The concept of normality: A reply to Freides

Comments on an article by D. Freides (see record 1960-07384-001), which presses for the elimination of the concept of normality on the grounds that there is little agreement concerning its definition, that it ascribes absolute, yet culture bound, patterns of behavior and that it disregards the flexible interactions between personality and circumstances. Although Freides concerns himself nearly exclusively with the idealist-adjustment view of normality, other approaches such as the statistical-average conception are likewise dismissed with the conclusion that "for purposes of scientific theory and also for practical clinical purposes" our emphasis must shift away from considerations of normality (or pathogenicity) and toward a greater concern with "the potentialities of every person under the proper conditions." Such a position, Korman argues, springs from too narrow a conceptualization of both scientific theory and clinical purposes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).