Gender and Normality

Abstract

All descriptions of mental disorder assume some criteria for defining what is normal — what is acceptable and tolerable for the individual and for society. These definitions of normality are almost always tied to gendered notions of behaviour and ways of thinking. Because people have different levels of tolerance not only for emotional stress, but also for behaviour that is outside the norm, differences of opinion arise among individuals and their families over whether or not professional therapeutic help is required. Often, what is experienced by the individual as a small personal difficulty, which will pass without any outside intervention, is seen by friends or relatives as mental disorder in need of treatment. Both views (that of the individual and that of the relatives) are valid positions, representing the two opposing camps in the debate on the role of medicine in helping people with mental health problems. According to the well-known ‘antipsychiatry’ psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (1961, 1970), the very existence of a publicly funded mental health system is an unnecessary medicalisation of ‘problems of living’ that could be solved privately. He argues that this system enhances the powerful position of a medical élite and does little to help the individual experiencing mental distress. For Marxist theorist Andrew Scull, the same system not only medicalises problems of living, but also selects some of these for particularly controlling interventions because it suits the particular developmental phase of capitalism (Cohen and Scull 1983).