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February 28, 2008

The normality of strangers:

"The only normal people are the one's you don't know very well."

A quote from the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. Not sure exactly where this quote comes from, but it's widely quoted on the net.

Adler was hugely influential in the early Freudian circle and coined the term 'inferiority complex' to describe what he thought was the innate sense of inferiority we are all born with and need to learn to manage as part of our development.

He believed that this developmental process shaped the personality and was reflected in each person's individual personality traits.

UPDATE: I've just noticed that there don't seem to be any photographs of Alfred Adler Smiling. Cheer up Dr Adler.

—Vaughan.

Posted at February 28, 2008 11:30 PM

Comments

Larry Smith says:

The only Vulcan I know is schizophrenic. Seriously.

Your post reminded me of an article showing that schizophrenics are in a certain sense more "logical" than the average individual. To buy the previous statement you'd have to consider "logical" the ability to reason in syllogisms, as opposed to using common sense.

Schizophrenics and controls were shown two types of syllogisms, one in which the conclusion is
concordant with common sense, and a second type in which the conclusion contradicts common sense. Participants were asked to decide if some premises implied the conclusion or not. The schizophrenics did better in both cases.

Here's a link to the BJP paper:
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/191/5/453

While reading that paper, Godel's proof of God's existence come to my mind. And the fact that he starved himself to death when nobody was available to taste his food for poison.

Comment posted at February 29, 2008 04:18 AM

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