The Psychology of Normalcy

To speak of a whole society as lacking in mental health implies a controversial assumption, contrary to the position of sociological relativism held by most social scientists today.

To speak of a whole society as lacking in mental health implies a controversial assumption, contrary to the position of sociological relativism held by most social scientists today. They postulate that each society is normal inasmuch as it functions, and that psychology can be defined only in terms of the individual’s lack of adjustment to the ways of life in his society.

To speak of a “sane society” implies a premise different from sociological relativism. It makes sense only if we assume that there can be a society which is not sane, and this assumption, in turn, implies that there are universal criteria for mental health which are valid for the human race as such, and according to which the state of health of each society can be judged. This position of normative humanism is based on a few fundamental premises.

The species “man” can be defined not only in anatomical and physiological terms; it also shares in the same basic psychic qualities, the same laws which govern its mental and emotional functioning, and the same aims for a satisfactory solution of the problem of human existence. It is true that our knowledge of man is still so incomplete that we can not yet give a satisfactory definition of man in a psychological sense. It is the task of the “science of man” to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. What has often been called “human nature” is one of its many manifestations—and often a pathological one— and the function of such mistaken definitions was usually to defend a particular way of behavior as being the necessary outcome of man’s mental constitution.

Against such reactionary use of the concept of human nature, the liberals, since the 18th century, have stressed the malleability of human nature and the decisive influence of environmental factors. True and important as such emphasis is, it has led many social scientists to an assumption that man’s mental constitution is like a blank piece of paper, on which society and culture write their text, and which has no intrinsic quality of its own. This assumption is equally untenable and equally destructive of social progress. The real problem is to infer the core common to all the human race from the innumerable manifestations of human nature, the normal as well as the pathological ones, as we can observe them in different individuals and cultures. The task is furthermore to recognize the laws inherent in human nature and the inherent goals for its development and unfolding. Just as the infant is born with all human potentialities which are to develop under favorable social and cultural conditions, so the human race, in the process of history, develops into what it potentially is.

This essay, printed here with permission of the author, is taken from a forthcoming book, “The Sane Society,R...