This article is actually better regarded as being about insanity, a topic about which many reams have been written. Examples of encyclopedia articles about this topic for your reference: [mental disorder] -- [insanity (topic in the law)] -- [mental health] -- [insanity (topic in the law)]
""SanIty" is variously defined as; the quality of a sound or healthy mind, rationality, the ability to discern right and wrong, "believing and thinking as you ought to believe and think, according to me," and any number of other definitions which users find expedient." Is this even true, or are you only speculating: who defines the term this way? Shouldn't you consider actual attempts to define the term? Shouldn't you at least say something that reflects what psychologists know and believe about sanity and insanity. -- LarrySanger
Besides - I was unaware WikiPedia was to remain mainstream, or to repeat what other publications have already said over and over?
Not everything I write is from my point of view, Bruce. Do you find that paradoxical?
Not all valid views are mainstream, that's about as obvious as anything can be, when you think about it. Sure. But the purpose of an encyclopedia article is to convey what the mainstream views are--at least.
By the way, regardless of whether you sign the article and regard it as yours, in my opinion it belongs to the wiki, and I will make bold to change it whenever I wanna. :-) Without asking you.
-- LarrySanger
I don't know how to improve this article, because I don't know enough about the topic of mental disorders in general. I do have some comments nonetheless--so, contrary to my own stated policy, I'll indent my comments and let you fix the article, if you can and want to. I am going to be blunt, because I think you will benefit from bluntness in this case. Here we go:
"SanIty" has been variously defined as; the quality of a sound or healthy mind, rationality, the ability to discern right and wrong, "believing and thinking as one is authorized to believe and think" and other definitions which users find expedient.
The word itself comes from the root adjective "sane," which stems from Latin "sanus," or "healthy." The implication, then, is that a sane mind is a healthy mind.
Health, in general, denotes strength, soundness, proper functioning, especially of biological systems. As the mind is generally regarded as the seat of awareness and reasoning, its proper function might be said to entail clarity of awareness and accuracy of reasoning. One would expect to find these qualities, then, in a sane individual.
It may be instructive to examine what constitutes clear and accurate awareness and reasoning and what constitutes inaccuracy in these areas. Further, it may be helpful to understand to what degree errancy must intrude into mental function before one can reasonably be determined to no longer be sane.
There are a number of objective criteria whereby one may assess the workings of a mind and determine their accuracy, but the largest portion of these have been declared to be more useful in determining IntelliGence than sanity.
One's ability to perform mathematical computations, identify shapes, find the next in a series of deductive steps, identify patterns in data, all are related to mental accuracy, but may be poor indicators of sanity. The kinds of tasks which one performs accurately, then, may have an impact on the perception of one as sane or not.
The most prominent aspects of accurate mental function which have been used as indicators of sanity over the centuries appear to have related to the areas of interpersonal relations and bodily safety of self and others. More recently, personal mental composure has come to be included, as well.
Criteria other than accuracy of function have been employed as determinants of sanity. Conformance and agreement with societal norms have played as great a role in the determination of sanity historically as any other criteria. In some contexts, societal norms loom large. For example, in WesternCivilization?, one would generally find it unsettling if a friend began to speak of voices telling him things, of demons tormenting him, or how he was cured by someone burning incense, shaking rattles, and chanting. Modern psychiatry lists such reported experiences among the symptoms of SchizoPhrenia? - a serious mental disorder. In many regions of the ThirdWorld?, however, shamanistic tradition accepts and reinforces such experience. One who declared to the members of such a culture that these subjective experiences were invalid might find his sanity called into question by the local chief or medicine man.
The impact of a culture or cultures are evident when one examines what the modern western medical (psychiatric) community uses as a measure of sanity. In a medical/psychiatric context, the most general means of identifying sanity is a definition by exclusion - that is, "absence of functional mental illness, defect or disorder." The word "functional" (denoting abnormality in function, but not in form) is important, as dysfunction which is traced to a uniformly remediable or replicable physical cause generally is reclassified as a medical problem rather than a mental one, with concomitant change in diagnosis and approach to treatment. Such medical issues are removed from the criteria for judging "sanity." The medical/psychiatric definition just stated will seldom be satisfied in the absolute, as will be seen below.
The problem of identifying a concise,positive, functional definition for sanity, a key element in the more general issue of MentalHealth?, is perhaps best illustrated by comparison. In identifying "sanity" with "health," one invites comparison with known standards of health in other organs and systems. A contrast is immediately apparent between the certainty and objectivity with which one can identify physical health, as opposed to mental health. One may examine, for example, a liver. Its normal role and functions, uniform from one person to the next, can be determined through the methods of physical science. It can be x-rayed or biopsied. Liver enzymes in blood samples can be measured. Hepatitis antibodies can be tested for. In the extreme, exploratory surgery may be performed. The proper functioning of a liver can be quantatively measured. While the mind is usually associated with a body organ, the brain, science to date has been unsuccessful in attempting to develop brain testing protocols which are definitive in predicting or measuring sanity. Part of the reason for this is that "normal" mental function may vary from person to person and from one context to another. Therefore, contextual observations, tests and measurements remain the standards of choice.
The standard for mental diagnosis in psychiatry is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). It has undergone a substantial evolution in the last half-century. From the few mental disorders defined in Freud's time, the number of psychiatric determinations of aberrant human behavior has expanded. When the DSM was first published in 1952, it listed 112 mental illnesses or disorders. The 1994 issue of DSM (IV) specifies more than 370 disorders. And the psychiatric community has not always agreed on how these should be classified. For example, concerning "schizophrenia," DSM-II states, "Even if it had tried, the Committee could not establish agreement about what this disorder is; it could only agree on what to call it." DSM-III says "there is no satisfactory definition that specifies precise boundaries for the concept 'mental disorder'.... For most of the DSM-III disorders... the etiology [cause] is unknown. A variety of theories have been advanced... not always convincing, to explain how these disorders come about." DSM-IV states that the term "mental disorder" continues to appear in the volume "because we have not found an appropriate substitute." Diagnoses which appear in the manual were developed, in part, by a majority vote of those attending DSM conferences. As a result, short attention span, questions about one's spirituality, difficulty with writing or mathematics, defiance of one's parents, fidgeting, excessive neatness, all have found a place in the manual among symptoms and diagnoses. In contrast, homosexuality or the unreasonable desire of a slave to escape, once defined as mental defects (the former in early editions of the DSM), do not appear in today's DSM.
In 1995, Dr. Rex Cowdry, then director of The National Institutes of Mental Health, stated to a U. S. House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee hearing that, regarding mental illness, "We do not know the causes. We don’t have methods of ‘curing’ these illnesses yet." This should not be surprising. It has been without doubt a cultural process, within the fairly limited culture of psychiatry and psychology, which has taken place in an effort to define the boundaries of sanity. Diseases with cultural definitions may not respond to medical science.
..."it's obvious that you're trying to set up an argument against the received view of insanity." You seem to be under the impression (broadly held, BTW) that psychiatry or medicine or some consensus authority actually defines sanity. Here is the real kicker - there IS NO "received view" on the definition of "sanity" from doctors or psychiatrists. One must read tons of books by them (done, thank you), each individual author defining it differently if he defines it at all (they prefer to go on at length about abnormalities, and the obvious fact that an absence of them is the preferred condition), and then try to find points of general agreement between them. The "medical" definition I used is paraphrased from the only medical dictionary I could find which did not define it as merely "Soundness or health of mind. Normal mentality." Question is, what the heck do you mean, "Normal?" The word "normal" is not a (forgive me) normative word, unless its characteristics are either obvious by definition, or can be demonstrated (like the normal function of a liver, heart, gut, brain, what-have-you). Well, I finally found "Normal" as being "without mental disorder." What's a mental disorder? See DSM-IV. You read DSM-IV, and it says "we can't agree and don't really know what a mental disorder is, or if it should be called a disorder at all - but here is the long list of things we do agree ought not to be a part of human mentality."
Note that I did not say in the article that there was only one medical definition. I said there was a "most general" one - one than can be found in medical literature which does not conflict with other definitions found in medical literature. The only thing they agree on is "normal." Quoting Taber's, (F. A. Davis, Philadelphia, 1974): "normal - 3. In psychology, free from mental disorder, or of average development or intelligence."
Who defines sanity in terms of interpersonal relations and safety of self and others? Heck - EVERYONE! But I should prabably make clear that I'm talking about a "street" definition, not an authoritative one. Examples: Why should he be committed? He's a danger to himself or others. Is he sane enough to fly a commercial jet? No - he takes unreasonable risks. Is she sane? No - she does not relate normally with others. She talks to herself, babbles incoherently, flails her arms for no reason, whatever. Is he sane enough to assist in his own defense? No - he keeps calling his lawyer "Jesus" and accusing him of working for the CIA.
now I gotta run - but I will see if the article cannot be tuned up some. I should probably introduce my thesis more clearly, "Medicine and psychiatry have self-admitted difficulties defining sanity, and here's why. And, by the way, could a definition be developed upon which most would agree?"
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