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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
way in response to his. In such experiences there occurs what
I would call a ‘normality reaction’; something more primeval
and fundamental than our reflection about normality as a
theoretical problem. )
Stern! speaks of sub-normal, normal and super-normal
people. Contrary to what Stern otherwise emphasises, this
classification evokes the idea of a graduated rather than a
modulated normality. It is unsatisfactory. If we take ‘normality
reactions’ as a point of departure we can make a more natural
classification, one that provides more room for variations and
shades of normality.
It may happen that we meet in a person something at once
strange and frightening. Primitive peoples do not distinguish
as the civilised do between the sublime and the pathological.
Whether they encounter in another person something of the
sub-human or the super-human, their experience is subjectively
associated with the #remendum. On a higher plane of
development the normality reactions are such that the mentally
backward, psychopathic and abnormal produce effects of a distinct
kind. These can properly be described as reactions to ‘defects
of normality’.
When we are confronted with mysterious and contradictory
elements in a person who otherwise seems to be exceptional
in talent, character and personality, our reaction includes a
sense both of mystery and bewilderment. In is a reaction to
what I would call ‘paradoxical normality’.
On the other hand, if in relation to a person we experience a
sense of recognition, a feeling of security and affinity in the
knowledge that this is another human being who stands by our
side and goes our way; one who neither mocks nor frightens us,
then our reaction is to ‘marked normality’.
It is evident that between defects of normality and the
paradoxically or markedly normal there is a wide range of potential
differences.
Judgment of Normality
Intuitive normality reactions of the kind I have tried to
describe do not give infallible verdicts. They are like a mariner’s
compass, that generally points in the right direction but can be
1 Hur skall det gå med Människan? Stockholm, 1938.
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