A Good Reason Not to Let Yourself Be Committed
Can you tell if someone is insane? Maybe, maybe not. On the other hand, can you tell if someone is sane. Are these questions the same? Let’s be more specific. Can you identify a insane person while walking around your neighborhood? On the other hand, could you identify a sane person in a psychiatric facility? According to an article by David L. Rosenhan, the answer to the latter is no.
This is from Jason Shafrin at his blog.
Actually, this is a bit scary. You could be committed and unable to get out, even though nothing is wrong with you.
We’ve all met people who we think are a little weird. Some people are a little more socially awkward than others. Or a maybe they are little more paranoid or emotionally unstable than the norm. Physiatrists like to believe there is no such thing as an emotionally healthy person who could not benefit to some degree from counseling. Maybe they are correct in theory — sanity is probably more of a continuous variable than a binomial (i.e. yes or no). Where is the line between sanity and insanity? Society is more concerned about the point where a mentally ill person is a danger to themselves or others. But that could also be a moving target — benign most of the time and a danger once in awhile. I once had a philosophy professor who told us that if an insane person knows they are insane– and adjusts their behavior accordingly — then they are, in fact, not insane.
On the contrary, it is very easy to identify the insane people driving into work. They’re either driving too slow in the passing lane, or they’re driving too fast a few inches from my rear bumper.
In the past, one could identify people who walked around talking into the air as mentally disturbed. Now, it’s hard to say whether they are delusional or just talking inanely into a bluetooth device while wandering aimlessly about.
I’m not sure that the study was 100% fair. First of all, the people claimed to be hearing voices. I, as a sane person, have never heard, nor claim to hear, voices.
Imagine being the person evaluating a so-called “insane patient.” They tell you that they heard voices when they came in, but now they don’t? That doesn’t sound quite normal to me.
The study would have been more convincing if the people had appeared to be involuntarily committed such that they got “caught in the system” and were wrongfully accused.
But, as it stands, hearing voices seems to be a sign of insanity. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Despite Virginai’s comment, it sounds a bit eerie.
I should add that the creepiest part (in my opinion) is where you can’t wipe your record clean following your “return to sanity.”
If the point of the study was to prove that it’s hard to wipe your record, then it’s a point well made.
I once knew someone, well call him Joe, who was put in a mental institution even though he was not mentally ill. He was a chemistry student working with a toxic substance that, if handled improperly, could produce aberrant behavior.
The college shrinks who had Joe committed didn’t bother asking why a chemistry student might be normal one month and not another. Nor did they bother asking what he, as a chemistry student, was working with.
His lab supervisor heard about what happened and put two and two together. It took months to get the commitment order reversed even though the symptoms cleared up soon after contact with the toxic stuff ended.
This really is a fascinating, but frightening, experiment. I think it shows that much of what we perceive is what we expect to see. If I’m told you are are insane, I cannot picture you any other way.
Yet another example of erroneous living by labels.