Be normal. Do what others do. Desire what others desire. Pursue the goals that others pursue. Think like the others…
In every person there are two opposing forces: one that leads to individuation and another that promotes socialization. We all want to establish ourselves as unique and authentic individuals, but at the same time we need to belong to a group and feel accepted and valued.
However, there are people in whom the force leading to socialization prevails. The need for social approval is so strong that it develops what the psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas called normopathy.
What is normopathy?
Normopathy is “the abnormal impulse towards a presumed normality”, according to Bollas. It is, therefore, a pathological normality. These people do not introspect, develop self-knowledge, and feel no curiosity about their inner life, rather they strive to seek social validation.
The normopath suffers from a particular type of anxiety: he is afraid to look inside and examine his psychological contents. Instead of exploring his concerns, desires and motivations, he focuses so much on integrating into society and adapting to the norms that it becomes an obsession that ends up affecting his well-being.
How to recognize a normopath?
The normopathic person craves—more than anything else in the world—social approval and validation, even at the expense of their own individuality and authenticity. Indeed, he is afraid of individuality. She is terrified of disagreeing and being different.
This is why he always tries to fit in and be like others. The normal therapist may ask a friend what she thinks of a new song, dress, or hairstyle before forming an opinion. Basically, he looks to others to tell him what to think or believe.
His dependence on external validation is so great that he ends up developing a “false me”. That false identity is outward-facing, trained to respond to external demands and to silence one’s impulses and desires.
This search for normalcy becomes abnormal, causing him to lose touch with himself. The normopath has lost the vital connection with his feelings and internal states, which usually manifests itself through an impoverished language. It is difficult for the able bodied person to put their experiences into words because they have lost connection with their deepest self.
Bollas found that these people fail to make the connections between their feelings, ideation and experience, but immediately switch to behavior. It’s as if they have some kind of operational thinking that quickly transforms the idea into action.
In practice, the normopathic person does not remain “open” long enough for an introspective vision to emerge. “The process of exploring the inner world and using reflective thinking to unravel the unconscious and conflicts is clearly too slow ,” says Bollas.
As a result, he shows hyper-rationality in dealing with others. But lacking the necessary sensitivity and empathy, he can’t connect with people on a deeper level, so his relationships are superficial. They are the typical people who always try to please us and are nice, but we just can’t connect with.
In some cases, when normopathy reaches extreme levels, the psychoanalyst Thomas H. Ogden refers to a real “psychological death” since there are entire parts of the psyche in which affects and meanings cease to be elaborated. In fact, the majority of people with disabilities feel a great inner emptiness. And the more emptiness they experience inside, the more they project outwards.
So it’s no surprise that able-bodied people work best when there’s a strict protocol to follow. They are people who accept everything their culture indicates as good, correct or true. They don’t question those beliefs, ideas, or values. They are afraid to disagree. They simply get carried away by taking a passive attitude, thus allowing the mass to lead their lives.
The path that leads to normopathy
The ideal citizen that many societies desire is the normopath, the person who adapts to the rules and follows the masses without questioning anything. Indeed, we often assume – wrongly – that the common opinion cannot be wrong. We assume that what is normal is correct and positive. This presumption leads us to think that what everyone does is politically acceptable and desirable. At that point, the opinions and reactions of the majority begin to establish the norm and exert a more or less subtle pressure on those who deviate from it.
This means that all of us, in one way or another, have inoculated the germ of normopathy.
Thus, the psychologist Hans-Joachim Maaz said that normopathy is “a socially accepted reality for the collective neurotic denial and defense against emotional damage, which is present in a large part of the population”.
But all this social pressure is not enough to develop normopathic behavior. In many cases, this desire to adapt at all costs is linked to traumatic experiences. Psychologist Barbara Mattsson, for example, found that people who have lived through war are more prone to normopathy. These people strive to be “ordinary” as they crave some degree of normality in their lives, which gives them a sense of security.
Normopathy has also been linked to traumatic experiences that have generated great shame. Being rejected or belittled can generate enormous shame, an experience that can leave such a deep wound that it pushes the person to disconnect from their “I”.
In fact, the psychologist Joyce McDougall believes that the “false self” that the able-bodied build is the result of the need to survive in the world of others, but without having sufficient knowledge of the emotional ties, signs and symbols that make human relationships are meaningful.
However, this pathological condition is not only the result of social pressures and oppressions or personal traumatic experiences, but is underpinned by a deep fear of looking within.
These people experience severe anxiety because they don’t understand their deepest impulses and desires, especially when these have been socially censored. They are afraid to look within because they don’t know what they will find in the process of introspection and they don’t know how to deal with their shadows.
That is why it is difficult for them to reflect on the facts, to stop and think. They go through life with few tools, usually borrowed from others, so they don’t get lost or face unexpected risks and surprises.
Technology certainly doesn’t help. Spending too much time in front of screens deprives us of the time and intimate space necessary for self-contemplation, during which our brain can make larger connections between events and our emotional reactions.
A “strong me”, the antidote to normopathy
In normopathy the social is exalted and the individual is ignored. But the normalopath doesn’t always follow the rules or behave like a robot programmed to follow others. Indeed, extreme normopathy is marked by breaks from the norm.
Some normopathic people end up exploding under the pressure of conformism that deprives them of psychological oxygen. In those cases, they are likely to react violently, turning against the role models or groups they used to follow, especially if they feel rejected or let down.
To get out of normopathy there is nothing else to do than develop a “strong ego” and accept the shadows we have inside. We have to open up to our self, explore it and rebuild it. With a curious and compassionate attitude.
To do this, we must free ourselves from the idea that normality is adequate, correct or desirable. We have to understand that normality – understood as what is normalized, regulated and majority-based – can sometimes do a lot of damage. We need to recover the importance of dissent, reflect on our environment and validate our difference.
But above all we must stop believing that we are immune to normopathy, because as McDougall said all normal people, at least to some extent, “move around the world like automatons, act like programmed robots, express themselves in a flat language without nuances, they have trivial opinions and use clichés and clichés.
“They tend to meekly obey an immutable set of rules of conduct foreign to who they are and lose touch with themselves by reducing the distance between themselves and others to zero. They are people who are too adapted to the real world, too adapted to life, who lose all desire to explore, understand and know, and gradually limit their thinking to an “operational” functioning and stop using it to know what is happening inside themselves or in the occult world of others”.
