A sleepless night and a hyper-stimulated mind...

Another sleepless night before a really long day ... apprehensive insomnia seems to have become a habit, maybe it is self-inflicted. But then tonight I am stimulated... with a lot on my mind. No, it's not the wonders of the world, it's the wonders of humankind.



I guess I can say that Psychology has become an obsession for me, and I mean it in the technical sense of the word, not in the loose sense that the word is abused these days. Well, this brings me to how annoying I find such loose usage of words that actually carry so much weight. You see words like 'psycho' or 'retard' being thrown at people like 'scoundrel' or 'rascal', not realizing that these are actually states of existence that are not to be loathed, but be appreciated, valued and explored. There is an immense lot to learn from these people that we have ostracised just because they don't fit our notion of 'normalcy'. What is normalcy anyway? Who defines it? Can you even call it a logical concept when my normal is not your normal? One citation that I feel is eternal and applicable to one and all is 'Normalcy is an idealistic fiction', courtesy Freud.


There are grave loopholes in the way we define 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Let me just say here that I do not believe in these two concepts (because if I were to, I would most definitely fit in the latter, and I find that to be apocryphal.) The concept of 'normalcy' defies the purpose of Psychology. Psychology is a practice that appreciates individual differences, and works toward their enhancement. By labelling certain people as 'abnormal', and then trying to fit them into a bracket of characteristics that match with what everyone else accepts, all the while, with the excuse of guiding them to the path of self-actualisation, we are in fact making them like everyone else. What we are aiming at is not the self-actualisation of that person, but moulding him into a cast that can be worn by one and all. Do you call it spirituality then? One soul in all of us? I don't think so. Soul may be one, but its forms are many. And the job of a Psychologist is to preserve the forms, each one in its glory, and not the soul. The saviours of the soul are the mass Psychologists, the ones that sell the most in a country like ours, those hypnotists under the facade of gurus that know when the iron is hot enough to hit. They are the ones who are experts at making each one of us like every other - the characteristics I choose not to be too vocal about, for they may seem blasphemous to some. What mental health professionals, then are doing is just a retreat to convenience, for the very nature of their work is such that they can't form generalisations, they can't make rules. But they have to, for without them they can't function.

One school of thought defines abnormal according to statistics - the behaviours common to the majority are normal and the ones that are prevalent in minority are abnormal. Galileo was condemned of heresy because he said that the sun does not move around the earth, but the earth revolves around the sun. He was the minority then, with the entire church as his opponent; but would you say he was abnormal? Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian government for holding up a Philosophy that challenged their hegemony, for standing by the truth, and ardently believing in virtuous living... was he abnormal? No he wasn't; he was a great man who gave people like me the reason to live. Well, they would say culture plays an important role in distinguishing between normal and abnormal. But in that case, these concepts become relative to culture. Hence, what may be considered abnormal in one culture may very well be accepted in another. We make universal assumptions, using them to create guidelines that are supposed to be universally applicable. But, what we apply them on are particulars, relative to so many things - culture, gender, age etc. Fallacious? The point I am trying to make is that as Psychologists, we carry preconceived notions of people who walk in to our offices, targeting them as pathological, in need of a remedy. I do not see empathy here, I do not see unconditional positive regard, and all the other hogwash we live by. All I see is unsolicited tyranny.



Then there are Psychologists who say that impaired functionality implies abnormality. Why not ask the ones that you and I think are functionally impaired? Human existence is a purely subjective experience. Who am I to say that a schizoid personality is functionally impaired just because he finds his happiness in solitude rather than other people? What of people like Leonardo Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, who were famously neurotic, but such great men? Were they abnormal or enlightened? Camus is believed to have devised his own death - a planned suicide. To himself, he answered the greatest question faced by mankind - whether this life is worth living or not. His, he believed wasn't. But during his lifetime, would one say he was abnormal? He was a man of great literary expertise, and a mind put to use, for generations to come after him. Leonardo Da Vinci, famously depressed, so much that his melancholia flickers in Mona Lisa's smile... but his creativity shone, only as a result of his melancholia. Freud himself was a cocaine addict... what does that leave us with?



But the saddest thing about the state of Psychology today is that it isn't Psychology anymore, it isn't the study of the human mind anymore. It has lost the human-ness of its endeavour, rendered no more than a business, a job, a money making scheme. Or perhaps, I am wrong.. because I am really a Philosopher at heart, pretending to be a Psychologist.