Cooper Mitchell
What is normal? Normalcy is not a constant, universal fact, as portrayed in these readings. What is normal to me is not normal to my next-door neighbor or someone who lives across the globe, but it is often treated as a shared idea. Ideas develop and change with time, place, and experience. That makes it difficult for us, as clinicians and future clinicians to decide what is not normal. A common theme in the readings was an "us and them" mindset. The individuals defining what was abnormal were mostly white, heterosexual males, making everything that did not fit into their category of "us" abnormal. BIPOC did not fit into the "us" category so they were seen as abnormal or more prone to abnormal behavior. Those in the LGBTQ community were different than the norm (at least the surface level perception of the population), so something had to be wrong with them. Women who were more emotional than men could be functioning normally.
Our field is unique in the fact that it tries to apply objective truth to subjective people. What is true for me is not always true for someone else, especially when dealing with cognition and behavior. A system that was made by white men to label everyone else is bound to fail if changes aren't made. This is a difficult task though because it involves deconstructing approaches that have been around for hundreds of years. Deconstructing our system is one thing, but fixing the hurt and opinion of the masses is another battle.
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