It behooves us to question the psychology behind stigma when it comes to mental disability. The truth is that mental “illness” is still shamelessly albeit implicitly associated with “evil” powers, as Thomas Szasz has observed. It’s precisely because insanity is thought to be due to possession by evil spirits that it is treated by subjecting the insane to cruelties which it is hoped the demons will dislike, as Bertrand Russell observed in The Impact of Science on Society. But as Plato wrote in Phaedrus, “…the greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed of madness that is heavensent.”