What is "normal"?

The main problem I have with psychiatrists is that they assume that they are well-balanced and healthy people, and are fit to judge and analyze others who presumably aren't well-balanced and healthy. They seem to believe that there is some standard of "normality" that we can all be measured against, and then we can be adjusted to that standard (with the help of their bible, the DSM), but who has ever achieved it in real life?

What does "normal" mean anyway? Is there anyone who has ever lived that didn't suffer from some kind of mental or emotional problem, even simple neurosis? The so-called normal people in American society are generally selfish, materialistic, egotistical, slightly manic, talk too much, eat too much, engage in wishful or magical thinking, cognitive dissonance, etc.

One definition of "sanity" or "normality" is that a person is well-adjusted to the society they live in. But when the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, their psychiatrists found him to be a "sane" bureaucrat who calmly administered the Holocaust.

Thomas Merton observed, "If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, 'well-balanced,' unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well."

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“It can’t be overstressed, one final time, that to see the world as it really is is devastating and terrifying. It achieves the very result that the child has painfully built his character over the years in order to avoid: it makes routine, automatic, secure, self-confident activity impossible. It makes thoughtless living in the world of men an impossibility. It places a trembling animal at the mercy of the entire cosmos and the problem of the meaning of it.” - Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” - Blaise Pascal

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage." - Ray Bradbury

"I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better, after all…" - Stephen King

I agree with you, that's why I believe science should be more strongly interjected into mainstream psychology. MRIs and blood tests should replace the subjectivity of the psych doctor and his bag of cookie cutter diagnosis that he hands out. Mental illnesses were named by man, and, can be incorrect, as man often is. I do not deny some people need help, but I do not believe that just because the DSM labels an individual as mentaly ill that he is infact ill. The DSM is subjective, so it can be wrong. Also, how do we destinguish between mental illnesses? so many are so similair that the lines begin to blur. Only when psychology begins to rely on science for a diagnnsis will be able to accuratly judge the difference between normal and abnormal.

Normal for me is what i call normal... I dont let people tell me what is and isnt normal, cos that will make me live my life the way they want me to live my life.

The Devil is normal

Freedom is abnormal

megan1986 wrote:I agree with you, that's why I believe science should be more strongly interjected into mainstream psychology. MRIs and blood tests should replace the subjectivity of the psych doctor and his bag of cookie cutter diagnosis that he hands out. Mental illnesses were named by man, and, can be incorrect, as man often is. I do not deny some people need help, but I do not believe that just because the DSM labels an individual as mentaly ill that he is infact ill. The DSM is subjective, so it can be wrong. Also, how do we destinguish between mental illnesses? so many are so similair that the lines begin to blur. Only when psychology begins to rely on science for a diagnnsis will be able to accuratly judge the difference between normal and abnormal.

Yeah, think about the labels professionals used 50 years ago. Hysterical, divergent, neurasthaniac etc. These diagnostics have been changed greatly since then. For instance being a homosexual is no longer considered a mental illness. I think in 100 years we will look back on horror at current practices, as we look back at medival bloodletting as archaic, now.

They put people on addictive drugs at the flip of a hat... We are going to kick ourselves and lots of doctors in the butt after how many (hope it changes soon) years of the pharmacy industry controlling our mental health system.

Everyone I meet is taking something. It makes me sick. Why are we so quick to label people with illnesses and tell them to pop a pill. I think everyone is so different, the DSM is laughable. I will have a BS in Psychology in December (who hoo) and I find the DSM silly. It's attempts to categorize symptoms is funny since every human who suffer from mental illness is so so different from the next. I keep faith in psychology when I see the doctors I work for treat people on an individual bases and regard diagnosis as a insurance "necessity" that isn't important. It's the treatment and progress thats important!

(Of course it's necessary to have a DSM to organize and such but I find it horrifying that anyone can walk into a psychiatrist's office and say "I talked to soandso for 45 mins and she thinks I might be depressed/anxious." And the respond is a rx for something!)

You're confusing statistical normalcy with functional normalcy. One is not meant to be the other. Just because normalcy is challenging to define doesn't mean you throw up your hands and abandon the whole concept. That's silly.

It's also difficult to define 'aquamarine' - some want a darker color, some say it's a lighter color. Some want more green in it, some want more blue. Despite these differences, aquamarine still exists.

You may not like the DSM or psychology - but what would replace it? It's been worked over by thousands of people for over 30 years.

Replace it with magic perhaps? Yeah, magic, that's the ticket.

I am not throwing away the idea of normalcy... not in the least. I am just saying it is seen differently by everyone... For example, someone with more pessimistic or even depression tendencies would never see the world as someone with optimism. When a negative even occurs they react differently and need different coping strategies.

The DSM is also amazing... For where we are now. But it is FAR from complete or perfect at describing/diagnosing humans.
I also think science should be, and will be, more integrated into psychology. This, I think, will change the DSM incredibly.
(Symptom checklists... fillng certain criteria, or not,.... ugg is this really the best way to fix people's mental problems??)

Also, just to clarify, I LOVE psychology and plan on dedicating my life to working on improving it. I can't go into practice with the practice as it is. Research is where I am headed, I think.

Most of my anger is directed towards psychiatry, not psychology.. and how selling drugs and making money became a part of healing people.

In a perfect world shouldn't statistical normalcy and functional normalcy be the same?

Further, shouldn't the word normal be devalued and happiness or fulfillment/success, , independent of normalcy values, be encouraged instead?

( Funny as I contradict myself by posting in a "what is normal" thread)

Right now it seems impossible to be happy or successful unless you did it in the normal or expected way.... Back to my original rant against psychiatry!!! Stop popping those pills if you dont really know what it's doing to you! Stop trying to be normal and aim for happiness or personal fulfillment.

Hi there and thanks for writing back.

You asked In an ideal world wouldn't statistical and functional normalcy be the same? Not sure, but I don't think so. I get what you mean: It'd be nice if the norm was functionality. I think you'd still have statistical averages and they wouldn't inform us about what's functionally adaptive - they'd just inform us about the statistical mean. We need both notions. We need statistical ideas of normal to perform research studies and make mathematical comparisons. We need functional ideas to help doctors and psychologists help clients make goals about how they'd prefer to function - how they can make life better for themselves. And to define how they can function and how they can't function.

While it is true that one definition of "sanity" or "normality" is that a person is well-adjusted to the society they live in. And it's also true that Eichmann was, in WWII Germany a mere bureaucrat who calmly administered the Holocaust. I find it a huge mental challenge to believe that he was 'sane' by any standard. Whoever deemed him 'sane' in that context was trying to stretch a point about normalcy and culture, and that definition of 'sane' is woefully lacking, I should think. Murder even in that Christian culture was, even back then, a huge moral wrong, and it's tough to see how the act of repeated murder was 'sane' even then. I don't trust it - I don't trust the 'sane' diagnosis.

The DSM remember has had quite a long history. It is far from perfect because it is always going to be a work in progress - further refinement is part of what makes it a useful thing - it's a tool that gets retooled every few years. So yeah, it's a bit behind, always. Just remember, before the DSM things were a lot worse.

I get what you're saying about money - but medicine is the same way, as is law, dentistry and others. For psychiatry - we've developed a profit motive. It's not ideal. But who's going to pick up the slack, and develop new drugs for free?

I do think medicine should be paid for by the State, be it for mental health or physical health.

Normal is a stupid word. If you seriously dug down into a person's everything, you'd find in everyone something that's labeled "abnormal". Yer right, the people who are "normal" are indeed selfish and egotistical! For some strange reason, I find that people with emotional problems tend to be nicer to others than people who are generally "normal". Plus, weird people are interesting! "Normal" people are boring! And those people aren't even "normal"! They just act it cuz they are pressured into it by society. People like me are just crazy and be who they wanna be and all those people who are labeled normal are the ones who tend not to like us...HUH! Big surprise eh?