Sanity (from Latin: sānitās) refers to the soundness, rationality and healthiness of the human mind, as opposed to insanity. A person is not considered sane anymore just if he/she is irrational. In modern society, the terms have become exclusively synonymous with compos mentis (Latin: compos, having mastery of, and mentis, mind), in contrast with non compos mentis, or insane, meaning troubled conscience. A sane mind is nowadays considered healthy both from its analytical -once called rational- and emotional aspects. Furthermore, according to Chesterton, sanity involves wholeness, whereas insanity implies narrowness and brokenness.
Psychiatry and psychology
A theory of sanity was proposed by Alfred Korzybski in his general semantics. He believed sanity was tied to the structural fit or lack of thereof, of what is actually going on in the world. He imposed this notion in a map-territory analogy: "A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a "similar structure" to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." Given that science continually seeks to adjust its theories structurally to fit the facts, i.e., adjusts its maps to fit the territory, and thus advances more rapidly than any other field, he believed that the key to understanding sanity would be found in the study of the methods of science (and the study of structure as revealed by science). The adoption of a scientific outlook and attitude of continual adjustment by the individual toward his or her assumptions was the way, so he claimed. In other words, there were "factors of sanity to be found in the physico-mathematical methods of science." And he also stressed that sanity requires the awareness that "whatever you say a thing is, it is not" because anything expressed through language is not the reality it refers to: language is like a map and the map is not the territory. The territory, that is, reality, remains unnamable, un-speakable, mysterious. Hence, the widespread assumption that we can grasp reality through language involves a degree of insanity.
In The Sane Society, published in 1955, psychologist Erich Fromm proposed that, not just individuals, but entire societies "may be lacking in sanity". Fromm argued that one of the most deceptive features of social life involves "consensual validation.":
It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth... Just as there is a folie à deux there is a folie à millions. The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
In criminal and mental health law, sanity is a legal term denoting that an individual is of sound mind and therefore can bear legal responsibility for his or her actions. The official legal term is compos mentis. It is generally defined in terms of the absence of sanity (non compos mentis). It is not a medical term, although the opinions of medical experts are often important in making a legal decision as to whether someone is sane or insane. It is also not the same concept as mental illness. One can be acting under profound mental illness and yet be sane, and one can also be ruled insane without an underlying mental illness.
Legal definitions of sanity have been little explored by science and medicine, as the concentration has been on illness. It remains completely impossible to prove sanity. Furthermore, as Korzybski has pointed out repeatedly, insanity to various degrees is widespread in the general population, which includes many people that are considered mentally fit in medical and laval terms. In this connection Erich Fromm referred to the "pathology of normalcy."
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|This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2010)|
- Anderson, Steven W.; Antoine Bechara; Hanna Damasio; Daniel Tranel; Antonio R. Damasio (1999). "Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex" (PDF). Department of Neurology, Division of Behavioral Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience, The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA.
- Chesterton, G. K. 2002. The Outline of Sanity. IHS Press
- Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski
- Korzybski, A. 2010. Selections from Science and Sanity. The New Non-Aristotelian Library, p. VIII.
- When Ecology Does Not Count: Checking the Ecology of The Ecology Check by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
- Consensual validation at vault-co.com Archived March 10, 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- Fromm, Erich. The Sane Society, Routledge, 1955, pp.14–15.
- Korzybski, A. 2010. Selections from Science and Sanity. The New Non-Aristotelian Library.
- Fromm, Erich. 1955/1990. The Sane Society.