How does one determine whether a person is insane? What criteria does it require?
Repeating the same action over and over hoping to get a new response?
Not recognizing fundamental facts about physical reality?
Deviating from the status quo a little too far?
Is there a universal set of characteristics that defines insanity?
Are you sure this is in the right forum? Seems like it would be really really easy to stray into GD.
I’m not quite sure how to answer it here…I suppose you could use the DSM, but there are certain problems with that, since not everyone agrees on every disorder in it.
1 : a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia)
2 : such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility
3 a : extreme folly or unreasonableness b : something utterly foolish or unreasonable
My mother was once seconded to work at the mental hospital in Whitby, and she told me that the official definition of insanity boiled down to ‘differing far enough from the norm that you can’t get along with normal people’. Nothing was said about actual fitness for survival, in either the allegedly-insane person or society.
I would love to find out how true this is.
These days, insanity is mainly a legal construct, as in not guilty by reason of insanity. Psych types speak of mental illness or mental disorders. A common (though by no means universal) litmus for identifying such is DSM-IV, in which symptoms or criteria for each are identified and if one has a given number thereof, a diagnosis is considered appropriate. As indicated in the linked article, the whole system is controversial, but has the advantage at least of somewhat standardizing terminology.
To see the face of God is to know madness.
On this subject, I recall a comment the writer R.D.Laing made in his book The Divided Self
{An excellent outline of this subject.} which went something like this;
“In this day and age, in the society we live in, anyone who claims they are completely happy
could be said to be insane.” I do not know if this helps, but a read of the book mentioned
definitely would.
That is an excercise in futility.
That may be attributed to stupidity or ignorance.
That is eccentricity.
I would go with diggleblop’s definition.
And in that context, as I understand it, the only important criteria is whether the accused knows (or knew at the time in question) right from wrong.
“insanity” is a bit of a dated term. While “Not recognizing fundamental facts about physical reality?” feels close, it would also imply that everyone born before the 18th century was insane–what society believes to be the nature of “physical reality” has changed that much.
"How does one determine whether a person is insane?" When the person in question can no longer function effectively within the bounds of socially accepted behaviors–What that person believes to be the best course of action given a situation is consistently destructive or disruptive to those around him. In short, the insane has his own ideas about what is right/wrong/acceptable/unacceptable. Interestingly, if you combine insanity with high charisma you end up with ultra-famous world changing leaders…who invariably think they could have done better.
"Is there a universal set of characteristics that defines insanity?" Nothing ironclad. Unless you’re willing to say that “the refusal or inability to accept a reality other than the one you know” constitutes insanity. If you call someone crazy because they don’t see things your way, then you’re crazy too because you don’t see things their way.
Our collective efforts should really be spent on the creaton of a better chocolate formula. Toblerone is close, we should start there.
Everyone is insane. They just lock up the ones who complain about it.
So sad a wise person once (ok…it was my mom).
What’s insane? My prices, I tells ya! They’re so low it’s insaaaaannne!!
More seriously, the only non-colloquial use of the term “insanity” with any sort of precision is in law. Like PBear42 said, insanity is a legal term, not a medical one. There’s no standard for “insanity” in the DSM-IV, but there are several in the law books. In law, insanity is a state of mind at the time of an offense that would excuse criminal conduct. The most common standard for determining this is the M’Naughten standard, either an inability to tell right from wrong or an inability to appreciate the true nature of one’s actions. This could be from mental illness, but not necessarily. For example, a mentally retarded person who grabbed a woman’s breasts because he honestly thought that was how one properly initiated sexual contact would probably be insane as a matter of law.
I have to object to this, or any other definition in which “the norm” or “the statistically average” is accepted as “the sane.” To be sure, there have been many “insane” societies in which the sane person has been the outcast. Merely “fitting in” says very little about one’s mental capabilities.
Plus, you can’t define “insanity” without first defining “sanity.” And central to that definition should be “adherence to the facts of reality,” not “agreement with the opinions of everyone else.”
The more I learn about psychology, the more I’m convinced that the OP’s third guess (deviating from the status quo a little too far) is the correct one. There really isn’t any objective standard of sanity. It’s all based on what the psychologist thinks of as being “normal.”
The legal definition of insanity, in particular, comes from the days when phrenology and lobotomies were considered cutting-edge science. That should tell you all you need to know about how scientifically sound it is.
I only have a BA in psych, but my interest was in abnormal and clinical psychology, and never once in any class did any professor say the word “insane”. It’s a legal and Hollywood term that doesn’t mean much beyond a superficial “So that’s why he dressed in his grandmother’s clothes and smeared bat feces on himself and killed the hobo with a stapler” type of use.
When psychologists or psychiatrists are called in to testify to a person’s mental state, they won’t use terms like “insane” or “crazy”-- they will name specific disorders, which will have criteria for diagnosis.
That just means the person is a computer programmer.
I can tell you this: I certainly don’t suffer from insanity; I actually kinda like it. ::rimshot::
Thank you - I’ll be here all weekend.
That’s pretty much what I said when she told me.
In the words of a wise poet,
pravnik, a nitpick. The insanity test is usually stated as a defect in mental reasoning which … . IOW, mental illness or disorder as understood by psych types, which fits into a pigeon hole recognized by the law as a defense. And, an aside to all looking at the thread, for a succint exposition of the disconnect between the legal and the psych conceptions, it’s hard to beat Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Indeed, that was the main point of the book.