View Single Post
 
Old Jan 29, 2009, 11:32 PM
Rhapsody's Avatar
Rhapsody Rhapsody is offline
Wise Elder
 
Member Since: Jan 2006
Location: Florida
Posts: 9,946
Quote:
Originally Posted by teejai View Post
Isn't regarding people as mentally ill on that basis a means of pathologising divergent or eccentic thinkers?
It brings up the spectre of correcting behaviours as a means of social control.
I believe Soviet psychiatry went down this road.
No - I don't think so...... as we know what is basically normal (just like we all know what is basically right & wrong) and this is how we can tell if someone we love is not acting right - based on a unstated description of normal.

Ex: we all know that it is not normal to hear voices, to see people that are not there, to feel that everyone is out to get you / kill you, to think that a dog can talk and that cats are aliens sent here to impregnate the universe, to believe you are God, Satan or a Famous Dead Person... etc.