Aberrations and Normalcy. What is Normal?

One of the biggest concerns of parents in any generation is whether they/we are bringing up kids who are "normal." We really don't fully know what we mean by "normal," but each of us has our laundry list of things we don't and do want our kids to become. Most of us want our kids to "fit in" with others, though we are pretty open as to which groups they choose to connect with. As we mature in our own lives, however, we begin to realize that the symphony of human life is pretty complex, and that what might have been considered "abnormal" or "aberrational" at one time just may not be so bad in our day. Even the psychological profession at times has the wisdom to recognize its prejudices--the most celebrated of which was finally removing homosexuality from a list of mental illnesses in the current DSM-IV (the "Bible" of mental "disorders").

While we know debilitating mental disease "when we see it," we are probably willing in our day to recognize lots of traditional phobias/aberrations less as aberrations now and more as peculiar characteristics of someone's personality. Indeed, we often look at some challenges as strange gifts of God rather than indications that our children or we ourselves are some kind of teratological freak. Many a parent of a child with autism, for example, has looked at the child as bringing more richness into the parents' lives through the child's condition than if the child had been "normal."

Looking at a "Dated" Encyclopedia

But the reason we play in our mind with concepts of normalcy and aberration is that our culture has been controlled by psychological approaches which have emphasized these concepts. In my research in the past weeks, for example, I ran across the Encyclopedia of Aberrations, a 1953 work edited by Dr. Edward Podolsky, with contributions by dozens of noted medical and psychological authorities of the day. By patiently combing through some of its entries, I received fresh insight into how we think about concepts such as normalcy and aberration. The purpose of the rest of this essay is to introduce you to what the medical and psychological profession thought were "aberrations" just a scant 50+ years ago. Space only permits focus on three "types" of "aberration": sexual, conduct, and in relationship to other people.

Sex-Related Aberrations

Make no mistake about it. The 1950s was a time of sexual repression, and the psychological/medical community was not going to upset the applecart. I suppose, however, that the occasional willingness simply to describe sexual phenomena without underlying moral judgments might have paved the way for a more liberated view of sexuality in the 1960s and beyond. Let's begin with several sexual "aberrations." It would be easy to start with homosexuality and lesbianism. As might be expected, the former has an article 8X as long as the latter. Homosexuality is perceived as an aberration: "Sexual perversion in general and homosexuality in particular have become meaningful within the content of the psychosexual conflicts as elaborated by Freud." Using Freudian insights, the author goes on to say: "the homosexual person shows a regression to infantile norms of sexual gratification..." (p. 271). That theory has gone out the window.

Well, how about masturbation? "Under ordinary circumstances (what is that?!), masturbation in moderation (what is this, a Protestant Aristotelian speaking?) is harmless. However, when this practiced is carried out through various bizarre methods and in a compulsive manner, it becomes an abberation" (p. 390). Not too helpful, I venture to say. It sounds very much like those 19th century court cases which refused to talk about anal intercourse between people and simply spoke about "the crime against nature," as if everyone naturally understood what was being implied and they agreed that it was "against nature."

Speaking of things "against nature," let's look at the entry under fellatio. Well, the encyclopedia just defines it and calls it a "sexual perversion." But then it introduces lots of other technical terms into the discussion which you should know about even if your only interest is to increase your vocabulary. For example, we have "frottage," a form of "sexual deviational behavior" in which a person (man) rubs up against a woman for sexual gratification. This is "often done in a crowded train or other vehicle" (p. 236). Then we have "onanism" (named after the biblical Onan--Gen. 38), who "spilled his seed on the ground," rather than performing his levirate duties. Irrumation is synonymous with fellatio or penilingus; now we have three words for this "perverse" phenomenon. I will close this section on sexual "aberrations" by mentioning nudism. The author indicated that a "type of cultism" has arisen recently with the spread of nudism and that, far from promoting health, this is nothing more than "exhibitionism," and "all cases of exhibitionism are frankly sexual in nature." Thus, the nudist movements can be traced back "to exhibitionistic and scoptophilic instincts" (isn't your vocabulary growing by the moment?). Well, enough on the sexual attitudes of the Encyclopedia. I think we are going through a period of sexual "overexpression" in our culture now because it was for so long "repressed." There are many other articles on various sexual phenomena (such as sodomy, post-orgasmic emptiness, iconolagny--being aroused by visual stimuli--and voyeurism), but I won't bore you with them now.

Aberrations of Conduct

Three of these "aberrations" that I noted with interest/amusement were boredom, malingering and oniomania. As we can expect by now, boredom, like masturbation, "in moderation" isn't so bad, but when it gets really bad, well then you have a problem. The article discusses manifestations of boredom in more detail. Many people are afraid of or unwilling to work. "Such individuals are compelled by their anxieties to loaf about and to 'putter' with things rather than to work with them" (p. 127). That may the first time the word 'putter' appeared in a psychological encyclopedia. In any case, the putterers are "concerned with finding ways of dissipating time." They form the "hobo fringe" of a society, while wealthy people who don't work are called "playboys." Playboys have "profound personality disturbance" which often leads to suicide. Well, can you hear echoes of a sort of conformity ethic with respect to work in these words? The book The Organization Man, to describe both the realities and pressures of conformity, came out in 1956. Truly, psychology seems more to be an expression of the "flow" of the time than of principles that might transcend the immediate reality of our society.

The word malingering comes especially from a wartime context where a soldier didn't do his job. While the focus of the article on malingering was on people in prison who "feigned sickness or inability," the analysis would probably hold for people in the rest of society. Malingerers play the role of psychotic patients in order to extract favors from others. And, I can't finish this essay without defining oniomania, one of the conducts that is labeled a "mania." What is it? No, it isn't being crazy for onions. Rather, oniomania is "an uncontrollable impulse to buy." The basic characteristic of this "aberration" is that "individuals make purchases of articles for which they have no use." In fact, they have no consideration of the "consequences of inordinate purchasing." This, an aberration? Then, in fact, our whole society in 2007 has gone mad..

Conclusion

I could go into more detail, but I won't. Many articles are concerned with issues de jour, such as cocaine and opium addiction, juvenile delinquency, various psychiatric symptoms, chronic alcoholism and "marihuana intoxication." I will close, however, with one of the symptoms that is most surprising to find. It is called "anti-Semitic attitudes." The editors of the Encyclopedia wanted to raise this issue to a mental aberration. I suppose coming out of the historical experience of WWII, anti-Semitism seemed quite aberrational. And, I think that every society ought to do all that it can to discourage and eliminate it. But by listing it as an "aberration," I think this encyclopedia shows itself for what it really is, and maybe must be: a thinly-veiled expression of the dominant values of the social elites at any time, bathed in medical and scientific terminology. Maybe we shouldn't have expected anything different. But it sure makes less urgent, in my mind, the study of psychology. And, it makes even more suspect the notion of "aberrations." Let's just go for rich description and keep the labels to a minimum; we might all be the better for it.

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