I ride a dangerous edge. I've been "insane" and as of current function "improperly".
As "insane" means illogical, and modern humanity is dysfunctional, does relative psychology have any value?
What have been your experiences with "normal" and "abnormal" minds, and how do we as societies react to unique perspectives?
Is there a divide between "abnormal" and nonfunctioning that society avoids?
I personally have been recently suspicious of imprecise Psychology because of its extremely fuzzy distinctions for major disorders and blurring of proof of physical symptoms and theory.
As a tool, I think it is less effective than humanism and compassion; which my life lacks.
I worry I will never be able to attain the functioning that early life deprived me of.
There is a continuum between "normal" and "insane" people. Both of them suffer from similar ailments, except that for "insane" people it gets to a point where they can't function normally in society.
So sanity is always relative to the society's context. Which does not mean that mental illnesses are an imaginary condition. It's just that society's response to it depends on the culture. In some places and times, "insane" people were considered sacred and worshiped, in other places they were put to death. Also, people considered normal in some societies are sick in others, simply because their behavior is not considered adequate (too aggressive, paranoid, lack of concentration i.e. ADHD, etc).
The legal rule-of-thumb is that if a person a danger to him/herself or others, they can be instituionalised against their will (in the UK we call this "sectioning" a person - I have no idea why.)
>In some places and times, "insane" people were considered sacred and worshiped, in other places they were put to death.
Back when the USSR was still functioning, Brezhnev had to sign up to some international human rights treaty (I forget the name, it was organised by the UN) because the gulags were making him look bad. He still needed to deal with political dissidents though, so instead of sending them to Siberia he had them put in mental asylums on the grounds that anyone who objected to a worker's utopia must be insane.
>>2
Forget it. You're only making life that much more difficult by holding yourself up to a non-existent ideal state.
>>5, as opposed to a life in a wholly nonexistant state? There is nowhere to go but up or insane.
>>6 up or insane? You're overlooking quite some possibilities, here. Try to think outside the box ^_^
>>7, perhaps I miswrote by degree, but that thought is the gist of it.
Although, horizontal motion is possible... I merely do not wish to sell my earlobes for adspace.
Still, the issue is, is insanity a merely relative term? Can it be forgone then, or does one but dodge the label? And, who here has read VALIS?
>>8 insanity is at the same time relarive and absolute. Just think about a leg handicap. It can go from total paralysis to a limping gait, to the capacity to stretch your leg like a gymnast. There is a continuum between those states, but the cutoff rate separating disability from normality is relative and arbitrary. You could even say that from the point of view of gymnastic's world, most of people are handicapped.
With respect to insanity, some people clearly have psychotic crises, and fail to reach the general consensus about reality, at least momenterily. But then, we all have different perceptions of reality
As for Valis, what did you want to discuss about?
Thank you all for both arbitrary and contrasting undelineated subjective definitions.
To >>1 I connected VALIS's (Phillip K. Dick's) consciousness philosophy (be it delusion, mania or but dreams) and wonder in its exagerated context if innovation and maddness perish to more normal conceits in most... and what we lose in cultural approaches to difference.
>>10 Would you care to articulate better your second sentence? I suggest that instead of writing a long cryptic sentence, you write a longer paragraph made of a succession of simple sentences (I'm working under the assumption that you are trying to communicate something to other people, not just talking to yourself).
>>11, talking to myself is appealing, I admit, but I don't need internet for that.
Basically, my rambled thought was that great innovation and ideas tend to come from psychologically abnormal (though oft functional) individuals. This abnormality is still little tolerated.
>>12 for the dummies:
Fucked up people are interesting and produce interesting stuff (think: artists). Normal people are boring.
100% open-mindedness is sometimes confused for insanity, especially for sociopaths. I feel no remorse, no shame, and no regret for anything I do, but I still act and think logically (ie. I'm not just gonna go kill someone because I'm pissed at them as a sociopath might).
"Normal" people versus "pathological" people... This is exactly what psychiatric consumers/survivors are fighting against: the stigma towards mental illness.
>>16 finally someone makes an useful comment.
Mental illnesses are like other illnesses: they eat more or less of your life, but they are not you, just a part of you.
Some illnesses make people interesting, but that's not what they are.
There is no absolute definition of "normal", the very concept of normal is garnered from the average person. If the average person had murderous tendencies, non-murderers would be the "psychopaths."
For the good of society of course, we view dangerous tendencies like this as "illnesses." On the other hand, if you're just 'strange,' but not hurting yourself or others, there's really no need to get psychiatric help.
>>18 I think this is becoming more or less the operative definition of a mental illness. If the mental trait prevents you from functioning in society, and you don't feel right about it, then it's a condition that needs to be adressed.
>>19 True, but functioning doesn't mean fairly functioning. It seems sometimes as if insanity and illogic that our cultures are rife with are tolerated just due to being normal. Perhaps successful people with issues are veiwed as "healthy" (at least looked at by their contemporaries)and failures of any type as "unhealty." I know this is not a rule, but some examples in that framework can provide a shocking example of how inconsistant we are in our judgements.
Look up the Nacirema for instance.
>>18 is hopefully right about where clinical psychology is progressing to, but I daresay that for the average individual the insane is whatever they cannot reconcile to their subjective worldveiw.
Humans are too dynamic and complex to have a real border between quirk and illness... at least, I don't see one. Do any of you fellows?
>Humans are too dynamic and complex to have a real border between quirk and illness... at least, I don't see one. Do any of you fellows?
I think it is by now pretty well accepted that there is a continuum between extreme cases of disease and healthy people. In practical terms one has to assign thresholds to rationalize therapies, but everyone agrees they are arbitrary.
In any case, I can feel in myself the equivalents of many mental conditions, and could well imagine reaching a dysfunctional state under certain conditions or stresses. I believe this is true for all humans.
>>18
There actually is a definition of "normal" or "healthy." According to the DSM-IV, an illness is diagnosed if the required symptoms for the disorder cause "clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning."
A classical example: shyness may be a "quirk." However, it is certainly less intense than generalized social phobia or avoidant personality disorder, where the client chronically experiences and anticipates intense fear of being judged and being potentially embarrassed or humiliated from his/her own actions. The latter will benefit a lot from changing his/her thought patterns, exposing him/herself in social situations, practising methods that can calm him/herself down, etc.
Nevertheless, this "definition" of "normality" is not absolute; psychiatrists still need to consider the degree of symptom intensity. After all, this is the subjective nature of psychiatry. With the advances of neuroimaging such as fMRI, however, I wonder how much of this will change in the future.
>>20
People who have mental illness come from all different background, "successful" or not, and we can't always see a mental illness on the outside. A man may seem very successful and productive on his job; however, unless he tells us, we don't know that he is currently in his hypomanic phase of his bipolar disorder.
"Quirkiness" is not illness; it's what make each individual unique. In fact, sometimes quirkiness is quite adaptive; consider some of the examples at http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20080623-000001.html
As stated above, what makes an illness is when its symptoms are intense enough that it causes significant distress and impairment in life. Humans are indeed too dynamic and complex to be "defined" by their illness and symptoms. That's why it's important to adopt a holistic view of health and perceive each human being as a whole. We might offend someone if we labelled him/her as "(un)healthy" or worse, with his/her diagnosis.
>>14
Totally agree, i'm very much like this, in my mind everything is possible and everything is relative. And because of that, because i refuse to acknowlege that there are "sanctities", norms, customs, laws that are there and cannot be broken or unchanged i'm considered a sociopath, mostly by my religious family members.
But i'm not, i just know that "nothing is impossible, there are only possiblilities waiting to be discovered".
>>19
Have you read a book "Aristoi" by Walter Jon Wiliams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristoi_(novel)
He shows a world where people force themselves into what our current society would picture as multiple personality disorder and use it as a tool to broaden their mental powers. It works, and because of that i would not consider such people sick or insane.
Speaking of MPD, i know a girl who has it, she refuses to undergo treatment because psychiatry here in Poland is so 19th century... I think i will show her this book, if she is going to live with that, she better start using it for her own good. IMO that will be the best "cure" for her.
>Have you read a book "Aristoi" by Walter Jon Wiliams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristoi_(novel)
Not really, but it does sound interesting. I think I will have a look at it. In my opinion we have naturally multiple personalities, or facets, and sometimes spend too much effort trying to rationalize them into a coherent whole. I think that does not need to be, one would be better off giving a curious ear to his own tendencies, and see where they lead to.