The World Between the Normal... and the Abnormal

Around a table in a restaurant, a discussion arose between two men on how to tell the abnormal person from the normal. One of them protested that he could recognize the abnormal from a great distance, and pointed to a girl in the corner, saying: "Do you see that girl, how she strikes her forehead? She is abnormal, of course." And his friend agreed with his view. When the argument and the meal were done, the two rose and passed near the girl, who was still worn out moving her hand in a nervous motion; and when they drew close to her they learned that she had been trying to drive off a large fly buzzing about her head!

The normal state is like happiness: we seek it and know not how to define it — except that it differs from happiness in this, that we do not know when we have attained it.

We judge that we are normal by comparing ourselves with others; but how do we know that those others are normal? By looking at their conduct? Yet at times they show the opposite of the truth: in the case of the girl and the fly, we cannot judge even the outward state from a distance — how much less the inwardness of the soul?

We look to the natural as the highest model for our conduct, and then it does not trouble us to be told that we are above nature — which means abnormality. The label "normal" is the level of the common run, and by this definition the decay of teeth may be counted normal, since it is the condition of the crushing majority of mankind; but if we say that the normal state is a model of perfection, then the decay of teeth becomes an abnormality.

Is it not strange that we reject a condition at odds with what is around us, and then accept to surpass others and become "above nature"?... And however the label of the natural may vary, no man can remain normal at every moment, for the standards of our society clash and diverge until we lose the path. Just as we feel pain in the head or in any member of the body, so waves of fear and sadness and anger sweep over us, whose causes we sometimes do not know; and so long as these states do not keep us from carrying on our work, they are counted normal.

Samir is one of the educated young men; his nerves weakened for a time, and it was quite natural that he should not look for treatment — for his parents would prefer his death to consulting a psychiatrist.

We cannot label an act normal or abnormal unless we grasp its causes and the influences upon it. If we see a man washing two dirty hands we pay him no attention; but when we see him washing two clean hands over and over again, we at once suspect his abnormality.

We feel a strange emotion when we help the needy, just as a self-contentment stirs in us when we finish our duties — and this is the reward of conscience; yet there are those who seek a passing ease by fleeing from responsibility, and this cannot be counted a working normality.

Someone likened man's life to an automobile crossing the road, carrying in its heart a quantity of oil that drives it, liable at any time to explode — and that is nothing other than the urges and the basic feelings without which it could not continue on its way; and whenever the driver senses a disorder in the motor, he stops, naturally, to look again into the machine in his hands.

Bodily conditions, such as illnesses, act upon the psyche; but the common run of people do not appreciate this, and the sufferer is branded abnormal. The whole difference between the normal and the abnormal is a single degree; and often enough normal people turn abnormal for a short spell, then wake from it to repair what was lost!... It is very hard to befriend an abnormal person; and the hardest sentence a man can utter is the accusing of himself with imaginary faults — so much so that many reach maturity with a feeling, deep in their souls, of their own smallness, and then one of them wonders how those around him fail to see his deficiency, when in truth these imaginings have no substance at all.

There are influences beyond counting that form the first kernel of personality: among them the period of birth, the family's material and cultural condition, and the measure of affection and love in the individual's life; and the mainstays of sound mental growth are liberty and emancipation.

There is one side worthy of our attention, and that is the close bond between body and mind. We invariably find the trace of bodily illness showing in thought, just as illness of the psyche leaves its mark upon the body; and the effects usually appear in the stomach, the intestines, and the skin, then in high blood pressure, "asthma," and headache; likewise sexual abnormality results from upheaval and want of emotional stability.

There is a class of people who take pleasure in pain and cling to it; and suicide is the outcome of a chain of psychic illness whose kernel is a hidden feeling of wrong.

We grow angry at times under outside influences, and this is something natural — we would be abnormal if we were unmoved. Let us picture a helpless old man: he faces yesterday, with death staring at him at every moment; he has no one near or far, and no one has need of his existence, since his repeating of the memories of the past annoys the young, while those who longed to hear such things have vanished from the book of life.

We must value such old men; and some countries set up clubs where the aged may gather for recreation.

Among the social abnormalities is addiction — though the drinking of a glass is a natural thing; and what deepens its abnormality is its weakening of the memory and then the unsettling of the balance of mind and thought. Before thinking of curing this disease or any other, we must understand that abnormality, in the eyes of its owner, is the best condition that can be reached; so the physician who undertakes his treatment must not try to remove the condition altogether, or the result will come out contrary to what he seeks. Individual differences must also be respected alongside the social situation, for every man has states and circumstances by means of which he — he alone and no other! — adjusts his life.