5 rock albums about psychological disorders

Artistic manifestations generally have a communicative function towards a receiving audience. Normally, the content to be communicated is emotions, ideas, thoughts... that is, aspects of human behavior related to psychology.

But to curl the loop, there are several movies, theater performances or novels that not only convey this content, but their narrative is based purely on some disorder or phenomenon psychological. Examples of this would be the movie "As good as it gets" (obsessive personality disorder compulsive) or the classic “Don Quixote de la Mancha”, in which a delusional disorder symbolized the idealism.

However, other artistic disciplines have also used this resource, perhaps in a more subtle and less popular way, such as painting or music. Below we review several great musical works of the 20th century whose main narrative focuses on psychological aspects.

• Related article: "3 curious effects of music on your behavior"

Rock 'n' Roll Classics on Psychology and Mental Disorders

These are several rock albums characterized by talking about different dimensions of mental disorders.

1. The Kinks - Soap Opera

The Kinks was a group already versed in what refers to conceptual records by the time they published Soap Opera, whose main theme would be everyday life, expressed through experiment perpetrated by the protagonist of the story, the fictional rock star Starmaker, who, looking for inspiration for a record, changed his life with Norman, a citizen, a priori, completely normal.

The album narrates an everyday day in Norman's life, and how Starmaker has to adapt to this new situation. However, in his penultimate song we discovered that they were both the same person, having been all a delusion of Norman caused by the disenchantment with his routine and boring life, being Starmaker an alternate personality created by himself.

2. Lou Reed - Berlin

The obscure album by a promising Lou Reed focused on the relationship of Jim and Caroline, two junkies who were "trying" to develop a relationship. Drug use and the relationship of violence between them led Caroline to plunge into a deep depression and feel a strong learned helplessness, which would end up driving her to suicide. In a plot premise as extreme as the one presented by Reed, it is easy to detect other mental health disorders such as borderline disorder, intermittent explosive disorder…

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3. The Who - Tommy

The classic album by The Who, which has its film adaptation, tells the story of its homonymous protagonist: Tommy, a boy who, after accidentally witnessing the murder of his mother's lover at the hands of his father, miraculously returning alive from the war, he was left deaf, blind and dumb, because his parents insisted that he had seen nothing, heard nothing, and would never say nothing. A poetic and interesting reading of post-traumatic stress, as well as the power of suggestion, especially in children.

Speaking of The Who, it is inevitable in this regard to comment on his other famous Rock Opera, Quadrophenia, in which it is established that the protagonist has four personalities. However, this is still a figure to represent the different behavioral tendencies of the protagonist in different contexts, and not a mental disorder per se.

4. Pink Floyd - The Wall

One of the most memorable works by Pink Floyd and Roger Waters, also called "the wall" in Spanish. It is the biography of a fictitious rock star, who loses her father in the war, suffers overprotection from her mother, bullying from her teachers, heartbreak... each of these stressful events is one more brick in a metaphorical wall, which rises between him and the rest of the people, leading him to isolation, drug addiction and to what we could classify as an example of schizotypal personality disorder.

5. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

Although the album is not structured in such a way that all the songs build a single story, the work teacher of the ill-fated Amy Winehouse continually resorts to the same themes in most of her tracks. As a visibly autobiographical contribution, Winehouse portrays us the feelings of a convinced addict, with occasional bouts of anger and passive aggressiveness (as in Rehab or Addicted) or toxic relationships and calls for attention typical of borderline personality disorder (Back to Black, You Know That I'm not Good, Me and Mr. Jones).