approaching eccentric
thanks for the comments! carrying on from my previous rant,
The oddest thing is the field of psychology, where I have been dabbling for the odd decade, insists on a concept of normalcy. Else, how to determine a psychosis or neurosis? We'd be inundated by crazies. (I say that like it's a bad thing). In the old days, every village had its crazies - the Simples, the Slightly Odds and of course the beloved icon of the Crazy Cat Lady (one of my personal aspirations). When did these people suddenly become not-okay? (I guess I'm ranting about marginalizing not-normal people now)
Despite ourselves we DO have a normal-meter inside that says ewww, that's so NOT normal. I suspect we get socially indoctrinated as we grow, reprise on my previous blog. If we're lucky we become aware it's happened. If we're brave or crazy, or both, we try to do something about it. I have several friends who are instantly judgemental about everything they see, based on aforementioned normalitis (itis = inflammation. smirk.) Most of the time, they feel perfectly justified in passing judgements, without ever questioning the standards upon which they are built. But that leads me to another rant, namely the tendency to assume that our reality is the only reality. So post-modern of me. ewww. I'll have to wait till my normalitis calms down before I tackle that one.
The oddest thing is the field of psychology, where I have been dabbling for the odd decade, insists on a concept of normalcy. Else, how to determine a psychosis or neurosis? We'd be inundated by crazies. (I say that like it's a bad thing). In the old days, every village had its crazies - the Simples, the Slightly Odds and of course the beloved icon of the Crazy Cat Lady (one of my personal aspirations). When did these people suddenly become not-okay? (I guess I'm ranting about marginalizing not-normal people now)
Despite ourselves we DO have a normal-meter inside that says ewww, that's so NOT normal. I suspect we get socially indoctrinated as we grow, reprise on my previous blog. If we're lucky we become aware it's happened. If we're brave or crazy, or both, we try to do something about it. I have several friends who are instantly judgemental about everything they see, based on aforementioned normalitis (itis = inflammation. smirk.) Most of the time, they feel perfectly justified in passing judgements, without ever questioning the standards upon which they are built. But that leads me to another rant, namely the tendency to assume that our reality is the only reality. So post-modern of me. ewww. I'll have to wait till my normalitis calms down before I tackle that one.
posted by zouzou at 11:15 a.m.
3 Comments:
Of course each of us sees things from our own reality. We can't very well see it from any other reality, can we?
Having said that, I think we could all do with a daily shot in the arm of compassion and gentleness... and be forced to wear another's mocassin's for at least a mile a day. If we did that, we all might slow down a bit (allusions to Bast here...) and think of one another in kinder terms. But that's just my rant for the day...
...are you saying society's wierd? giggle. I guess we're not all that different because societies by definition grow around shared values and concepts. So we indoctrinate our children with (broadly) the same stuff. and THEN ostracize anyone who doesn't agree.
I don't think psychology is right, in some of the cases - particularly where neuroses are concerned. Psychosis has a chemical component that can be identified and "calibrate" but neuroses are mostly defined as non-adaptive behaviours. So they may or may not be right. Homosexuality was actually in the diagnostic manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) at one point.
Hmmm...a lot of psychologists I know have entered the field to figure out their own abonormality - or to escape from it into someone else's. So what does that say about the field in general?
Normalcy to me is a moving target, subject to whims and trends. To wit, homosexuality. To older generations (and I'm generalizing here!) an anathema; to younger generations, a normal percentage of the population. Maybe normal is more of a continuum, like gender is. The fringes at both ends are socially unacceptable but there is a vast percentage which falls into what society has deemed to be "normal" behaviour.
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