DEAR STUDENTS ….. YOU ARE NOT ABNORMAL JUST UNIQUE YOU ARE NOT SHIZOPHERNIC JUST A GENIUS YOU ARE NOT PSYCHOTIC - NEUROTIC JUST DIFFERENT

My Student experience this week ……

Student – Do I appear abnormal to you …??

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Sudhanshu – Why are you asking me this ?

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Student – One of my teachers called me abnormal ….

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Sudhanshu – You are not abnormal – your behaviour can be abnormal sometimes …. But even that is not there in your case ….. you are a curious inquisitive questioning ?individual.

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Student – Why did he call me abnormal ?? What should I have replied to him.

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Sudhanshu – You should have replied – ‘Sir you are abnormal too, the way you are calling me abnormal.

You know why …… because these days, people like you, who think that they are perfect and so are normal. Because in your understanding perfection is being normal.? But what I understand is ?that - ?nobody in this world is perfect. Therefore, not only I but everybody including you are ABNORMAL.’

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Student – Good reply ……..

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Sudhanshu – My Son, I have also gone through in my life? what you are going through …. In my life experiences, people have also called me - abnormal. Not only that, ?they have called me with more higher degree abnormality words like Psychopath, Schizophernic, Neurotic etc …… do you think I am so …… I am teaching you since last six? months is it so.

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Just do your work and progress …….. The world of academia is also? full of many idiots ( Phd kar ke aa jaate hai akal nahin hoti ( exceptions are there) …… nobody is a PSYCHOPATH, ?SCHIZOPHERNIC or NEUROTIC …….. there are just deviations and aberrations in the expression of your emotions and thoughts which are unique to you? and they have to be so - that is the variety in existence. You are DIFFERENT as I am or everybody is ……. And not abnormal …

? APPEAL TO MODERN DAY ACADEMICIAN DON’T ADDRESS TODAY’s STUDENTS AS ABNORMAL BECAUSE THEY DO NOT COMPLY TO YOUR WAYS .. HE/SHE HAS A WRITE TO BE DIFFERENT ??!!

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SOME WISDOM FROM SUDHANSHU ON THIS ASPECT

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Abnormal behaviour

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Abnormal psychology—also referred to as clinical psychology—is

the study of abnormal behaviours. It looks at the origins,

manifestations and treatments of disordered habits, thoughts or

drives. These may be caused by environmental, cognitive, genetic

or neurological factors.

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Abnormal psychologists are concerned with the assessment, diagnosis and management of psychological problems. They are both scientists and practitioners who often specialize in the treatment of various disorders like anxiety disorders (anxiety, panic, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorders); mood disorders (depression, bipolar disorder, suicide); substance disorders (alcohol, stimulants, hallucinogens, etc.); or very complex problems like schizophrenia. Clinical psychology is part, but by no means the central part, of psychology. It is certainly associated by lay people as the most interesting and important specialism in applied psychology.

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?Defining abnormality While it is relatively easy to spot people who are distressed or acting bizarrely, it is much more difficult to define abnormality. “Abnormal” means departure from the norm. So very tall and very short people are abnormal, as are very backward and very gifted people. Thus, strictly speaking, Einstein and Michelangelo were abnormal, as were Bach and Shakespeare.

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?For clinical psychology, the issue is not so much whether the behavior is abnormal, as whether it is maladaptive, causing a person distress and social impairment. If a person’s behavior seems irrational or potentially harmful to themselves and others, we tend to think of that as abnormal. For the psychologist

it is called psychopathology; for the lay person, madness or insanity.

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We would all like the certainty and clarity of a precise distinction between normal and abnormal. Yet we know that history and culture shape what is considered abnormal. Psychiatric textbooks reflect this. Homosexuality was not that long ago considered a mental illness. Masturbation in the 19th century was thought of as abnormal.

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?“The years have layered onto this term (i.e. abnormal) too many

value judgments and any number of synonyms are preferable:

maladaptive, maladjusted, deviant, etc.”

A. Reber, 1985

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Socio-economic status, gender and race are all related to abnormality. Women? are more likely to have anorexia, bulimia or anxiety disorders than men, who, in turn, are more likely to be substance abusers. Poor people are more likely to be diagnosed schizophrenic than rich people. American children suffer a high

incidence of disorders of undercontrol compared to overcontrol, but that is the opposite way around in the West Indies.

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Early approaches to abnormality saw bizarre behaviour as spirit possession. People believed in animalism—the belief that we are similar to animals—and that madness was the result of uncontrolled regression. Ancient Greeks saw abnormality and general malaise as caused by bodily fluids or “humors.” As a result, early treatment of the insane was mostly involved in segregating them and then punishing them. Humane treatment didn’t really appear until the 19th century.

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Generally agreed-upon criteria Today, psychological definitions of abnormality revolve around a handful of generally agreed-upon criteria. These have been classified as the 4Ds: distress, deviance, dysfunction, danger. Abnormality generally involves pain and suffering, one aspect of which is acute and chronic personal suffering. One criterion is poor adaptation—not being able to do the everyday things of life, such as hold down a job, maintain happy interpersonal relationships or plan for the future.

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A very common criterion is irrationality—bizarre, illogical beliefs about the physical or social world as well as, very often, the spiritual world. The behaviour? of abnormal people is often incomprehensible to others. They are often unpredictable; they can be very volatile, changing from one extreme to another and often quite unable to control their behaviour. Their behaviour is often very inappropriate.

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Almost by definition their abnormality is characterized by unconventional, usually rare, undesirable behaviours. In addition, abnormality has a moral dimension. It is associated with breaking rules, violating moral standards and disregarding social norms. Illegal, immoral, undesirable behaviour is abnormal.

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One rather interesting criterion of abnormality is the discomfort that is generated in people around abnormal behavior. Observers often feel uncomfortable around clear evidence of abnormality.

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?“She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She

says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.”

G. Stein, 1935

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The problems of the concept - The problems with any definition of abnormality are clear. Firstly, a healthy person in an unhealthy society is often labelled as abnormal. There are many examples where societies have been deeply intolerant of those who don’t obey their narrow (unhealthy, maladaptive) standards of belief and behaviour. Secondly, of course, expert observers can’t agree on the

categorization of normal vs. abnormal. Even when multiple criteria of abnormality are specified, there remains fundamental disagreement about whether a person is considered in some sense abnormal. Thirdly, there is the actor-observer difference: who is to make the judgment? Actors rarely think themselves abnormal: most of us are reasonably positive about ourselves and indeed have a great deal of information others do not have. Yet there are well known traps and hazards in making a self-diagnosis. It is easier to be observers and label others abnormal, particularly those different from us or threatening to us.

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Self-diagnosis A primary goal of counseling, training and therapy is helping people become more self-aware. Clearly some mentally ill, and supposedly normal people, have little insight into their problems. They seem deluded. Equally students of abnormal psychology say they recognize that they have certain mental illnesses when they read textbooks. This occurs because many of

us have an exaggerated sense of the uniqueness of some private, nonshared, even “forbidden” or disapproved-of thoughts or behaviours. All of us hide certain aspects of ourselves and can suddenly see these alluded to in textbooks that list all sorts of abnormal behaviors.

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Normality vs. abnormality

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Subjective This is perhaps the most primitive idea that uses ourselves, our behavior, our values as the criteria of normality. This is the stuff of idiom and adage (“once a thief, always a thief”; “here’s nowt so queer as folk”). So people like us are normal, those different are not. This approach also tends to think in simple categories or nonoverlapping types: normal abnormal- very abnormal.

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Normative This is the idea that there is an ideal, desirable state of how one should think and behave. This view of the perfect world is often developed by religious and political thinkers. Normality is perfection: the further from normality one is, the more abnormal. It’s a more “what ought to be” than “what is reasonably possible” state of affairs. NOTHING IS NORMAL BECAUSE NOBODY IS PERFECT.

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Clinical Social scientists and medical clinicians attempt to assess the effectiveness, organization and adaptiveness of a person’s functioning. Much depends on which dimension is being assessed. Clinicians also accept that the normal-abnormal distinctions are grey and somewhat subjective, though they strive for reliable diagnosis. Abnormality is usually associated with poor adaptations, pain or bizarre behaviours.

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?Cultural Culture dictates trends in everything from dress to demeanour, language to love. Culture prescribes and proscribes behaviours. Certain things are taboo, others are illegal. Again the further away or different from cultural norms a person appears to be, the more he or she is judged as abnormal. However, as cultural beliefs and practices change, so do definitions of normality. The case of homosexual behaviour nicely illustrates this issue.

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?Statistical All statisticians know the concept of the bell curve or the

normal distribution. It has particular properties and is best known in the world of intelligence. Thus a score of 100 is average and 66 percent of the population score between 85 and 115, and around 97 percent between 70 and 130. Thus if you score below 70 and over 130 you are unusual, though the word “abnormal” would not be applied. This model has drawbacks in the fact that behaviour that occurs frequently does not necessarily make it healthy or desirable. Also, while it may work for abilities which are reasonably straightforward to measure, it works less easily with more subtle and multidimensional issues like personality or mental illness.

ACADEMICIANS PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING FROM THE WORLD OF TODAY – DEGRESS AND BOOKS ARE NOT ENOUGH …..

GOD BLESS YOU !!

JOY TO ALL TEACHERS AND STUDENTS? …… sudhanshu