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pachyderm
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Default Jan 30, 2009 at 08:49 AM
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by pegasus View Post
I think you are making this more difficult than it should be.

Mental illness/disorder = Psychological distress
I disagree. Psychological distress might be caused by the death of a loved one, for instance, without there being any (long-term) disorder involved.

And being out of the norm does not cut it for me, either. The norm, or "normal", just means you fit within a certain distance of the average of what exists in the surveyed population. That would be the same as "healthy" only if the population average is healthy -- which I think is subject to dispute. The definition of healthy depends on "objective" factors (at least theoretically) and not on averages of what exists in any given population.

Freud was one, for instance (and I agree with him) who wrote, in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, that everyday life is, to some extent, psychologically pathological. That seems to be backed up by evidence: would you say that our societies display notable emotional health? Crime, wars, child abuse, unbalanced "leaders", emotionally disturbed people such as us -- those things do not come from nowhere.

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