BIZARRE BEHAVIOR & CULTURE BOUND SYNDROMES

A few years ago I worked as a psychologist in a large state-run mental hospital. Each day on the job I would regularly interact with people who would be considered strange and who acted in bizarre ways. I thought nothing of this and perhaps due to my psychological training or familiarity over time, the appearance and conduct on my hospital patients was something I took for granted. It wasn’t until a friend or family member came to visit that I got a realization of how strange my charges were and how shocking their behavior could be. I remember seeing the look on the faces of my friends when they first came in to the unit and were suddenly surrounded by people who looked and acted in radically different ways than what was considered normal to someone outside of the hospital.

One day my wife came to visit and was accosted by one of my patients as soon as she arrived. This patient Ron suffered from Ring 22 chromosomal disorder. He had the IQ of and infant even though he was in his twenties. He was about 5’2” slightly built and good looking. He would alternate mood very quickly, laughing one moment and then crying the next. My wife being someone new excited his curiosity so he sought her attention. This would have been fine except his way of eliciting it included drooling, muttering incomprehensible phrases, and trying to pinch her breasts. As soon as Ron tried to get my wife’s attention a number of other patients decided to join in on the fun. When I came in the room, my wife was surrounded by ten or so patients pawing at her and trying to pinch her. She very politely tried to stave them off but was almost driven into a panic when I finally whisked her off the ward. Once outside I could see that she was very agitated. After she calmed down she looked at me and asked incredulously “ how can you work with these people every day?” The truth was I didn’t know.

The appearance of my patients (many of whom were quite strange compared to Ron) and their strange behaviors had become familiar and commonplace to me. In order to help them, I needed to see beyond the strangeness of their presence and the typical human reaction to extreme differences in behavior. This is, or course, what my training as a psychologist allowed me to do. My training also helped me to ask what the meaning (if any) lay behind the behaviors I was seeing day in and day out in the hospital. In a way, this is exactly the goal of this blog – to better understand and find meaning for behaviors that exist on the extreme edge of the human repertoire. Simultaneously we can learn to become desensitized us to the strangeness of those who perform the behaviors. Instead of reacting to the strangeness of those who are so unlike ourselves by distancing ourselves from them, we can instead engage them as fellow human beings.

In a more ‘macro’ point of view the problem my wife had in visiting the hospital ward was one of cultural relativity. Briefly, cultural relativity is where something normal in one culture or group appear strange, abnormal or bizarre from the viewpoint of some outside the group or in a different group. From inside our culture at the hospital our patients’ behaviors did not appear bizarre. They might be maladaptive, adaptive, ‘reinforced’, communicative, etc., but they were not bizarre per se. However, for someone new to the world of the mental hospital there were strange things going on.

So in a way the purpose of this blog is to examine the ‘relativity’ of human behaviors. More specifically, I hope to:

1. Explain and distinguish the most common bizarre behaviors and syndromes from around the world.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the psychology of abnormal behavior in relation to cultural phenomena.
3. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of theory and research in the psychological and physiological bases of extreme behaviors.
4. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of individual and cultural differences in what is considered ‘normal’ behavior.
5. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of perspectives on the origin and treatment of bizarre and extreme behaviors.

Let me know how I am doing and if you have behaviors of your own to share please drop me a line. I look forward to your comments!