Do Psychologists have an Abnormal Ideal of "Normal"?

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The term “normal” is often and indiscriminately used in our society. On many occasions, we might hear about behaviors that are or aren’t normal. We hit a wall when we try to define what normality or abnormality really is. It’s difficult for us to define what’s normal and what’s pathological, strange, or weird.

As psychologists, we look at the whole breadth, spectrum, and bell curve of human experience. Every person is distinctive — a particular individual with his own ideas and his own ways of doing things. Being exposed to unique behaviours psychologists tend to learn and appreciate that all presentation is “normal”. However, normal is not the same as functional.

Functionality is what we are trying to assess and examine that includes an individual's behavior, emotion, social skills, and overall mental health. We look at if our clients’ actions are functional in moving towards what is important to them and who is important to them.

We could say that normality is a construct that comprises those behaviours, ideas, and characteristics adapted to a society. The things that we don’t usually desire or the things that we’re trying to get rid of are what we often times call “abnormal”. This explains how the consideration of normal and abnormal behaviours, actions, and feelings varies to us. For this reason, my idea of normality is based on functional diversity.