What's Wrong with Being Normal?
February 27th 2008 14:25
Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.
Sigmund Freud
The idea that there are normal and abnormal ways for people to be and to behave is a very familiar one. So also is the idea that abnormality--or deviance--is something regrettable, deplorable, and even, in some cases, punishable. Here, however, my main concern will be to consider what might be meant by the claim that a person is, in some respect, normal. There is, no doubt, an unsophisticated usage according to which what is normal is what is familiar, and the unfamiliar is feared or condemned as abnormal. But since we are all sophisticated this need not detain us. Sophisticated philosophers, though, have often proposed conceptions of human nature, conceptions that presumably have implications for human normality
Diagnostic criteria for NPD: Normal Person Disorder
A chronic feeling of normalness
A tendency to bore others easily.
A nagging sense of constantly meeting one's goal.
Lack of difficulty getting organized.
Inability to be humorous.
Knowing how to count without forgetting what number you are up to.
An inability to be creative and intuitive, no seat of pants to fly by.
Highly stimulated by lectures, speeches, dead cockroaches and other normals.
An unbroken remote control.
A To-Do list which gets done.
A chronic interest in each or any of the following for more than a week:
Job
Relationship
Schedule
Patience
Passing Grades
Sex
Normals
A methodical nature.
Affectionately known as "Bump on a log"
Sigmund Freud
The idea that there are normal and abnormal ways for people to be and to behave is a very familiar one. So also is the idea that abnormality--or deviance--is something regrettable, deplorable, and even, in some cases, punishable. Here, however, my main concern will be to consider what might be meant by the claim that a person is, in some respect, normal. There is, no doubt, an unsophisticated usage according to which what is normal is what is familiar, and the unfamiliar is feared or condemned as abnormal. But since we are all sophisticated this need not detain us. Sophisticated philosophers, though, have often proposed conceptions of human nature, conceptions that presumably have implications for human normality
Diagnostic criteria for NPD: Normal Person Disorder
A chronic feeling of normalness
A tendency to bore others easily.
A nagging sense of constantly meeting one's goal.
Lack of difficulty getting organized.
Inability to be humorous.
Knowing how to count without forgetting what number you are up to.
An inability to be creative and intuitive, no seat of pants to fly by.
Highly stimulated by lectures, speeches, dead cockroaches and other normals.
An unbroken remote control.
A To-Do list which gets done.
Job
Relationship
Schedule
Patience
Passing Grades
Sex
Normals
A methodical nature.
Affectionately known as "Bump on a log"
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