STEVEN JAMES BARTLETT

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TOWARD A CRITIQUE OF NORMALITY

Steven James Bartlett

‘Normality’ has many meanings depending on one’s frame of reference.

For statisticians, normality refers to a range of values about the mean of a distribution curve. This gives us a clear-cut, precise understanding of what we have in mind when we use the terms ‘normal’ and ‘average’. From the statistician’s point of view, (1) the average person is someone whose characteristics place him or her within the normal range of values, and (2) the atypical, exceptional person, whose characteristics qualify as outstanding, special, or greatly more developed (or greatly less developed) than the normal person, is someone who in these respects is far from being normal.

For anthropologists, ‘normality’ is a socially-relative concept, for what is average, ordinary, or customary in one society often is not in another. The “normal person” in one society may be the outcast in another, quickly marginalized or ostracized because of his or her “difference” relative to that society’s values and expectations.

For biologists, ‘normality’ is generally applied to mean that a biological function is efficiently and unimpededly performing its designated function. When an organism functions as the biologist understands it should—that is, according to its physiological design and its relation to its customary environment—the organism is judged to function within normal limits.

From the standpoint of medicine, ‘normality’ is used in much the same way as in biology: When an organism, its organs, tissues, cells, and genetic constituents function efficiently and effectively for the maintenance and survival of the organism, and there is no detectable impediment to that proper functioning, the organism is considered to possess normal—i.e., good—health.

For psychiatrists and many clinical psychologists, ‘normality’ means ‘good mental health’: the two are uncritically equated on a fundamental level. However, here the “proper functioning” of the individual is not at present primarily determined by referring to his or her biological health, but rather by applying diagnostic categories that reflect social interests that acquire their expression when committees of psychiatrists vote whether certain patterns (so-called “syndromes”) of thought, emotion, and behavior should (or should not) be labeled “mental disorders.” The psychology of abnormality studies individuals who are so labeled; people who are “psychologically normal” are judged to be “mentally healthy.”

Neurologists and cognitive scientists share an interest in comparing the “normal” brain with the “abnormal.” A variety of imaging methods may be applied in an effort to identify commonalities shared by “normal” individuals—those who possess characteristics that allow them to be classified as biologically normal, medically normal, and perhaps psychiatrically normal. As essentially different concepts of normality are applied in combination in this way, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand exactly what is being investigated and concluded: Are the neurological characteristics of an individual patient actually being studied? Or are we perhaps instead studying the normality standards of the investigator as they are being applied to the patient, standards that predetermine the conclusions reached? And is it perhaps the case that the background social values that specify what we believe we should accept as mentally healthy simply are being brought to the surface in disguised form?

We see that each professional group tends to have a somewhat different meaning in view when its practitioners use the word ‘normality’. The term has become a catch-all for what we suppose to be desirable. When we’re told that someone is “normal,” we feel reassured that nothing is amiss. But this is a non sequitur and all-too-often a grave mistake.

For example, we now know that the majority of psychologically normal people, when circumstances are right (which is much of the time), will think, feel, and behave in ways that are harmful to others, and often to themselves in the process: The famous Milgram experiment, which has now been replicated in many different societies around the world, has shown that the majority of psychologically normal people (in simulations not known by the subjects to be mock tests) will knowingly inflict suffering on someone whom they don’t know if instructed to do this by authority figures; after they do this, the subjects will sometimes feel great contrition for what they believe themselves (falsely) to have done; the alleged harm they have done can come back to haunt and harm them. —But the fact remains that psychologically normal people generally will obey their authorities and inflict suffering on others. (We were, of course, already, perhaps dimly, aware of this brute fact as a result of a long human history of wars, genocides, and terrorism. But there is nothing like the bracing effect of an artificial lab experiment to bring our attention to bear on what we should already have known.)

Zimbardo’s prison experiment provides another example of how regular, ordinary people will, when circumstances permit this, behave abusively and even cruelly toward others.

Peer review, the now universally accepted “gold standard” of academic and scientific publishing, similarly provides another example and ample evidence of the predisposition of regular people to behave in sometimes mean and abusive ways toward others they do not know. The tendency of peer reviewers to do this is of course amplified when their identifies are shielded and they can act anonymously. (See the author’s study of the psychology of peer review and editorial bias: “The Psychology of Abuse in Publishing: Peer Review and Editorial Bias,” Chapter 7 in Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health: The Need to Look Elsewhere for Standards of Good Psychological Health (Praeger, 2011).

From the perspective of the “big picture” that takes in the total human scene, it is safe to say that there are many serious shortcomings to being “psychologically normal.” Being psychologically normal is nothing to be proud of. Being normal in this sense simply means that one has the psychological characteristics that most people have, and once we recognize that the majority shares predispositions to think, feel, and behave in ways that are often considerably less than good, we have reason to feel the need to take reflective stock of where we stand as a species.

In my book, The Pathology of Man, I proposed that our understanding of ourselves would benefit from a clear look in the mirror offered by the science of pathology. We normally (a word that should signal we tread on the thin ice of presumption!) reserve the term ‘pathology’ for application to non-human pathogens, and yet we human beings, proud though we are of our exemplary species, in many ways qualify as pathogens, and our thinking, emotions, and behavior as pathological. The Pathology of Man is one way of holding up a mirror to our less-than-the-best selves. Although we may dislike what the mirror reflects back, if we as a species are to improve ourselves, we must build on facts, not on our preferred beliefs.

My more recent book, Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health, holds up a somewhat different mirror, a mirror of what we mean, and what we often unknowingly achieve, when we adhere to an unquestioned equation of psychological normality with good mental health.

Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health begins with a quotation from Einstein: He was once asked, “What can we do to get a better world?” He replied, “You have to have better people.”

The study and critique of our species’ flawed psychological constitution has one chief purpose only: to help us become sufficiently self-aware so that we can become the better people we may be capable of becoming.

For more information about Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health: The Need to Look Elsewhere for Standards of Good Psychological Health, click here.

After the publication of this book, I was invited to contribute the opening chapter to Trends and Future Directions, volume 3 of the comprehensive collection, Abnormal Psychology across the Ages, edited by Thomas Plante (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO 2013). This chapter, ”The Dilemma of Abnormality,” complements and extends the foregoing discussion.