This post was prompted by reading a review of "What is madness?" a book by Darian Leader (a psychoanalyst). I haven't read the book but was taken with what was reported as one of its basic premises, which is that there is a difference between being mad and going mad. People can be mad, ie have an internal world which makes no sense, but unless they go mad, ie do something which projects that internal world externally, we would never know it. So many people might be mad, but we only recognise it when they go mad.
Now I realise he is talking about real psychiatric disorders, but I found myself thinking about character styles in healthy people. We each have an internal world that makes perfect sense to us, and the internal world of others who share our character style would also make sense to us. But the internal world of those with different character styles would seem crazy. However we don't see it while their behaviour fits with what we can make sense of using our own internal model. So we don't realise their internal world is different to ours. We only notice their different inner world when they show it to us through unexpected actions, at which point we think they've gone crazy!
What you have to realise is they were "crazy" all the time (to you), just as you are "crazy" all the time (to them). So it's worth taking the time to truly undertand their inner world (and your own) so that their (or your) "crazy" action doesn't take you (or them) by surprise!
