Word of the day: Drapetomania
I'm unaware if this concept was mainstream or fringe in 1851, but Drapetomania is an interesting instance in the history of psychiatry/neuroscience:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania
I'm not a teaser, it's a mental illness a physician came up with to describe slaves who otherwise inexplicably run away from their masters.
With the state of neuroscience in 2008 showing how warped almost all of us "normal people" are in our rationality, rationalizations, decision making processes, and perceptions of self, I wonder where that leaves the social concept of crazy people. Are they just the tail ends of the bell curve of our collected warpedness? Is crazy just being warped in a different way than the rest of us? Is it measuring the performance of conformity? The ability to engage in the various strategies Goffman describes to mask difference from the majority? We're all sufficiently warped that we must all be constantly performing, lying, and covering to pretend that our viewpoints match the various situational majorities we find ourselves ensconsed in, or at least that they're not offensive to them. So is that where "crazy" people differ?
Comments