The Persecution of the Psychologically Deviant

David Bouklas

The ancient people of the world used to have wise men in their village who spoke
"the truth" about the universe; they enlightened the local tribes people on issues of
the world, the gods, their existence. They were often times medicine men, or advice
givers. They were said to have knowledge that superseded the average human
being, and were thus held as pseudo-religious figures in the direct community. It's
my theory that these people, who saw the world differently, who had this "gift" of
alternate experience, were marginalized to the status of psychological defects,
deviating from the mean of ordinary human perception. Where once people with
these unique experiences were treasured as valuable insight into a higher level of
consciousness and experience, they are now confined to institutions, appropriated
by a society that is so underwhelmingly static in their psychological functioning. We
all eat the same, speak the same, function the same, with a certain amount of
leeway so that we may express some kind of shallow sense of individualism and
"self-expression." The question that I have, ultimately, is this; does the
marginalization of the psychologically deviant create the concept of the
"psychologically disturbed," and stigmatize any kind of alternate interpretation of
the universe, marking these people as any less functional then those with "normal"
brain function? Is the severity of paranoia and catatonia prevalent in modern-day
schizophrenia a product the schizophrenic's condition, or of the inability of his/her
society to allow him to properly function in his own condition in their normalized
world. I would argue that schizophrenia, depression, and most psychological
deviations would take on a less defective color, and gain a sense of richness and
functionality, if they weren't repressed by society's desire to find and eliminate the
other.