Fictional works about insanity?

[Kyriakos]

Got any interesting one to suggest?

They can be movies as well, not just books/stories.

I have read a few of note:

-The house of Asterion/The South are two very nice short stories by Borges.
-La Horla/He? are a couple by De Maupassant (he has more in this vein)
-The black monk, a largish story by Chechov, which builds up to a memorable conclusion.

Maybe the death of Ivan Ilic, by Tolstoy, although iirc that is more about slow erosion of will to live.

ETA Hoffmann has some interesting stories, mostly variations on the theme of the doppelganger, eg The Sandman.

Re movies, i really liked 2002's Spider, by Cronenberg.

[jockmcplop]

As far as movies go, Jacob's Ladder is class (I always recommend this), Black Swan too.

[Kyriakos]

I haven't seen all of Black Swan, but i am not sure if Jacob's Ladder is really about madness, cause

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

going by the very end - if that is real- Jacob was dreaming the whole story while in reality dieing on that surgeon's watch after he was heavily injured in battle.

[John Doe]

I haven't seen all of Black Swan, but i am not sure if Jacob's Ladder is really about madness, cause

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

going by the very end - if that is real- Jacob was dreaming the whole story while in reality dieing on that surgeon's watch after he was heavily injured in battle.

I have the same feeling as you about Jacob's ladder.

I enjoyed the Black swan, there's definitely a troubled character in it but I wouldn't classified all the way to insane.

May be try Bad Lieutenant, American psycho, shine, a beautiful mind, birdy, natural born killers. Man bites dog might be to much on the comic side. I didn't really like Shutter island. Pi and Amadeus is where genius and madness meet. There are tons of movie using psycho but it's more to provide thrills and suspense than it is about insanity (psycho, misery, silence of the lambs, the shining)

[VINC.XXIII]

Re movies, i really liked 2002's Spider, by Cronenberg.

Brian De Palma Pulsions.

[Halie Satanus]

Insanity is a pretty broad term. American Psycho: the protagonist is definitely insane, though there's debate as to whether the events in the film actually happen or if it's all in his head. Apocalypse now is about one man who is thought to be insane (Kurtz) and another who is travelling (actually and figuratively) towards insanity, though Kurtz may actually be the only sane person on the story. The Devils tackles the insanity of mass induced hysteria based on religious oppression, as does the Crucible. I'm guessing since you like 'horror' you mean more that side of the term.

Henry - Portrait of a serial Killer.
The Shining.
The Boston Strangler.
Zodiac.
Girl Interrupted.

[Kyriakos]

I don't think those films are about insanity (at least those of them i have seen). Well, the Zodiac is not (regardless of whether the zodiac killer was insane or not), given it is a rather standard police mystery movie.
Girl Interrupted is typically about insanity, yet are there really many scenes with anything like an insight? Iirc it had a number of insane girls, but not really anything showing the POV of an insane person. Contrast to Spider, or even Shutter island.

[Halie Satanus]

Insanity is a pretty broad term.

[LaMuerte]

There are many ways to interpret the novel The Fiery Angel by Valery Bryusov. If you read this story wearing firm secular glasses, you'll get a pretty ghastly story about insanity.

Crime and Punishment by Fjodor Dostojevski also handles about insanity , though in this case , a temporary one in the form of the state of being of a murderer during and after a murder. The same can be said about The Brothers Karamazov in the part leading up to Ivan's hallucinations.

[jockmcplop]

Insanity is a pretty broad term.

A further problem here in defining a work of art about insanity is that the only way for a sane person to grasp the essence of insanity is through metaphor, so most artworks about insanity are not about insanity explicitly, but about the struggle to define and express the reality of circumstances that one finds themselves in, and the internal sense of alienation from others. Movies that are specifically about insanity often say less about mental health than more metaphorical books/films like 'A Scanner Darkly'.

[VINC.XXIII]

POV of an insane person. Contrast to Spider, or even Shutter island.

Thats very specific.

Indeed Pulsions isn't a POV(nor a psychiatric asylum huis-clos).

[Martinskyboy]

Insanity it pretty large and alot of movies you can find insanity in it and alot in police suspense. Here some good I remember.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
gothika
taxi drivers
falling down
In the Mouth of Madness
A Clockwork Orange
Blade Runner
Pulp Fiction
Apocalypse Now
Full Metal Jacket
Psycho 1,2,...
The Silence of the Lambs
Texas Chainsaw massacre

Not sure it what you looking for but some are pretty insane But if it I can think of some other one'S.

[Kyriakos]

I should indeed have specified more!

I am interested in movies that focus on the person being insane, and show some attempt at building a narrative from their own point of view.

Those are not as common, yes. While a myriad films feature at least one "insane" person.

[jockmcplop]

The Fisher King? I think I remember that being about a mad guy.

[Kyriakos]

I sort of liked The Machinist, Spider, a Beautiful mind (well, the latter not that much)

[Spear Dog]

As mentioned, the definition of insanity is problematic and fluid. All the suggestions here have merit under broad definitions. I would add Frances about the actress Frances Farmer which questions the definition of insanity and who gets to decide what insanity is, and the Australian movie/book by Peter Carey Bliss - wherein the protagonist suffers a near fatal heart attack and upon recovery, viewing the world with new insight, is unsure whether he survived or has gone to a hell where his life is a deviant parody of what he perceived as his previously ideal existence.

Also:
...and the ass saw the angel,​ a novel by Nick Cave - very much from the pov of the insane person (actually, insanity is also a plot thematic in Nick Cave movies, e.g: The Propostion, Ghosts of the civil dead);
the movie - Spider baby - billed as the 'maddest story ever told', ... just because no-one has mentioned it yet.

[Kyriakos]

The Lynch movies could also be mentioned. Inland Empire for example, although in most of his movies he doesn't care to present any specific way to interpret what is going on, it is usually twisted as a personal delusion.
In Mulholland drive this is more obvious i suppose.

[Cyclops]

A lot of Lovecraft's works include elements of insanity and sometimes in the protagonist. Several stories have the narrator passing out in a delirium when they see something awful (At the Mountains of Madness, Strange Shadow over Innsmouth, Dagon, Call of Cthulhu and others), and others explain seemingly insane behaviour in terms of the influence of occult/science fiction causes (Rats in the Walls, Colour out of Space, Dunwich Horror). The works themselves are cheap pulp stories, not high literature although the author attempts at times to make them so.

The Tell-tale Heart by Poe remains probably the best example of a first person POV cracking under stress: short and sweet. Several other stories contain elements that border on insanity but typically end up being the result of indigestion. His work has a very clear direct influence on Lovecraft and he is IMHO the finest author the US ever produced.

The Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is a story told form the POV of a boy with autism, and while not about insanity it does address a very different way of looking at the world through the eyes of someone with a disability that affects the workings of their mind. I would recommend it for its own merits.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a book narrated by a character who spends time in a mental health facility and is IMV semi-autobiographical. Its not an exciting book but deals with some issues in her life through several metaphors including the one in the title.

[Kyriakos]

^Well, the title is awesome (incident of the dog in the night time), so for that alone i will check it out!

[Kyriakos]

Hm... read a bit of the curious incident of the dog in the night time.

At first i didn't like it, but despite myself not liking the writing style of it, i really find it genuine. Particularly the things already mentioned about words with multiple meaning, leading the person viewing them as separate discussions ("his face was drawn, but the curtains were real")

It also has a bit of the "Flowers for Algernon" vibe, the latter being a very devastatingly sad story..