Abnormality: What Is It?

Abnormality: What is it?

While on the face of it, "abnormality" sounds like an easy thing to define, in fact there are many different techniques used by psychologists to classify behavior, or mental health, as "abnormal". All of these have their strengths and weaknesses; there is no one "right" way to define abnormality. Some of the most common are:

Statistical

In some cases it is possible to gather data in a numeric form and derive a mean average value. We can then say that the majority of values which are nearest to the mean are "normal", and the minority of values farthest from the mean are "abnormal". For example, if the average height of a set of people is five foot eight, with most values falling in the range four feet to six foot six, then a height of less than three foot or more than eight foot would or probably be considered "abnormal".

One problem with the statistical approach is that the decision of where to start the "abnormal" classification is arbitrary.

Another problem with this method is that behavior which is undesirable may be statistically frequent. For example, depression is regarded as undesirable, yet it is not uncommon enough to be classified as abnormal in the statistical sense.

Deviation from Social Norm

A social norm is an unwritten rule which governs behavior in a given social context. Using this definition, behavior which breaks these rules is regarded as abnormal.

Strengths of this technique:

• It takes into account the social dimension, which is important because the same behavior that might be considered "abnormal" in one context could be "normal" in another.

• takes cultural relativism (the way that social norms change over time and between cultures) into account

• tries to avoid ethnocentrism, which is the tendency to regard one's own culture as "normal" and consequently see different cultures as "abnormal"

Some of the problems with this technique are:

• It's difficult to define what a "cultural context" is - cultures have sub-cultures within them. One way to overcome this is to use laws as a reference point - e.g. if a society has a law against murder, then that is considered a "social norm". However, evidence shows that many, if not most, people will admit to breaking the law, and so by this measure, they are all "abnormal".

• It doesn't provide an objective definition of abnormality

• It makes non-conformity undesirable. E.g. suffragettes might have been labeled "abnormal" even though they achieved positive