I recently watched two videos offering differing ideas about the causes of psychosis. One was a TED talk by Thomas R. lnsel, M.D. director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The other was a BBC Horizon documentary, Why Did I Go Mad? Insel. Why did I go Mad? One is an interesting glimpse into psychosis via three people who hear voices and hallucinate. The other is a mystifyingly popular conjuring trick suggesting psychosis is a brain disease that we can discover before it even manifests and all but eradicate hopefully like Leukaemia. Let's start with the magical thinking trick. What Insel starts with is the common psychiatric approach to talking about madness. He talks about biological illnesses that have nothing in common with psychiatric conditions. It's what they do. He begins by listing a series of biological conditions; heart disease, leukaemia, etc. of which science has rather wonderfully cut ...