Loading the Dice in Favor of Madness

Abstract

The g oomy biographies l of m nt e al patients most often represent psychiatric artifacts produced through a "loaded" process of sampling only the bleak events of the patients' lives. If a social identity were constructed for any person based on a biased sample of his life events, he could easily be portrayed as a villain or as a man of character, as a criminal or as a men of low and o der, as a s nner or as a saint, and as an insane or as a sane person. In the present r i i study, a group of college students were asked to compile their biographies highlighted by the bleak experiences of their past. These biographies were then rated and classified by a panel of judges into four categories of psychosis, neurosis, personality disorders, and normal. Over 90 percent of the biographies fell into one of the three categories of psychiatric disturbances. This finding tends to support the argument that, following the current psychiatric ideology and practice of loading the dice in favor of madness, a pathological case could be constructed for almost anyone regardless of the ndividual's psychological well-being.