How do I disengage from Touchwiz?
Welcome to the forums. It sounds like TouchWiz is crashing. You can load an alternate launcher on Play. If the phone won't let you do anything, you can go to Play on your desktop, sign in with the same GMail account, and search for Nova launcher.
It's free, and when you click install, it will flag the phone to start downloading it. Once it's done, click your home button, and you should be given a choice which launcher to use. Click Nova, and you should get control of your device again.