 So, today what we are going to do is we would be initially talking about the whole process of adjustment what the challenges are before us as human beings and how we very nicely make a balance between all types of demands that we experience in our life. And finally, we would also be trying to look at things from the viewpoint of normality versus abnormality. Yesterday what we did was we tried to look at the fact that there was a heavy dominance of the biomedical model in terms of analyzing human behavior. And because of the over emphasis on certain scientific temperament at the cost of the social context biomedical model was supposed to be rethought of people did revise it and towards the end we did discuss that even the practice within the medical fraternity as well as within the behavioral sciences did accommodate certain things like preventive medicine holistic medicine in the medical sciences and positive psychology health psychology in the behavioral sciences. Today we are going to talk about the adjustment process and as you know that this course is primarily about the psychology of adjustment. So, what we would do is that we would try to understand the ingredients of the adjustment process then we would be looking at how people are defined with respect to certain parameters and they are designated as normal or not normal or abnormal or sub normal. And while doing that we would also try to take a couple of extremely socially relevant examples and thereafter we would flow to the whole dynamics of the adjustment process. Now, adjustment is defined as a process wherein one builds variations in the behavior you need to break down this definition into multiple components. So, this process requires you that you should be looking at the variations in the behavior means the behavior will keep on you know changing it will keep on you know showing certain level of dynamics. And why such type of changes are needed because you want to achieve harmony with oneself remember one thing this is not harmony with you know the environment or others, but it is the intra individual harmony. So, you want to maintain harmony with oneself or you want to maintain harmony with others that is the other possibility or you are trying to maintain harmony with the environment. So, three major factors intra individual harmony, inter individual harmony and harmony with the environment. And then this harmony is maintained with certain goal and the goal is to maintain the state of equilibrium between the individual and the environment. The primary responsibility of all human beings in terms of you know delivering the best possible response that is needed by the environment is that you try to strike certain degree of equilibrium. Means things would be at a normal state and then the moment there is a need the situation demands you to do something you simply you know look at the task and analyze the task you perform whatever is expected out of you. So that you and the environment both remains in a balanced order. If you do not perform what is needed out of you the system will you know further put demand either on you or on others and hence the whole harmony will get disturbed for certain period of time. To strike that harmony individuals do try to know build variation within their own behavior. And striking variation within their own behavior would mean that you in the similar type of situation you come forward with multiple types of responses based on your own judgment of what would be the most prudent activity to perform in this very situation. Smaller examples you can take like say you come to the class you are trying to look at the projection and meanwhile the person sitting next to you whispers something in your ear. Now there is a environment here the environment demands you to attend to the lecture imagine a case when the instructor is too harsh or your neighbors are too harsh in terms of telling you that you should not disturb us. Now you will try to achieve harmony in that type of situation so even though you heard somebody whispering in your ear you do not respond to it. You do not respond to it or the second situation could be that you do whisper but you make a very delayed type of a response. Say you put your hand like this and then you whisper in a delayed fashion and in a much more slower fashion third variation you prefer not to talk instead you write something on the sheet of the paper likewise there could be multiple variations and all these variations are primarily intended to strike that balance with the environment. Now with all your life experiences that you have till now you know that besides maintaining equilibrium with the environment one important task that all of us perform and we are supposed to perform is to maintain that degree of balance with others also. You want to maintain relationship with the others also in the society in a very very balanced order and when you do that you again have to come forward with multiple types of variations in your response. Now psychologically many a times it might be relatively easy to maintain that degree of equilibrium with others but it is extremely difficult when you find inconsistency within your own self means an example could be that something that does not fit your own value system but the situation expects you to do that. There is a dish harmony between your own two inner construct something that you feel doing but your know moral code of conduct that you have invite from your culture from your family tells you that this is not worth doing. Such type of conflicting situation can know put heavy toll on the adjustment process and it is know much more difficult to handle situations like this compared to when you are trying to strike balance with others. So inter individual know situations can be had relatively easier compared to when you have intra individual problems. Now adjustment process also know encourages certain changes in order to optimize the relationship know you have certain degree of relationship but then you would try to optimize it to the maximum possible extent. One of the examples we are taking now we took the example of know somebody whispering in your ear we take another example of somebody who visits a consultant physician and he is diagnosed with a terminally ill disease he is told that you are suffering from this. In some cases doctors are modest not to tell you the time frame that they expect of your survival at times doctors tells the caretakers that perhaps you would survive for three months six months in certain types of disease situation works like this. What could be the possible responses you are suddenly told that you have been diagnosed with a terminally ill disease one option that you become tense and becoming tense simply means that you now consider that death is inevitable it could be today it could be tomorrow it could be day after tomorrow it could be after a month but then it is inevitable. So, you start counting your days now and this makes you extremely tense the other response that you simply deny it and you say that how can this happen to me. I have never say for example study we were taking the example of somebody who develops HIV infection we were talking know with respect to the comparison between certain types of medical diagnosis which has greater social acceptance like diabetes compared to something like HIV infection which does not have social acceptance. Now you become an individual who starts you know denying the diagnosis and say that how can this happen to me I cannot develop HIV infection I never had blood transfusion I never know had displayed rampant type of sexual activities I am not one who have abused the drugs. So, all the causes that you know can lead to infection of this virus you say that I have not been involved with any of these and hence you deny it or you simply say that fine others can acquire it how can I means there is a difference between me and others in the society or you turn extremely angry you do not show your anger to others might be that you implode within know one form of aggression is that you explode you show your aggressive burst to others other could be that you boil within you are not expressing yourself and but you still think that why me know there are millions and millions know in this country who does things the way I have done. So, why only I should be penalized for it why have I been you know chosen to become an HIV infected patient. So, these are interesting dynamics know and in life you would realize in reality if you see know how people tend to accept things how people tend to deny things how people respond to different things you will find huge variation and that shows how people are different from each other and what type of strategies are being used in terms of know adjusting to the type of challenges that life has put them in front of I will take two interesting examples two of the field experiences one the case of mother I do not know about the father, but the mother who was too sensitive in terms of knowing how psychologically sound her daughter is the daughter I guess was too young perhaps 8 or 9 years old and the mother was know too desperate to know about the IQ level about other psychological parameters as if you want to have a psychological profile of the child. A majority in our society never knows many of these characteristics these traits we do not even think of getting measured and then she did consult couple of people she did ask me also and then it went to the extent that she finally went to a psychiatrist asking that fine she wants certain test to be administered on her daughter certain clinical examination to be performed on her daughter because she wanted to know how sound her daughter is what took place was that uniformly everybody whom she consulted simply denied saying that why do you find there is a need for it there is no need for your young daughter to undergo these tests or assessments know or any type of clinical observations there is no need for it know let her lead the life the way she is leading know and there is no reason why you should be worried about know young baby out of no reasons. Now you suddenly know you have a daughter and your parenthood propels you know to become over agitated in terms of know identifying certain problems that you might be aware of second situation and a sad situation this was experience I had long back around 10 12 years back with the help of one of the nationalized banks a mental health checkup program was organized and this was organized in a locality which was basically locality predominated by the weaver community and community which are into this type of staff know if not into weaving then coloring or know middlemen who are involved in selling these products. So, it was basically of a lower socioeconomic strata and that locality was deliberately identified for this camp because it was realized that this locality has the highest number of intellectually disabled children. Now intellectual disability has nothing to do with socioeconomic condition, but it is just a chance factor that many families there were know identified to have children with intellectual impairment this camp was organized and there were know couple of doctors who were administering one or the other type of test there were few psychologists trying to administer psychological assessments. There were also some officials from the sponsor who were primarily you know distributing medicines which the doctors prescribed free of cost or in certain cases where know training was a possibility they were promised that you will be giving given a sieving machine. So, that you can know walk at your home and you can earn bread for yourself the posters the banners they were displayed know 10 15 days in advance and, but there was a very thin appearance not many know children came not many parents came. So, although this full team sat for the full day there was a very thin population given the fact that there was an inside report that this area has a large number of intellectually impaired children. Now once these free medicines were distributed and certain other other stuffs were distributed and promise of sieving machine was made by evening by the time this whole team was about to leave a large number of know people started pouring in and they were interested know of getting whatsoever is available free of cost. And this was to my utmost surprise know that what you are interested is not in the welfare of your own child, but what you are interested getting is whatever comes to you at minimal cost or at 0 cost. Minimal cost because you would be leaving some of the task that you otherwise would have performed. So, you left that activity and came to the site of the camp and the stuffs are being given free of cost and therefore, you start demanding for it. And the field workers later on told us that you know for 2 3 weeks they had a tough time going to the field because every time people will catch hold of them and ask when is the next camp going to be held. This is a very amazing type of experience, but the reason why we are discussing these two examples here is that in one case situation does not exist, but then you try to know make a microscopic analysis of the situation and you try to extract things before it can occur. In the other case symptoms are glaringly visible and you show a tendency to deny it. Let me tell you another interesting story similar type of a story when the data for the census was being taken you know that census data are collected every 10 years. So, last time when the census data was being collected government has been struggling to get accurate data of people with different types of problems right from physical disability to intellectual disability. And a tendency has been found that people would simply say that even though they have children with one or the other type of disability in their house they will simply deny that I do not have any child like that. From the primary source means from the parent's mouth you hear that I do not have a child like that. From the neighbors from other sources you come to know that yes there is one child who is hard of hearing, there is one child who is you know physically crippled, there is one child who is intellectually disabled, but the primary sources will always try to deny that. And if you talk to them in person they will give you n number of reasons why they do this. Then another issue which has to do with it and that has to do with everybody know who is a member of the society that a good number of people in our community either they show the tendency to deny the diagnosis or it also has been found that you delay either the treatment process or the prevention process. For example it has been observed the doctors will tell you that it has been observed that many women once they conceive they report to the clinic much later. And therefore the first few months goes waste the even though you have certain things which are supposed to be delivered to these women free of cost at the local by the local medical authorities. They do not get this benefit because you do not report to the health centers at proper time. Second which has both the sides know the tendency of denial we were talking right now that very fact that you are diagnosed with one problem and then you just tell the doctor or you can tell others that fine I will go for a second opinion. So, you meet a doctor the doctor diagnosis you with one type of a problem and then you seek opinion from the second medical expert. Similarly you go for a psychological assessment you are diagnosed with something you go for a second assessment by some other consultant which is fine problem comes when you come to know the diagnosis, but then you show extreme of denial you do not accept it come on come on I have a many children develop like this know which time it will happen gradually it will happen one day it will happen and that day usually never comes mostly it never comes. We have alternate type of practices So, it is not only that you deny know the diagnosis made by some expert rather you go in some other direction I will give you a true example a family which had two consecutive child with you know speech and auditory problem. So, they could neither here they could not speak both the parents they know kept on denying it saying that there are children who develop these abilities little late in their life. So, the critical period was gone they went to the doctor and the doctor know tell them told them that fine the circumference of the head of the babies are know much more smaller compared to what the normal head circumference is and therefore, there seems to be some neurological issue behind this which should be deeply examined. Meanwhile, the parents come to know from some source that if you and this is all false type of things I must tell you right in the beginning before I tell you what they were prescribed they were told that you go to a banyan tree early in the morning pluck one leaf green leaf from the tree cook small amount of porridge of this size know which can be engulfed in just one go put it on the leaf of the banyan tree and then make your child eat it. Now, completely from neurological examination to porridge on a banyan tree it is completely weird type of combination, but this parents know they delayed neurological examination for more than two years I know this case very closely, but for these two years they did use the banyan tree leaf. So, the banyan tree lost many of its leaf cut see these parents, but the child never got the medical assistance that it should have got right in the beginning when the parents were advised to undergo certain neurological tests. So, you will find 100 types of examples in and around you where you would realize that there are 100 types of possible reactions and we do give many types of responses some responses which can be classified to be perfectly minus the fact that it has a wider range some type of reactions which are very difficult to accept it does not seem rational. Now, psychological adjustment is the critical processes that will help the person achieve harmony with his or her current state. Now, the example that we took of the terminally ill disease and three possible response reactions that you deny or if you do not deny then you become tense. If you do not become tense or deny then you turn to be angry why is it me the process of psychological adjustment demands that you should finally achieve harmony with your current state. So, if the truth at this time is that you have been diagnosed with a disease developed at you know grand feeling with the new to accept whatever is true. So, finally the outcome of the adjustment process would be that it will allow you to accept things the way they are having said that it will also tell you that although you have accepted the current state there is always a possibility of betterment. Satisfaction of psychological needs through social networks have also been found to facilitate social and cultural adjustment. Now, you try to satisfy your psychological needs not through your own endeavors, but also through your social networks family as a unit friends as a unit. There are several types of other institutional mechanisms of know deriving such type of psychological needs the whole literature in psychology is full of now a days with a research on spiritual inclination or spiritual practices which works as healing forces which you will find good number of research which talks about your community involvement that acts as a buffer when you are yourself in a great amount of distress. So, you involve with the community task and that know serves another type of psychological need. You get involved with some type of spiritual activities and it starts serving satisfying your psychological needs. And then there are certain social and cultural issues that also you need to take into account when you are trying to adjust will take many of these examples in the coming days. And human beings learn this whole dynamics of the network from these experiences you have your cultural baggage, you have your social ethos, you have your family system and there are good networks that you develop know friends with whom you love to play friends with whom you want to share your grief remorse or your fantasies friends with whom you tend to share your academic enterprise. It need not be an animate body, but then say consider your care your passion for some bigger cause say you are involved in saving the trees, you are involved in planting in planting new trees, you are involved in watering the trees which are know put in your area. You are involved in many types of things you have developed couple of hobbies that you find very passionate about. Now all these things know they develop a network around you and this network works as a consolidating force which strengthens your know need for satisfying some of the issues that bothers you. It also provides you the strength to face certain adversities that you might encounter in life. It also gives you certain guiding principles which you can take forward when you are thinking of a possible reaction in a given situation. Now changes in the environment triggers the interpersonal activities that can help achieve these needs know and this serves two purposes meeting needs in the change environment. So, you once you have manipulation in the environment there is a new demand that has been put forward before you. So, you tend to meet these needs and at the same time it increases the expectancy of meeting needs in the future know. So, if a new demand has come in front of you and you have been able to satisfy it then besides fulfilling the need you also know that next time if similar type of challenge comes or even if little more severe challenge comes in front of me I am capable of handling it. And therefore, adjustment process engages both inner inner as well as inner outer relationship. So, inner inner is you and say your belief system your value system your thoughts your feelings those are inner inner relationships as well as inner outer relationship know. So, you and people in the environment and this relationship interestingly can be both it can be harmonious it could be conflicting. And this is know the whole propelling force that makes the whole adjustment process extremely dynamic in psychology we talk about three core issues know cognitive, cognitive and effective. Cognitive is your thought process the way you think the way you know derive information from your past experiences means memory dependent activities. Your effective processes effective is your feeling component and cognitive is your action. So, cognitive, cognitive and effective all these three pillars they should know work in harmony with each other means you do what you feel you do and feel what you think. So, all these three things this synchronize problem would come when you have know dish harmony between one or two of these components means you do something that you do not feel doing like you are given this course in HSS lottery although you hate this course like anything. So, you are made to do something that you do not like similarly there could be know all types of permutation combination know when you feel something else, but you do something else you feel and think differently your thought and your feeling does not match together many times it happens in life. So, those are those conflicting situations which will know always make your whole adjustment process extremely dynamic and the best part of it is that with little effort and with time most of us in most of the situations succeed maintaining that harmony. Now, the harmony and conflict within and among once behavior value belief system effective reactions and so forth they work as our major determinants know. So, unless you have know harmony between them your adjustment will be at stake and the moment you have conflict between them again your adjustment will be at stake and hence it is know something like walking on a tight rope you must have seen people know with a stick in their hand and walking on a thin rope when they try to strike that balance adjustment can be to a greater extent equated with that type of situation know that situation always demands you to strike a balance and you always try to do it most of the times successfully sometimes we might fail, but remember one thing that success in terms of coming forward with a response is largely achieved because we there is a possibility of wide degree of response know there is a great variation it is not that you have to the first step has come here. So, the second step also has to come at the same point it is not like that know it can deviate and to certain degree deviations are accepted. In the next topic after we discussed normality we would be talking about know this type of range know and the possible deviation the very understanding of this purpose also makes us appreciate whether the person it is adjusted or not discordance and inconsistency within and among these determinants is interpreted as maladjustment know. So, once you have know inconsistency between your say behavior belief system effective reactions. So, basically the cognitive cognitive and the effective components those are know likely to be interpreted as indicators of maladjustment that you are not able to adjust. So, adjustment involves an inner-inner as well as an inner-outer relationship this we have discussed and adjustment also demands that one should strike balance between the needs and environmental obstacles. So, it can be understood like this that you have certain motives and in your initial attempt you experience a barrier you can take any type of example a small child trying to get a chocolate and there are 100 barriers in front of him the older sibling does not allow him to have the chocolate. Parents advise that know you eat too much of chocolate and it will develop cavity. So, parent becomes an obstacle the shop is closed the third obstacle parents do not give you the money fourth obstacle you are too young to go alone to the shop fifth obstacle you go to the shop with somebody and it is closed sixth obstacle you can think of hundreds of obstacles for any anything in life the smallest of the activity and you will have hundreds of obstacles. Now, at the initial step what happens once you have a barrier that you experience for a given motive you learn that this does not succeed that does not succeed third also fourth also, but one or more than one will succeed and then you know. So, rest are the endeavors with that does not lead to success this succeeds. So, next time onwards once you have a motive you know that five of the behaviors are not to be done behavior. So, you do not replicate them behavior that does that did not lead you know attain the goal you stop doing that repeating them and therefore, you minimize the time involved you also minimize the energy involved and in that process you also minimize the conflict involved ok. So, if I cannot surpass the advisory of my parents there is no point negotiating with my parents if my father is every time going to tell me no more chocolates you will have cavity look at your older sibling and what is the point in talking to the father go to the mother. So, you know how to bypass the obstacle mother in front of father again might say that do not know father is told no to you. So, please go, but mother in the absence of father might allow. So, you know there is a variation in the response know mother can be approached, but not in presence of the father and then suddenly you come to know that mother and father you have over struggling with them for a chocolate, but then the grandfather comes with the chocolate tells you low better and then you say grandfather can bypass both of them. So, you know how to know encounter the barriers that you experience in life in initial attempts we struggle more subsequently we struggle little less, but with more and more of experience of life our responses gradually becomes much more perfect. And hence know one or two strikes and we finally attain our goal, but again I would say that adjustment process has been oversimplified when we say this. There could be situations where it is extremely difficult take your own examples you were I am taking a hypothetical example might be some of you might fit into this I do not know. Say you were born down south say you were born in Chennai studied in Chennai did coaching in Hyderabad came to IIT Kanpur you never got a chance to have know the type of food that are provided in this mess your hostel mess provides a food that you never tasted in your life. The roommate you got was somebody who you have never interacted with say your friend comes from extreme north is turn part of the country you realize that both of you does not match in terms of your language you have extreme difficulty understanding both English and Hindi you have difficulty having all types of chapatis, rice, dal and vegetables full of potatoes served in the hostel mess. You have extreme difficulty know coming to 8 o clock class in the chilled winter morning and then you said that I never ever had bought a sweater because there I never experienced that chilled winter I did not experience winter at all here the winter is much more know than what we usually think of winter and overall the institute ask me to come at 8 o clock and the instructor says you have to sign this paper which is a documentary evidence whether you came to the class or not. There could be many such situations where initial or subsequent barriers you do not know how to handle. So, people know at times you come forward with issues like this imagine situation you completed your b-take you now go to Europe chilled winter say for example, you went to Sweden you went to Norway to Finland countries which are otherwise extremely cold round the year. And what is usually summer for us is sorry winter for us is summer for them and then know you have to accommodate. Now, the weather is not bad, but it is horrible throughout the year there is a foreign language that you are minimally aware of or not at all aware of there is there are food practices that you are again find very weird. And then you have limited money with you your passport says single entry visa know so you cannot even go back to Chennai have some food and come back you do not have a choice and then you have limited money your scholarship tells you that only these many euros per month. And above all you realize that there are several things that are completely know incompetent incompatible in terms of your cultural acceptance in terms of your value belief system accommodation. For example, many people will share this shock with you waters are much more expensive compared to bears in many of these countries you can afford to have bear, but you cannot afford to have water there every day. And you have limited money you have single entry visa what to do now and means what I am trying to say is that you have to adjust and the situations are know becoming much and much difficult for you know and whatever you try it is very difficult. The good part of it is that usually human beings are many much more intelligent in terms of finding out a way out. I can give you true example minus the name and the details a person know who was born in one of the southern states belong to certain type of a family which was completely completely know against know the non-vegetarian food and alcohol and stuffs like this they had a different protocol that was supposed to be followed every morning when you leave your bed. He was born in that type of an environment and finally when he had to stay for couple of years in Europe he had extremely tough time and the intelligent compromise that he came forward with was once I am in the flight once I have taken off. So, then I can have whatever is served in the flight once I am in Europe I will behave the way Europeans do, but once my flight touches down the Indian soil I am as pure as I was know according to my family value belief and practice patterns. These are intelligent compromises because you have to finally strike a balance between what your immediate environment demands you to do and you also have to take into account your own behavior your own value belief system your own thought processes all of these has to be taken into account and then adjustment has to be made. So, this was all about the adjustment process. So, we will stop here tomorrow when we meet we would be talking about perhaps an interesting topic and do not know whether the earlier two discussions were equally interesting or not. We would be talking about normality how do we define normality and we would be talking about some type of social practices that usually we ignore or many of us are not aware of or we do not see it happening in and around us very frequently. So, we would be now talking about how norms are derived how behaviors are fitted into those norms who decides the norm who is supposed to comply to those norms and then finally who defines what is normal. There is a interesting possibility in this case now what we would do is that we would take scientific view point we would take of course psychological view point we would touch upon the sociological view point we would also touch little bit about on the legal view point, but you can also take it to a philosophical discourse who it is saying what is sanity what is insane who is not saying who is normal who is abnormal who defines it and stuffs like this this we will be taking up tomorrow.