normality is our collective, protective madness
For Becker, this is literally true: normality is our collective, protective madness, in which we repress the truth of the human condition, and those who have difficulty playing this game are the ones we call mentally ill...a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. Psychoanalysis reveals the high price of denying this truth about man’s condition, what might be called “the costs of pretending not to be mad.”