The Seba library treats Normality in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Myers, Steve, Samuels, Andrew, Hillman, James).
Jung then evolved his thinking to a standpoint that was more aligned to Foucault’s own. Thereafter, the post Jungian concept of normality has remained relatively undeveloped by comparison with psychoanalysis and mainstream psychology.
Myers argues that Jung’s conception of normality underwent a critical evolution away from a normalizing stance, but that post-Jungian thought has subsequently neglected the concept relative to individuation.
, Normality in Analytical Psychology, 2013thesis
Freud (1937) had talked of ‘normality in general’ as an ‘ideal fiction’ and, Joseph concludes, Freud equated normality with analysability and with the outcome of a successful analysis.
Samuels surveys the psychoanalytic tradition’s fragmentation of normality into competing registers—health, average, ideal, process—anchored by Freud’s foundational characterization of normality as an ideal fiction.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
Offer and Sabshin suggested there were four main psychoanalytic understandings of normality: an average…a disease…a process…and a healthy (but unobtainable) ideal.
Myers catalogues the principal psychoanalytic frameworks for normality, demonstrating its inherent conceptual plurality and the impossibility of any single authoritative definition.
, Normality in Analytical Psychology, 2013thesis
The second and third stages deal, respectively, with normality and with social adaptation. For some people this will not be enough; it will be limiting or even damaging to them.
Samuels locates normality within Jung’s four-stage therapeutic model as a middle achievement, explicitly distinguished from and superseded by individuation in the fourth, transformative stage.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
That there is abnormalcy in normalizing, that the watchword of integrated normality is the very place of Athene’s style of psychopathology, is most vividly imaged in her function of protectress of the ‘city.’
Hillman inverts the usual valuation, arguing that integrated normality is itself a form of psychopathology—the defensive armoring of rational ego-consciousness under the archetype of Athena.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
there are two types of neurosis either side of normality, ‘collective people with underdeveloped individuality [or] individualists with atrophied collective adaptation.’
Myers draws on Jung’s polarity to show that normality is flanked by two symmetrical neurotic failures—over-collectivization and over-individualization—making it a dynamic equilibrium rather than a stable state.
, Normality in Analytical Psychology, 2013supporting
in psychology the normality of the individual cannot be defined by a law that expresses the coherence of the world, because if this law alone were valid, there would be no individual reality, and thus no problem of normality could intervene.
Simondon argues from individuation theory that normality must be understood as an intra-individual adaptation rather than a social law, for any purely collective criterion would dissolve the very individuality that makes normality a problem.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Adjustment is not adaptation; adaptation requires far more than merely going along smoothly with the conditions of the moment. It requires observance of laws more universal than the immediate conditions of time and place.
Jung distinguishes sharply between surface adjustment to environmental norms and genuine adaptation, implying that social normality may coexist with deep developmental failure.
, Psychological Types, 1921supporting
It is remarkable how often the family is experienced on two levels: the façade of happiness and normality, and the behind-the-scenes reality of craziness and abuse.
Moore observes that normality frequently operates as a social façade masking shadow material, illustrating in the family context the gap between performed and lived psychological reality.
, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992aside