{"podcast":{"title":"Back from the Borderline","slug":"back-from-the-borderline-4079851","podcast_index_feed_id":4079851,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69","website_url":"http://backfromtheborderline.com","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69/1735679446378-b2e8272f-396f-4979-a13e-2172ecffa88e.jpeg","author":"mollie adler","episode_count":358,"summary":"Back From The Borderline is a podcast about depth psychology, symbolism, spirituality, consciousness, and the search for a more meaningful life. I started this show years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Somewhere along the way, the questions became much bigger than me. They led into Carl Jung, mythology, Christian mysticism, dreams, tarot, philosophy, esotericism, religious history, artificial intelligence, and the symbolic patterns that quietly shape the way we see ourselves and the world around us. The word borderline has taken on its own meaning over the years. It speaks to the edge almost all of us eventually reach. That place where our old explanations stop working and we’re asked to learn an entirely different way of seeing. That’s the space my work inhabits. Some episodes are conversations with researchers, psychologists, philosophers, historians, and spiritual teachers. Others are long-form essays where I follow a question wherever it leads. Lately I’ve been especially interested in symbolic literacy, the way images, myths, dreams, and archetypes quietly organize human life, often long before we’re consciously aware of them. I’m not very interested in being “ce…","last_synced_at":"2026-09-08T16:23:45.590679+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851"},"episode":{"title":"The Intelligence of Madness, Part One: Who Gets Called Insane?","slug":"the-intelligence-of-madness-part-one-who-gets-called-insane","published_at":"2026-05-12T09:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-one-who-gets-called-insane","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851","url":"https://shows.acast.com/back-from-the-borderline/episodes/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-one-who-gets-called-insane","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69/e/6a011a61dcea0196addd5a54/media.mp3","summary":"Part One of a two-part series on madness, psychosis, and the thin line between breakdown and revelation. Sanity has always come with rules. Speak “correctly.” Show up to work and produce. If you hear a voice, see something other people don’t, or start asking questions that unsettle the people around you, there’s a shift, even if it’s subtle. Concern arrives, then usually a diagnosis. Then the extreme pressure to “return to normal” as quickly as possible. In this first installment, I begin with Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown in the streets of Turin and follow the history of madness through asylums, psychiatry, mysticism, and depth psychology. We look at depersonalization, hearing voices, spiritual emergency, and the long record of human beings crossing into states of consciousness that modern culture has little patience for. Much of what we call sanity is actually more like “social fluency.” Knowing when to smile (and when to stay quiet) and how to say “I’m fine” while inside, you’re completely falling apart. Older cultures sometimes treated these states as initiations , while the “modern” West has tught us to treat them as symptoms to suppress. This episode asks who gets to define reality, what forms of perception are welcomed in society, and what happens when unusual experiences are completely stripped of meaning and reduced to pathology/disorder/dysfunction. Featuring Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Michel Foucault, Plato, and cross-cultural perspectives on psychosis, mental illness, and the relationship between madness and genius. 🜏 CONTINUE THE WORK: If you recognize yourself in something from this episode, don’t leave it unresolved. If you want more depth and the full archive: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline You’ll get: ☆…","meta_description":"Part One of a two-part series on madness, psychosis, and the thin line between breakdown and revelation. Sanity has always come with rules. Speak “correct…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3591,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/episodes/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-one-who-gets-called-insane/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-one-who-gets-called-insane.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}