The Quest for Normalcy

With each passing day, I find myself increasingly confronted with valid reasons as to why psychology is an essentially doomed enterprise. It is evidently quite paradoxical for a student of psychology to feel this way but what perplexes me even more is why such a question does not often arise in the minds of individuals who pursue this discipline. Unlike other endeavours whose object of study lends itself very well to empirical scrutiny, psychological inquiry attempts to categorize something which, by its very nature, resists definition. The workings of our mind are always veiled by our inclination towards self analysis, and only reveals itself in its disintegration. This is perhaps why the phenomenon of mental illness has informed much of our knowledge regarding the psyche because pathology allows us to investigate the dark recesses of the human mind which is always concealed in its functional counterpart.

Freud, for instance, conceived an entire theory of personality through his attempt to cure patients afflicted with hysteria. His investigation into the various psychological afflictions of his clientele created an opportunity where he could peer through the pretense of our modern tastes and sensibilities only to find that the mind was still under the sway of primordial instincts. Notwithstanding the insights such analysis has furnished whose influence is perhaps yet to be determined, it still suffers from a grave misconception. The reason a significant part of Freud's understanding is now subject to disagreement is because his theoretical premise is derived from an investigation of pathology. A pathological mind, as much as it reveals all that which was formerly inexplicable, also distorts our perception of the very mechanism it renders evident.

Although we have come to liberate ourselves from some of Freud's antiquated ideas, we are still trapped in his old habits. Much like Freud, we still try to understand the psyche and what is 'normal' by investigating what is dysfunctional. I believe introducing the word 'normal' here is by no means a sleight of hand because any inquiry into the human mind is premised upon the inclination to discover some organizing principle which enables us to understand and predict human behaviour. The form of this principle might manifest differently in the lives of individuals but its essence must remain the same. The discovery of this principle, I believe, constitutes the fundamental task of psychology.

However, unlike other disciplines, psychology is mired in the paradox that an individual by definition is an outlier. A person is almost infinitely different in the way he thinks and behaves compared to others. He harbours a myriad of hopes and dreams and is laden with as many personal inadequacies. Such a vagary among individuals obviously makes the task of establishing a true normal utterly impossible because to what standard must the individual be even compared to? Social norms and morals are often a product of their time and could not possibly meet the ever changing circumstances in the life of an individual. Therefore it seems quite reasonable to assume that there are infinite ways to be as long as that way of life does not produce any dysfunction.

Such a negative definition of normalcy, although plausible, still fails to address certain fundamental questions. What is the ultimate purpose of the mind's habitual activity of assimilation and understanding? From where does its relentless need to question, ponder, create and reflect originate? Although tracing the endless chain of causes and effects in explaining behaviour might provide some semblance of understanding, we are still willfully blind if we choose to ignore the simple question of where such causes and effects ultimately tend towards.

One of the cardinal reasons for the infamous rift between Freud and his most prized disciple, C.G Jung rested on this disagreement. Where Freud stayed content with trying to understand the mind by investigating its antecedent psychological causes, Jung saw the obvious limitation of constricting the psyche to a merely reactionary organism. Jung believed that the psyche was as much constructive as it was reactive in nature and discovered that its inner workings often betrayed the existence of an obscure ideal around which all psychological processes revolved. An obscure ideal, which he termed the Self, that not only subordinated all psychological activity but also weaved together the vagaries of living such activity invariably produced.

None of the aforementioned deliberations suggest the imposition of a particular way of living. Psychological inquiry is often too consumed in navigating the labyrinth of causes and effects that it blatantly refuses to acknowledge that there must be some ideal or principle which gives direction to the sheer breadth of mental functioning. Since the existence of such a principle often calls for ways of thinking which push the boundaries of scientific rigour, we rest content with the assumption that normalcy simply refers to an absence of dysfunction. The desire to arrive at such a conclusion and the reluctance to part from it could be ascribed to the misconception that normalcy, in this context, can only be defined in comparison to the majority. However, the true normal of psychology neither lies in the deafening voice of the majority nor in the eccentric opinions of the minority. It instead lies in that very principle which informs much of what we think and feel. A principle which, instead of defining what is normal through morbidity, evinces what it means to truly live.