• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Insanity vs. Sanity

Foreigner

Foreigner

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
8,603
Location
The Cosmos
I had this discussion tonight with a friend in person. He has Aspberger's syndrome, which is an autistic spectrum disorder. He was telling me that his greatest challenge growing up was that society stigmatized him as being "abnormal". He believes that if society had a more broad definition of what is normal, or tossed out "normal" altogether, then more kinds of people could gain acceptance and thus achieve higher functionality. In short, most "disorders" are diagnosed on the basis of how well a person functions in society. The difference between someone hearing voices and someone who is "schizoaffective" relates to a professional diagnosis, which is often determined based on their ability to function in the human world. When people can no longer function they get slapped with the label.

Think about what people were put into asylums for 100 years ago compared to today. Some things that were hopeless diseases back then are now just considered part of the normal human spectrum that we don't even bother treating, i.e. homosexuality.

Given this information, I ask what determines normal and abnormal, or sanity vs. insanity, in a world where philosophical, intellectual and cultural diversity is so high? Could factors like the information age and the internet contribute to a higher degree of subjectivity around social norms and thus acceptance of differences?
 
Social and cultural norms are a sociologically measurable phenomena, and they vary context to context. ebola can probably say more about this, but i agree with your suggestion that the web can increase acceptance of disabilities. it can also encourage mob mentality and bullying too.

insanity is a bit like criminality. people are removed from society when they pose a threat of harm onto themselves or others. functionality varies, as you mention, but the line is drawn in terms of harm.
 
Foreigner said:
Think about what people were put into asylums for 100 years ago compared to today. Some things that were hopeless diseases back then are now just considered part of the normal human spectrum that we don't even bother treating, i.e. homosexuality.

Given this information, I ask what determines normal and abnormal, or sanity vs. insanity, in a world where philosophical, intellectual and cultural diversity is so high? Could factors like the information age and the internet contribute to a higher degree of subjectivity around social norms and thus acceptance of differences?
Click to expand...

In his seminal historical treatise History of Madness, Foucault discusses the origins of the modern notion of madness by tracing its historical development from the 14th century onward, firstly by situating its origins within the historical context of the widespread, nonspecific diagnosis of 'leprosy' (along with the social stigma and isolation associated therewith) prevalent during the Middle Ages. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, recorded incidence of leprosy all but vanished, the leprosaria emptied, and the idea of 'madness' stepped up to fill the void. This marked the beginning of a series of sweeping societal transformations which resulted in the retooling of the old lazar houses as hospitals and sanitaria to house the incurable and the 'insane.'

The foregoing is, of course, nowhere near the whole story, and is a horribly inadequate summary of one subsection of a fascinating, but rather controversial, historical opus. Anyway, if you're at all interested in theoretical discussion re. the historical origin of insanity - it's $12.69 on Amazon; free on TPB.
 
^ You're telling me that they invented madness because they didn't want to put their former leprosarias to waste?

I need to read that book.
 
To get a proper definition of sanity vs insanity you need to compare. Unfortunately the only patterns of thinking available for a person to analyze is their own. Going on outward appearances or use of language etc is not an accurate way to determine sanity vs insanity. What we have is a system that basically determines whether you're safe to be let lose in society and that you won't cause too much of a stir, and also functions to get people "healthy" again in order so that they can pay taxes. Not much to do with sanity or insanity really. Highly intelligent, charismatic people can be absolute fucknuts and pose a danger to large amounts of people.. but they're deemed sane because of outward appearance.
 
I don't understand why there are only two options, sane and insane. Why no room for a grey area?

Even gender now has more than two options....
 
Its all in what and how we relate things. With more exposure comes more relate-ability.
 
It has its roots in the social; the individual is not separate from society. Abnormal behaviour is an idea formed by the individual which is constructed from relations made in the social world. Your opinion informs other opinions, so the social perception of abnormal is dependent upon a shared generalisation, or social universalism, which is best articulated empirically.
 
most "disorders" are diagnosed on the basis of how well a person functions in
society.
Click to expand...

Well, I would disagree. Social functioning plays a part. But its not the complete
picture. In terms of a disorder its physical functioning. If you can't do the things
that people do day-to-day, feed yourself, shower, go to the bathroom then its a
disorder. Whether someone talks to someone else is largely irrelevant in this day and age. You can purchase food by a machine. I think a person is less IN a society than a collection of human beings that by and large function rather poorly. Society implies that the social order works and is what persons are to be measured against. Society is itself a delusion.

In terms of Autism, AS or AD really isn't Autism. Its not even a favored diagnosis.
There's a lot of discussion that its become a favored diagnosis for a certain level of
introversion and mild compulsion on one particular thing, meaning that really, its
overdiagnosed. People with AS/AD function very well as opposed to Autism, which needs a
certain level of care.

I think what the OP is getting at is the cultural attitude towards people with Mental
Health issues, people who are ignorant tossing around words like "retard," "schizo,"
"crazy bitch," "psycho" , even "addict." I don't think we're ready as a human race to
move past this. Maybe 100 years from now. Who knows. Given other factors I don't think we'll ever move past this.

Seperate from law or the Mental Health field, I don't think sanity exists nor does insanity. Its a cultural delusion that people can be normal and abnormal. It boils down to fitting a square peg in a round hole. Its the absurdist hypocracy in which we live, that someone else can call another person a "weirdo" when they themselves, the modern man, is a broken, fragmented individual clinging not even to ethics or morality but prewritten laws and hallucinations of satisfaction.

In short, the game was rigged before you born.
 
There is still quite a stigma around psychological disorders. A lot of people hear "mental illness" and equate it with schizophrenia. Also it is difficult for a "healthy" person to understand mental illness. Bodily conditions are obvious and understandable but psychological issues are much stranger.
 
the australian government have put in a concerted effort to de-stigmatise mental illness over the last few years. it's working, i think, in getting the message out that it is far more common than we had previously thought. now there are a lot of free mental health services available here.
 
^^ Well that doesn't say much really (in response to Shulgin). Most mental health professionals don't really know what schizophrenia is. I read a basic American Nursing textbook that mostly referred to "schizophrenics" as street people and considered them borderline retarded. I've heard a cultural anthropologist speak on it as a neurological disorder where the language process in the brain is affected, received language and the directed language by the patient is confused to varying degrees. It could be a collection of symptoms. It could be a child disorder, discoverable on onset of puberty. There's the dopamine theory. I read an article in Discovery where there was evidence thru imaging that it was progressive and the brain was dissolving. People have every right to be confused. Hell, there is evidence that professionals have misdiagnosed or were forced to misdiagnose on the basis of political grounds, recently.

And again, "psychological" issues versus neurologic? Its all very confusing. Take a rape victim, acute psychological trauma - yet, the science behind it shows that the brain will change its composition after an event such as that. Depression, anxiety, memory loss, loss of emotions, greatly reduced sexual response(if at all), dissociation, etc etc. Yet, people will be so bold as to label that person as a "tramp," "slut," "she deserved it," "he was a fag anyways" etc etc.

As a jump in logic, until people can start treating the rape victim, and the schizophrenic with the same amount of respect -as there's a definite stigma of blame that the person is somehow at fault or responsible for their own mental health - then we're pretty much nowhere in terms of being inclusive.
 
jpgrdnr said:
^^ Well that doesn't say much really (in response to Shulgin). Most mental health professionals don't really know what schizophrenia is. I read a basic American Nursing textbook that mostly referred to "schizophrenics" as street people and considered them borderline retarded. I've heard a cultural anthropologist speak on it as a neurological disorder where the language process in the brain is affected, received language and the directed language by the patient is confused to varying degrees. It could be a collection of symptoms. It could be a child disorder, discoverable on onset of puberty. There's the dopamine theory. I read an article in Discovery where there was evidence thru imaging that it was progressive and the brain was dissolving. People have every right to be confused. Hell, there is evidence that professionals have misdiagnosed or were forced to misdiagnose on the basis of political grounds, recently.

And again, "psychological" issues versus neurologic? Its all very confusing. Take a rape victim, acute psychological trauma - yet, the science behind it shows that the brain will change its composition after an event such as that. Depression, anxiety, memory loss, loss of emotions, greatly reduced sexual response(if at all), dissociation, etc etc. Yet, people will be so bold as to label that person as a "tramp," "slut," "she deserved it," "he was a fag anyways" etc etc.

As a jump in logic, until people can start treating the rape victim, and the schizophrenic with the same amount of respect -as there's a definite stigma of blame that the person is somehow at fault or responsible for their own mental health - then we're pretty much nowhere in terms of being inclusive.
Click to expand...

This is spot on with the rape-victim analogy. People have no understanding of what is really going on inside the victim's mind so they don't feel sorry for them.
 
If a person has a psychiatric disease, it means they fail at life because of the way their thought processes work. They're in harm's way because of the way they think (and consequently, behave), and/or they put other people in harm's way because of how they think. I don't think it really breaks down simpler than that.

Of course, life is harmful. Being alive hurts. You're impermanent, and so are we all. But these are not facts of life most people want to be reminded of, most of the time. So they push, or lock, people away whose thoughts and behaviors force them to think about suffering and mortality. Joseph Campbell would probably say there's really a lot of tokenism and talisman-like spell casting going on in all this. Cultures are pretty much made of elaborate and dynamic situations, protocols, and symbolism whose main purpose is reassuring the populace that everything's OK. People and stimuli capable of breaking that culture's calming spells become a lightning rod for the entranced populace's collective fears and hatred. Drug users certainly play that role in a lot of cultures, don't we? We dare to do something that's utterly foolish from an evolutionary point of view. We bend our internal realities to the point where we might very well miss a very real threat to our safety and survival in the external reality. This provokes a visceral 'yuck' response in a lot of people, because it makes them think about how full of danger, and pain, the world is. But if we kill every messenger that carries that message, then just maybe the message will go away. At least for a little while.

It's true that every culture has sanctioned, and usually highly ritualized and tradition-laden, outlets for acting out our rage at the painfulness and injustice of it all. (Think of any legal institution or organized activity that's cutthroat competitive.) But the rituals and rules and traditions and pomp in sanctioned activities for flirting with danger and pain serve in part to hide the true cathartic, dare I say magickal, purpose of these activities from the very people who take part in them. But non-sanctioned ways of running headfirst into pain and danger haven't built up those layers of sugar coating, and they're just too raw and bitter for most people who haven't grown up thinking of them as normal to swallow. The implications of what they do and why they do it is just too existentially scary. Though the haters probably don't usually even realize it.

This varies a lot from culture to culture. How many here could watch the world championships of the Yupik ear pull, or stand and watch a large group of devout Muslim men flagellate themselves until they bleed? A lot of foreign students at my college in the US were turned off by the culture of pushing-the-limits drinking, and a lot of people from other cultures think the gun culture here is hair raising. Somebody who got a kick out of walking around with a water pistol and squirting random people would probably have his sanity questioned in the US. But there's a holiday in Thailand where people do just that, all day. We have a holiday where you dress up and act as someone or something you clearly are not. People who do that in public, on other days of the year, often have their mental state questioned.

jpgrdner and Foreigner, I think the difference between failing at society and failing at life in general is little more than semantic. Don't underestimate the role social isolation plays in the incubation of most severe cases of most mental diseases. A healthy social life provides one with a normative force for grounding and double-checking thought and perceptual processes. But without the feedback of other people, ways of thinking, perceiving the world, and behaving that otherwise would have been weeded out, gently or not, by others' responses, instead linger and become entrenched. Others' discomfort at seeing or hearing these just feeds the vicious cycle.

For every psychiatric patient, there is a reason, something real and formative to that person, that makes withdrawal from most or all social life, foregoing socialization into one or more rather basic and widespread conventional norms that allow people in that culture to trust each other and get along, a more attractive option to them than just surrendering to socialization, acculturation, and assimilation. Sometimes this problem lies in flawed structures in their CNSs, or another part of their body, from day one. Sometimes the wrong pathways have been reinforced and conjoined through circumstance and experience. The key to helping the patient cope better and become a bit more socially connected (these are usually one and the same, but not always), lies in identifying what that reason is, and finding ways around its influence.
 
jpgrdner and Foreigner, I think the difference between failing at society and failing at life in general is little more than semantic. Don't underestimate the role social isolation plays in the incubation of most severe cases of most mental diseases. A healthy social life provides one with a normative force for grounding and double-checking thought and perceptual processes. But without the feedback of other people, ways of thinking, perceiving the world, and behaving that otherwise would have been weeded out, gently or not, by others' responses, instead linger and become entrenched. Others' discomfort at seeing or hearing these just feeds the vicious cycle.
Click to expand...

I have a hard time accepting that the social world can have a positive effect. All I see is the Western world behaving in an absolute absurdist way. The worst is the medical industry trying to pretend that it itself is rational when it is very clear that it isn't. I have a hard time placing faith in definitions of normalcy. Some here seem to do it with ease, but I can't.
 
I think normalcy is best understood as just a shared common understanding amongst the majority of the population within a society. That would be different in other countries; I mean don't you try and 'fit in' when overseas and adapt to a completely different set of customs and other ways of social life? Abnormal shouldn't be defined by having a different view, but one that is at great odds with the vast majority within a particular society.
 
Last edited:
^ By that same token, "abnormal" doesn't necessarily mean bad, it's just a word to define a deviation from what most other people are doing. Such deviations can often have utility. Your foreigner example is a good one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top