Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part 5. Symptomatic Religiosity in Neurosis and Insanity - 1. Who Is Normal? - Judgment of Normality - Talent and Genius
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
WHO IS NORMAL?
deflected so that it misleads. It is, therefore, necessary to base
our judgments on normality on facts that can confirm or correct
normality reactions.
This is not easy to do. Psychiatrists, psychologists and social
workers, as well as Christian spiritual advisers, all know from
experience in their own fields the difficulty of deciding on
general grounds what is normal, mainly because a distinction
must be made between abnormal or deficient part-functions in
a personality and abnormal or psychopathic individuals. The
difference can be illustrated by analogy. Some of the
instruments in an orchestra may be out of tune, and some of the
players may have a poor sense of rhythm. These deficiencies
impair the quality of the orchestra’s performance, but they
don’t prevent it from making music. There is all the difference
between this situation and one where each member of an
orchestra starts playing a different tune and the conductor’s
baton falls from his hand because he cannot control the players
at all. A person of defective normality is like an orchestra of the
first kind. When the second kind of situation occurs we have a
collapse of personality.
Psychiatrists emphasise the difficulty of drawing the line
between psychic health and disorder in the individual case.
There are, for example, normal fluctuations in mental capacity
and emotional stability, variations of tempo and vitality that
occur from time to time in everyone. Moreover, certain psychic
illnesses are periodic, sometimes presenting all the signs of
mental health and at others the symptoms of disease. Again,
people are not all insane who cherish absurd ideas. Sometimes
the nature of these ideas and their history leave no doubt of the
insanity of these who hold them, but there are many borderline
cases. Moreover, a person’s power to make normal social
adjustments depends upon the kind of environment he lives in.
While therefore it is sometimes possible to say definitely that
from a psychiatric point of view a person is normal or abnormal,
often enough it is entirely a matter of opinion.
Talent and Genius
‘Paradoxical normality’ presents special problems. To
begin with, it is necessary, as Stern has said, to distinguish
159
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
