An intrinsic malfunction-a deliberate social construct ? framing mental variation beyond the prescribed and over-medicalized biomedical context in Brian Yorkey’s ‘Next to Normal’

Abstract EN

The present paper addresses the question of 'mental illness' as a complex lived moment of severe rupture, a 'spiritual' human variation, and a meaningful active sociopolitical experience.

aiming to reify and transform what is commonly referred to as a problem of disordered minds, deviant psyches and inherent inferiorities, the researcher draws on the 'social model of disability'-an alternative framework that ideologically runs counter to the dominant orthodoxies of the functionalist biomedical perspective-for a more complex and nuanced understanding of the limitations associated with mental diversity.

for this purpose, the study takes as its primary focus the experience of the protagonist with bipolar disorder in Brian Yorkey's radical rock musical, 'next to normal'(2009), to negotiate the multifaceted network of socio-political contexts informing madness and to offer new and transformative insights and unorthodox representation of the human mind.

to this end, the study finally reaches the conclusion that madness in not necessarily a manifestation of intrinsic behavioural, psychological, or biological malfunction, but is culturally induced and deeply involved with the increasingly maddening politics of the dominant, social (purely clinical or psychiatric), and identifying community that is not set up to accommodate those who have been defined as mad.