If we take off the cloak of reason and instead clothe with that of madness, we may have the chance to penetrate deeper, more occult realms of the spirit, where essential truths may be revealed to us. At least so thought Socrates. There was however one condition: this madness must be of divine origin.

There are more types of sacred insanity in Greek thought: prophetic, ritual, poetic or erotic, all of which are inspired by the gods Apollo, Dionysus, the muses and Aphrodite respectively. But how did the Greeks come up with these beliefs and to what extent can the mental states described by them be compared to those described in modern psychology textbooks? For this ancient people, there was a difference between divine madness and madness caused by some sort of illness, as Herodotus recount in the story of Cleomenes, who runs amok either because the gods punished him, or because of excessive drinking. It is an old distinction, though not that old, because primitive peoples associate all forms of mental illnesses with divine intervention.

The cause may even be the victims’ allegations that they are in contact with a being of higher order. Menecrates, a physician who lived in the 4th century AD thought he was Zeus. Most probably, like many others, he was suffering from epilepsy, considered a sacred disease because it implied the idea of possession, of an attack from the outside. The double personality syndrome may have also led to the belief that the person was authentically possessed, rather than suffering form the intervention of a daemon. The daemon is however responsible for some case epilepsy, paranoia and other mental imbalances.

When madness foresees

Works such as The Odyssey are filled with references to the demonic origins of mental diseases, a very common theme in the Homeric age, but in the Classic Age authors tend to draw a line