The HUGE problem with depicting mental illness in fantasy (it’s not what you think)

There has been a trend in the last few years in fantasy where the authors are including depictions of mental illness in their fantasy stories. If you're new to my blog, I’m Erik Goodwyn, I’m a Jungian psychiatrist and a fantasy author. I do a lot of videos on the intersection of mental health, dreams, storytelling, and myth-making. I’ve delivered over 50 lectures, posters, and workshops in the US and Europe on Jungian psychology, and I’ve published over 30 book chapters and articles in peer reviewed journals. I have also published 6 books on psychology, philosophy, and dreams, and my first fantasy novel, King of the Forgotten Darkness, came out this year. If talking more about that kind of stuff interests you, like and subscribe, and you can also find me on TikTok, FB and Instagram. 

So if you’re a writer or just love storytelling, you’re going to want to listen up. Like I said, whether its the psychologically realistic stories of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series, or Brandon Sanderson tackling mental illness and trauma in Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive, it seems like modern authors seem to want to focus in on things like depression, self-harm behavior, trauma, and even schizophrenia (such as in the Hellblade video game series). I’ve also read some fantasy novels where the authors delved into substance abuse, and of course Dune is famous for its depictions of the psychedelic substance known as spice. Perhaps they do this in order to raise awareness for mental health issues–which I heartily approve of. Or maybe they want to develop empathy for folks who are struggling with mental health issues, to combat stigma that often goes with them. I also approve of that. 

Another possibility is that this is another element of the concept of making fantasy “more gritty” and “realistic”. I’ve discussed that subject before, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. But overall, this is part of a general writing trend that encourages writers to “get into the characters heads” more, make storytelling more immediate and immersive, and focus of body reactions and micro-emotions in order to be more “psychologically realistic” perhaps, or to increase immersion. These are very powerful techniques, and there are a lot of good reasons why they are effective I will probably do another post about at some point. 

But today I want to talk specifically about the concept of depicting mental illness in a fantasy story, and why, if you choose to do this, you have to be EXTREMELY careful about how you go about it. And the reason is simple: doing this can undermine the fantasy elements of your story. This is a unique problem with the fantasy genre only. Depicting mental illness in a crime drama, a romance, or a literary work is fine. But fantasy is very different, and that’s because mental illness is not the same as things like liver cancer or broken bones. Mental illness is entangled much moreso in culture.

This means we run the risk of imposing OUR cultural ideas of what mental illness is into a fantasy novel, and if you don’t do it very carefully, you can completely undermine the fantasy of it. To understand why, you have to look at the way what we call “mental illness” has been defined and depicted around the world, in indigenous contexts, and throughout history. In my book Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy, I get into this a lot, but generally speaking, even the word “mental illness” is not universal by any means. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not even the majority of ways to look at emotional suffering. Think about this: you’re writing a fantasy novel. What makes it a “fantasy”? Is it “the imagination”, or “magic” or “fabulous beasts like dragons”? Maybe it’s spirits or demons. Spells, wizards, or curses and magical objects. 

Think about this. For the vast majority of history and even today cross-culturally in most indigenous contexts every one of these things–magic, dragons, cursed objects, ghosts, spirits, gods–were NOT considered “fantasy”, “escapism” or “flights of imagination”. No, every last one of these things was 100% REAL. Thus, if you brought a story containing all of these things to a person living in that kind of culture, they would wonder why you were calling it “fantasy”. It’s not imaginary or impossible. It’s just another day. 

See, you have to realize, we live in a very unique and historically anomalous state. One, however, in which we are so used to, we take it for granted. Anthropologists call our culture by an acronym. Westernized Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Developed countries (i.e., “WEIRD”). I’m sure they came up with this to be tongue-in-cheek, but it’s also accurate. For the vast majority of our existence on earth, fantasy elements weren’t fantasy. They were accepted elements of reality. This naturally extends to mental health.

This is where it gets interesting. Consider the Senegalese ritual known as the Ndeup. In his work, psychologist Andrew Solomon-who suffered from depression–actually describes going through this ritual that a local medicine woman suggested he undergo:

But in that context, the Senegalese do call it “depression”, but something else, and it’s not blamed on neurotransmitters, poor attachments in childhood, or any of the usual stuff mainstream psychology likes to point to. No, in that culture, roughly, the suffering one experiences in that state is caused by harmful spirits hanging on to you who are jealous of your lovers. In order to be cured, you must endure a day long ritual where the entire tribe joins in, wrapping you in the blood of a ram, wrap you up in intestines, and you must hop in that state to a specified place where you remove all the organic material, bury it, whereupon all the women in the village spit water on you to rinse you off. There’s more to it, but you get the idea. It actually worked for his depression, funny enough.

My point is in a fantasy novel you are describing another world, another culture, and a place where “magic is real”--as if that weren’t the default state for the entire history of humanity up until the Enlightenment or so. And even today, in our culture, the mainstream worldview is a hyper-skeptical, post-Enlightenment, post-Protestant, anti-ritual worldview that sees “the real world” as nothing but a dead landscape of mindless mechanisms operating by physical clockwork laws. But within that context, there are pockets of people who still believe in “thoughts and prayers”, crystals, and so forth. Usually, however, all of this is subverted by the dominant drive for hyper-individualism and profit mongering, but that’s a subject for another day.

For us, if you want to tackle mental illness in a fantasy story, you have to account for worldview–including your own! Compare that to the worldview of the people in your fantasy setting. In a fantasy setting, spells, curses, monsters, wizards, demons, ghosts–all 100% undeniably real. There should not be any edgelords who “don’t believe in fairy tales” in a world where such stuff is commonly known to exist–it undermines the fantasy. Fairy tales in a fantasy world where fairies are known to exist are just tales about fairies. There’s nothing of the “just” in it. Only an idiot would take that stance in such a world. But that applies to US too, in WEIRD cultures. WE view mental illness in a way that deals in neurochemistry, cognitive distortions, and all that stuff. But in more traditional cultures, people with schizophrenia are merely special individuals who are closer to the gods. People who are depressed are afflicted with harmful spirits. People with dissociative trauma symptoms are possessed by demons. People who are struggling with personal identity have suffered “soul loss” and must go on a spiritual journey to recover it, or have a specialist like a folk magician to retrieve it. 

These two explanations are, in some ways, mutually exclusive unless you are VERY careful about it. Moreover, you don’t want to impose the modern WEIRD framework on a fantasy culture and have your heroes performing psychotherapy on side characters where they discuss their Oedipal complexes, ego defenses, or take serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I’m just saying, if you’re going to have magic and spirits in your world, it’s better to approach the “mental illness” issue you’re wanting to tackle using these magical elements, because here’s the secret: the magical and fantastical things are incredibly powerful symbols and metaphorical expressions of those seemingly prosaic or reductively explained things. That’s the bridge. Now, if you want MORE details on how to bridge those two things, I’d recommend reading my book Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy:

(https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Symbols-Psychotherapy-Erik-Goodwyn/dp/1138120286),

Or if dense psychology texts aren’t your jam, or you just also want to read a fantasy novel with this kind of thing in mind–i.e., tackling mental illness without destroying and dessicating the vivid, gorgeous, and full-blooded magical elements, you can read my novel King of the Forgotten Darkness. It’s a story of a man who lives caught between two worlds–one a futuristic world of advanced science and completel lack of suffering, and another one full of darkness, magic, and chaos. The hero must illegally go to the dark world in order to save a family member he once thought dead. Think Narnia meets Pan’s Labyrinth.

In that book you’ll see how I accomplish the balancing act I’m talking about here. So if you want to include mental illness, consider putting into terms that a culture in which magic is REAL would! Externalize the inner conflicts into demons, spells, monsters, and magical landscapes. You’ll still get the mental health awareness in there, but only some will see it because you’ll be using symbols. But what you WONT do is undermine the fantasy. 

Catch ya next time!

EG