Submitted Literature
Crash
Review
Madness is a stock theme in Ballard's work, appearing in virtually all of his non-science fiction work. Thematically, the novels listed here range from pathological sexual obsession ("Crash") to one man’s desire to escape the civilised world and challenge himself, and his sanity, to a battle against nature ("Concrete Island"). Notions of hysteria and collective, infectious madness have been long-term interests of Ballard's, and are demonstrated most clearly in "High Rise", a cautionary tale about the psychological dangers of physical and mental isolation and the pressures of capitalism. His most recent four novels – "Cocaine Nights", "Super-Cannes", "Millennium People" and "Kingdom Come" explore the impact upon psychological health of modern phenomena such as expansive shopping malls, gated communities and the paradoxical pressures of excessive leisure.
Key Themes:
- Antisocial Personality Disorder
- Revealing Reads
- Self-Injury
- Violence
Reference: J.G., Ballard. 1973. Crash. London: Vintage, 1994
Reviewer
- Charley Baker
Date Review Submitted: Friday 20th March 2009
View By Theme
- View All Themes
- Addiction
- Addiction
- Alcoholism
- Animals
- Antisocial Personality Disorder
- Anxiety
- Asylums
- auditory hallucinations
- Autobiography
- Bereavement
- Biography
- Bipolar Affective Disorder
- Cannabis
- Carer Issues
- Child Abuse
- Child and Adolescent Carers
- Childhood / Adolescence
- Cocaine
- Creativity and Madness
- Criminally induced insanity
- Cultural Psychiatry
- Cure
- De Clérambaults Syndrome
- Dementia / Alzheimer's
- Depression
- Developmental / Learning Disorders
- Diversity and Ethnicity
- Domestic Violence
- Eating Disorders
- ECT
- Education
- Female Genital Mutilation
- Fiction
- Head Injury
- Heroin
- History of Psychiatry
- Home
- Hysteria
- Institutional Abuses
- Isolation
- Medical Training
- Meditation and Mindfulness
- Mental Illness and The Psychiatric Institution
- Morbid Jealousy
- Multiple Personality Disorder / Dissociative Identity Disorder
- Munchausen by Proxy
- Mutism
- Neurological Disorders
- Novel
- Obsessions
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
- Personal / Professional
- Personality
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Post-natal Depression
- Postmodern Madness
- Professional / Occupational Stress
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychosexual Disorders
- Psychosis
- Psychosynthesis
- Psychotherapy
- Rape
- Religion
- Revealing Reads
- Schizoaffective Disorder
- Schizophrenia
- Self-destructive behaviour
- Self-Injury
- Societal Pressure
- Stress
- Suicidality
- Test
- Tourettes Syndrome
- Violence
- Vulnerability