Mental Deviance

Abstract

‘Mental illness is a metaphor’, claims Szasz (1973, p.114), used to cover people who are ‘socially deviant or inept, or in conflict with individuals, groups or institutions’. Leaving aside for the moment the issue of the status of medical definitions, this quotation serves to remind us that, legally and historically, what is now regarded as mental disorder is basically the need to deal with a social problem. Such a social problem may be revealed at an individual level, because someone finds that they cannot cope with life in society; or at an interpersonal level, because those with whom they live cannot cope with them; or at a social level, because the agents of some social institution find them socially deviant. Yet the importance of this social situation has often been ignored in attempts to explain the cause of mental deviance in mysticism, malice or madness, and to remove this cause by eradication or cure. We are not suggesting that the causes of mental problems can be ignored; we merely want to stress, particularly to lawyers and social workers, that the form of the problem to be explained can in fact be determined by the nature of these practical situations, and that therefore in different situations there may be different problems to explain.¹