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Old Jan 26, 2011, 05:35 PM
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Jshect Jshect is offline
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Member Since: Aug 2010
Location: Oceania
Posts: 49
My abnormal psych text described abnormal behavior or psychological dysfunction as “behavioral, emotional, or cognitive dysfunctions that are unexpected in their cultural context and associated with personal distress or substantial impairment in functioning.”
If you are on a date, it should be fun, but if you experience intense fear the whole evening and this happens on every date your emotions are not functioning properly.
Cognitive dysfunctions include hallucinations and thought processes that are totally out of touch with reality.
Suffering and distress are a normal part of everyone’s life but if you are constantly in distress that is abnormal. However in some disorders, distress is absent such as in mania.
Normal and abnormal dysfunction are two ends on a continuum with many gradations in between. There are many dimensions rather than just two categories normal and abnormal.
Most psychological disorders are simply extreme expressions of otherwise normal emotions, behaviors, and cognitive processes.
In most cases the more successful you are in the eyes of society, the more eccentricities society will tolerate. For instance it’s not normal to masturbate in public, but Modanna stimulated on stage. If you went to work dressed like Lady Gaga, you’d be laughed at and fired.

So tell me, do you fit the definition of abnormal?