We banish a great many thoughts from our minds on the grounds that we may be ‘mad’. Some of them evidently are: too mean, flawed, absurd. But it’s one of the tragedies of our thinking lives that there are invariably a great many that could have been of high value, if only we had dared to examine them further.
Our thinking lives are harmed by a background imperative to appear at all times wholly normal and entirely sane: we should, to maximise our insights, learn to make friends with moments of ‘mad’ thinking.
