abnormal and comparative histologist and pound and elements of jurisprudence

Let me dispense with "comparative histologist," which isn't just a nineteenth century term but was used so suggestively by Roscoe Pound in an 1892 letter that I simply want to pause and let it sink in. I describe the circumstances of the letter in more detail here. It is remarkable that Pound, who talked about then-current jurisprudes as being "comparative Histologists" of modern law used this image when he was but 22 years-old. A histologist (the word had been around only about 40 years when Pound used it) examines tissue microscopically, usually to discover if it is diseased. The histologist does this normally by doing a biopsy--cutting the living tissue from the body and subjecting it to analysis. Thus, the tissue so cut is "dead" tissue or, at least, has been severed from life. That is how Pound thought about jurisprudes like Holland--they cut away the living tissue of law in trying to compare legal systems and extract principles from them. It remains a great word to use to criticize those whom we think are engaged in "sterile," rather than "organic" or "life-giving" activities.

Abnormal

But I am really interested in abnormal, not because it is my middle name, but because of the way that Holland used it in his Jurisprudence. Let's begin with how he used it and then back into the word itself. In ch. 14 he discusses "Private Law." This law has to do with persons and rights. Persons can be divided into two categories: "normal and abnormal" (p. 319). A "normal" person is one who is "unaffected by any special characteristics," while an abnormal person is so "affected." What does Holland mean by "special characteristics?" Well, he gives the examples of "such peculiarities" as "infancy, coverture, alienage, slavery, and so forth" (Id.). In other passages he adds things like lunacy and convict status as a pecularity that makes one "abnormal."

He has a little diagram to depict normal and abnormal on the next page. Imagine an x/y axis. The "y" axis is the "normal" person. Then, as certain special characteristics make the person fall away from "normal," there are lines, perhaps of 75%, 60% etc. representing various states less than "normal"--in his diagram he has "infant," "feme covert," "convict," "lunatic," "etc.". The "x axis" is an "artificial" person--some kind of corporation. Thus, we have normal, abnormal and artificial persons, though in one passage he seems to suggest that an artifical person is just one species of abnormality. Isn't is really nice to be able to divide the world so easily and wonderfully?*

[*The thing that is so outrageously amusing about Holland's discussion here is the assumption that since he is giving us a "systematic jurisprudence," he is giving us "the Truth," capital "T." This is the way things are. Pure and simple. But even his discussion on the development of the concept of "artificial person" shows that the idea of an artificial person only slowly evolved over time. Thus, even though he admits that history gives data to the analytical jurisprude, he denies that there is such a thing as historical jurisprudence. The evidence he gathers belies this contention. And, the laughability of some of his material, as I am listing it here, when it was written only 105 years ago, shows that his so-called "system" of analytic jurisprudence is nothing other than a historical construct cobbled together to reflect the way things worked for one society for a few years. Why isn't everyone a historian?]

Indeed, I used the word "falling off" from normal very advisedly. Holland's x-y axis diagram as described was first used in the field of grammar. The "nominative" case represented the "y" axis, and as cases "fell off" from the nominative, you had genitive, dative, accusative and ablative cases. So, we have Holland's Latin lessons in his mind as he constructs the diagram. And, we don't really have to ask who a "normal" or "standard" person is. Let's just say it isn't your slave from Ceylon. It is uncertain to me, however, whether Holland would have considered an unmarried woman a "normal" person. Otherwise it is a white male. Standard. Normal. In spite of all temptations, he remains an Englishman.

Back to Abnormal

The word "abnormal" or "anormal" only arose for the first time in English in the mid-1830s. In the 1830s it meant "contrary to general rules," such as in the sentence, "The relative positions of the contents of the abdomen, and the abnormal states of that cavity." Thus, from the beginning, abnormal meant to deviate from "the ordinary rule or type; contrary to rule or system; irregular, unusual, aberrant." An interesting theological usage from 1841: "The Mosaic system must always be considered as an abnormal, exceptional Dispensation." But it is precisely this last usage that allows us a view right to the heart of abnormal. It is basically a "power" term, a term that allows the person using it to exclude or denigrate others by taking the "scientific" high ground of "normalcy." Since jurisprudence is a science, and since science uses words like normal and abnormal, and since YOU may be abnormal....one can readily see how scientific terminology can be used to trash talk people. Since the Mosaic system was abnormal, can't we see how 19th century theologians would then argue that the Jews are abnormal, and if they are abnormal, well, can't we put them under certain restrictions, just like women and lunatics?

With all this value-laden stuff emanating from abnormal, you would think that psychology would have dropped the term. When I was an undergraduate student you could take a course in abnormal psychology. But it is till used today, as the supplementary volume to the OED says, to describe "the branch of psychology that deals with unusual behavior, mental processes, and personality, esp. mental pathology and maladaptive behavior."

Conclusion

Well, we still may need a vocabulary to describe weirdness, since it is all around (and in) us. But maybe we should only let someone use words like abnormal or maladaptive or unusual who has first confessed his/her own abnormality. "Hi, my name is Bill, and I am a freak..."

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