Dictionary.Com turned out to be our next step. They listed: insanity: adj 1:

afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement; "was declared insane"; "insane laughter" 2: very foolish; "harebrained ideas"; "took insane risks behind the wheel"; "a completely mad scheme to build a bridge between two mountains". If you look up corresponding words, it still doesn’t help. I then I turn to what I know from a mental health aspect, insane is when you lose all touch with reality, danger to self or others or you are seeing flying pigs come out of my ass. Can society’s definitions and standards of insanity and mental health hold true in the JossVerse? No, it cannot.

The demons and vampires that are commonly seen are what mental health would call a delusion or hallucination. If Angel talked to a Psychiatrist about his brooding and 200+ years of a blood habit, he would be locked up quicker than I can finish this article. Best case in point that we have seen was Buffy in Normal Again. She was put away because of her delusions and hallucinations, which ended her up in a catatonic state where she lived the JossVerse in her head. What is to say that it wasn’t real? Besides the fact that Angel has his own show and Spike is now on it.  The point is, it could have happened. The viewer saw what would happen if our definitions of insane and sane where at work in the JossVerse. It also did a wonderful job in showing how complex and blurred the line becomes in distinguishing reality from distorted reality.

Sarah Michelle Gellar wonderfully did the shifts in moments. The emotions of confusion, horror and detachment were excellently portrayed during her performance. Think about it, what if the life you know isn’t real? You are actually interacting with people that do not exist. Your job or your school does not exist. You are actually a product of the delusions that you have built, because you cannot deal with reality? You are sitting in a room, somewhere, staring out a window or sitting in the sun after the orderly pushed you out in it, in a wheelchair. Nothing that you know is real, but till all this time, you had no reason to doubt it. Of course, it isn’t true. You are here, reading this article and reflecting on the possibilities that the question brings to mind.

Insanity, such an interesting topic of debate for me, I believe that is because it isn’t clearly defined. You see it and you know, but how fair is it to judge a character based on our standards? Another, more recent one, is Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. Lorne states “Oh, God, don’t go in there! It’s where he keeps his full-strength crazy.” We see two sides of Wesley in Time Bomb. One is jittery, disorganized, but in touch with reality and regretful for harming Gunn. The other is more disconnected, catatonic, but does respond and interact with reality. Does this mean he is crazy? No, no it doesn’t. Not by our standards or the standards that would hold up in the JossVerse. It has not been a long time since the death of the person he considered his soul mate, compounded with the fact that he has brought back painful memories of living through Season 3 and 4 of Angel. (Season 4 would have done me in, still does.) The man has tremendous stressors on him, and yet, there is more… Illyria is walking about in his soul mate’s body and housing what little there is left of Fred within her, but also there is this BIG apocalypse that has evidently started with the Angel Crew forgetting to RSVP.  Give the man a break, he already walked a thin line as it was, but now it has gotten thinner.

One clarification is needed; someone reported that some site is stating that Wesley is a sociopath. A sociopath is one who is affected with a personality disorder marked by antisocial behavior. Antisocial is defined as shunning the society of others, not sociable. Hostile to or disruptive of the established social order, marked by or engaging in behavior that violates accepted mores:

gangs engaging in vandalism and other antisocial behavior. Antagonistic toward or disrespectful of others; rude.  Can someone honestly agree with this in Wesley’s regard? Yes, he did become anti-social in seasons 3 and 4, but people told him not to come around or Angel would kill him. I consider that to be a forced antisocial behavior, but clearly it is not a part of a personality disorder.  One or two incidents with shooting people, but clearly, they deserved it.

Wesley is grieving. There is no time frame for the grieving process in the normal world, and we shouldn’t be expected to have one in the JossVerse, because it is a process and one moves through that process, as they are able to. I find Wesley being sort of healthy because he didn’t jump up and try to hook up with Illyria. What is not realistic is for the viewers to set up a time frame for him to be done with grieving and move on, because we are not the ones to do that. I mean, I am still grieving and it has been a while since her death and then I grieve for Wesley because of all the crap that has came down on him once again. I can grant him a few tics and disorganized behavior for a while to come it is normal. At least he isn’t shutting himself up in a dark room in a drunken stupor anymore. That is improvement.

There are numerous more examples of the uses of mental health within the realms of the JossVerse, but I am going to wait and revisit the others at a different time. If I don’t, I think I could type days and days on end with the subject.

Today, when you are relaxing, think about this… If this world wasn’t reality, but a product of a delusion, can you imagine what hell you were escaping by creating a world such as this?