 Today we will continue with the construct of normality and how it is socially constructed and how we evaluate in a clinical setup who is normal and who is not. We took the example last time of the Hindu marriage act and the social practices in terms of polygamy. So, today we would continue with this construct. What we actually we were discussing was that although with this phase of modernity gradually certain type of practices you find that they are either being phased out or they have slowly started dying out, people trying to follow the same set of pattern. But it is important to note that basically it was the majority's view that prevailed. It was not that when this Hindu marriage act came into being such type of practices were not prevalent in certain regions of India where we had no seen with the help of this map. But what was important was that certain people who were the stakeholders who had the freedom of defining the law, they did define the law in such a way that automatically certain section of the people who were spread throughout the country, their practices could not be fitted into that legal framework. Even though there are practices that does not fit into the legal framework, their immediate society accepts the practice and that is an interesting dimension. I promised you that at times we would be talking about the legal, the social and the psychological benchmarks. So here you have a possibility where although the legal framework does not accept certain type of practice, the social acceptability of the practice very much exists. Now if you look at it from a different view point that why there was a need for certain norms to be evolved, we would be talking about this issue even later on also that you want to maintain certain degree of harmony. In the beginning also we talked that adjustment is all about maintaining harmony within certain constructs within you that would be the intra individual equilibrium that you try to maintain. At the same time you try to maintain the inter individual issues and therefore you want to minimize conflicts that is the reason why human beings always thought of evolving norms. But then while evolving a norm one can realize that the majority's view point suddenly became predominant and then you have certain idealistic concepts. The idealistic concepts which are basically later on constitute as the moral principles that should be followed. So faithfulness for example is a moral construct, loyalty for example is a moral construct. And therefore when you look in terms of a human beings behavior and you analyze in terms of whether this person's behavior fits into the norm or not, whether his behavior or her behavior can be considered to be legally appropriate, socially acceptable and psychologically normal. You find that there could be little bit of deviations. Now if you analyze the norms from the view point that we have discussed right now you would realize that these criterias have come out of certain socially constructed evaluations. Society considers loyalty to be important and therefore whether you are loyal or not becomes very important. If society does not emphasize on socially relevant constructs like loyalty then loyalty is not an issue at all. You can make a comparison there are thousands and thousands such examples. You can take for example marriage as an institution the way we have been talking about. We were restricting ourselves to the Hindu marriage act that is acceptable in India. But if you make a cross cultural evaluation the marriage practices in India and say the marriage practices take for example in one of the European countries take the example of Netherland. Now in our country even people who go for divorces when they apply for a legal divorce we have something called family courts who are supposed to look into such type of disputes. And people in the legal fraternity also they would try their best to console you to make you understand that if there is a possibility have some patch up but do not break up. Although the law allows you to do that you have certain license to argue on behalf of a client as a practicing lawyer or you have the authority invested in you to decide on the fate of certain type of problem that has come in fourth of you because you are part of the judicial system. There also you realize that there is something that has social value and therefore you convey your client that fine is there a possibility of meeting a marriage counselor trying to work out a solution which is mutually acceptable to both of you so that divorce does not take place. Compare this with the whole practice that is currently prevalent in say Netherland for example where you find that marriage as an institution is weakest in that country and marriage as an institution in our country seems to be extremely stronger. So it is all about how much of emphasis society lays on a particular type of a practice. The contemporary society of Netherland does not lay so much of emphasis on it therefore it becomes fragile. In countries like ours know suddenly you know there is too much of a value that is provided to this type of an institution. And therefore even though with all types of hiccups and everything the outer skeleton of the institution marriage still remains there. And therefore when you try to inject concepts like faithfulness, loyalty you know all these idealistic concepts they very easily assimilate in systems like ours where you realize that this institution has been given utmost importance and then certain idealistic concepts have also been injected into it. Now the moment you see this example and you also realize that there are certain idealistic concepts that has been put forth this means that one way of defining normality could be that it is actually a value oriented idealistic concept that there are certain things at the society values. These are all idealistic concepts because certain people know try to adhere to it and therefore they are called much more normal compared to you. That could be another way of looking at normality another way of defining normality. Now the moment you have certain idealistic concept this once again would mean that the moment you start deviating from the idealistic concept. Then you are evaluated as if you fall short on something which is extremely desirable and if you have seen advertisements for certain positions you have legibility criteria and then you have desirable qualifications have you seen such type of ads. Now desirable qualifications simply means that you may or may not have it but those who will have it will be given more weightage in terms of selection. And therefore what socially you find is at the moment you have the idealistic concept of defining at normality and people who do not come close to it they would be considered to be good or bad. So these are all value oriented judgments. So good bad better worse. Now these are all you know reflection of certain deviations from the idealistic concept but still they do not define you to be normal, abnormal or subnormal they simply define you as good or bad acceptable or unacceptable. Now here you find two interesting things one that society allows you to deviate from the idealistic concept and it will simply brand you as good or it will tag you to be bad. Even though you show certain degree of deviation society except this form of a behavior. Problem only comes when the deviation is too severe or too acute and then it is you know far more repeated in your behavior when society starts rejecting such type of behavior. What is equally important to see is that certain practitioners of some other faith in the same country. Now they are legally allowed to have more than one wife in our country we have talked of the Hindu marriage act therefore we are now deviating a bit. But then you realize that even though you have different type of religious practices in the community largely the focus is on serial monogamy. Means you have you know divorce you have the death of the spouse and then you remarry that has been accepted. This means that at one given point in time if you have a single spouse then that type of behavior has been considered to be more idealistic compared to having multiple spouse at the same time. Now the interpretation of the norm you find that within the society changes because the religious practice changes here. And therefore it also means that you know the idealistic concept of adjustment although it is socially oriented but it is culturally limited. So social you know social constructs gives it is an orientation but certain you know cultural barriers they restrict it and say that find it is allowed and it can be extended to this community but not to that community. Now you remember the Hindu marriage act the slide there when certain words were you know colored red those were the unsoundness of mind mental disorder and insanity. Now even in the legal framework you find that certain things which are of clinical relevance of psychological relevance they become prominent. But the act itself you know somewhere does not keep on you know classifying all types of mental disorders all types of insanity. Now although they also refer to medical taxonomy like unsoundness of mind mental disorder insanity these are medical taxonomies they can be interpreted as social categorization of disorder what is sane and what is not will depend on whether society accepts that type of a behavior or not. And if one fails to infer to the behavior as abnormal or subnormal then the behavior by default becomes normal. So this is you know another way of looking at it that you search only for abnormal behavior and you come up to the level of subnormality and when you realize that the behavior is neither abnormal nor subnormal then by default you consider this behavior to be normal. We will take certain examples here the top example where you see a Bharat Natim performer although she is equipped with both the lower limbs. As a part of you know an artistic expression she rests her body weight on one fade and extends the other one. Society accepts it why because there is a dominant view point at find this is one form of cultural expression dance is a form of it. Bharat Natim happens to be one form of dance in India and this is one of the steps and therefore if you know it fine you are far better than me because I do not know Bharat Natim. Go to the other extreme of it when majority of the people have only two lower limbs here you have somebody who was born with five lower limbs. This is a case from Pakistan when in a hospital in Karachi a baby was born with these many lower limbs and you realize that there are interesting type of social interpretations come to the lower figure. You see image of Sushmita saying when she became Miss Universe in 1994 you look at the pretty face and the world's admirers you come to the other case here. This is a photograph from a child in India in Uttar Pradesh and here you find that the child had two heads and two nose two mouths and again you find that there is a different cultural interpretation of it deliberately I have put the news item there which basically describes that when this child was born the parents took pride in having a child like that I am sure Sushmita since parents would also have been proud of her performance here although you have a child with peculiar features with multiple facial features the parents take pride saying that a goddess is born in my family and all the villagers started pouring in and they offered their prayers to this baby donated money to the child and then you are not considered to be a child with a certain chromosomal aberrations but you are considered to be representation of Hindu god or goddess. Now these are interesting social constructs what I am trying to say is that medically although you say that this is an abnormality socially you celebrate it this is not an abnormality and if you believe in practice like that then you admire the whole process then you admire such type of deformities you are getting my view point I am sure you must be aware of this government has been putting money in this pulse polio immunization program for long and probably one of the missions which succeeded in our country like anything and there was too much of effort made to make this pulse polio vaccination program successful this oral drops right from having Amitabh Bachchan endorsing that though boons in the GK you remember his popular ad to know even people at the grass root level even if you are you know traveling in a bus train airports everywhere everywhere every every small single point no it was so micro management was done in a fantastic way that you would have somebody you know putting a yellow jacket saying no pulse polio program and they will stand there with capsule with these polio drops although this entire program was successful which was to say that here I consider my citizens and I want them to be free of such type of medical problems and then suddenly there are certain small pockets including Uttar Pradesh there is a small pocket where the villagers rejected accepting this simply because somebody had sprayed the rumour which is purely a rumour that this is basically no process of limiting your capability of producing offsprings you remember there is a government slogan in our country that you should have two kids okay so although it is all you know unscientific but somebody correlated know that though boons in the GK is equivalent to know having only two kids okay and this goes against our cultural practice this goes against our religious sentiments okay and it was unbelievable that a group of people accepted this logic they were small community and they refused you know administering this pulse polio drop to their children so although things are for good you have social rejection here things requires at most medical care it gets socially celebrated just contrasting examples you can see in your life okay I will come to another interesting example on the left hand side you see mother serving the armed forces when she came back to her native country after serving the war in the Middle East okay you see her you know hugging her child on the airport okay and you can see the emotions of a mother okay child is so dear to you although you went to serve your nation you went abroad you worked you know as uniformed service personnel in the Middle East when your country was fighting the war okay you show know so much of concern love care compassion everything for your child you can very closely see the emotions on her face okay this is also one way of caring for the child loving the child and I will now show you a video which is a weird practice completely weird practice in terms of loving and caring the child there are places in Maharashtra where children are taken to a place of worship they are taken to the second floor and then they are dropped from there so it is a free fall in the air the family members they stand on the ground okay with a bed sheet thankfully most of the child fall in the bed sheet only okay but imagine the level of trauma that these small children must be experiencing but then you are told that find this is how God blesses your child and you are convinced this is surprising okay you would like to see that video it is absurd it is absurd but then it has social acceptance I will show you that video and then come back the whole crowd there the whole community is standing there and then the child is being dropped from the rooftop God has blessed the child this is the construct of normal behavioral pattern okay so what we are trying to know understand in this discussion is that as you know there are social categorization of disorders okay which are actually heuristic social artifacts you remember we had referred to Medox's statement in the past and then he did talk about heuristic social artifacts saying that all disorders that we consider to be disorders are actually social categorizations no and these are heuristic social artifacts and because you see so much of variation in the pattern of behavior it is very difficult to understand you know that who deviates and who doesn't because the moment you make little bit of a change and you realize that the whole situation has changed I will give you a couple of more examples we talked about you know the idealistic concept thinking about good and bad okay thinking about acceptable and not acceptable a few years back we had a student here at IIT Kanpur who did her PhD in sociology she worked on one of the tribes in Odisha okay what she did was that she studied the tribe which basically you know has been isolated from the modern Odisha community they live on the highlands the mountain regions and the top area not on the lower area because of whatsoever reasons some of them they started you know shifting downwards and those who started shifting downwards they got in touch with certain activities which otherwise are considered to be not to be practiced activities for example say if you steal an object of somebody okay from a modern perspective this is an act of theft and it you know makes you undergo certain legal process now some of them were arrested for committing such type of behavior they were sent to prison okay once they were in prison and they were because the crime that they had committed was not so severe therefore their duration of stay in the prison was limited two years three years one year something like six months and they would come out which according to them was small duration but then when they stayed in the prison they got in touch with other prisoners who were actually from the modern world okay new of many other things so these you know prisoners from this tribe they will learn usage of certain tools and techniques okay for example plastic combs if I tell you that plastic comb is an artifact for grooming yourself okay for us it's not a news because right from birth we have been looking at you know combs and I'm sure many of you must be carrying combs in your pockets okay because you want to groom yourself properly and especially when these gels were not available most of the people used to carry combs in their pocket now these people from the tribe when they reverted back to their community after they were released from the jail they would carry small small things with them a plastic comb okay a ball pen a hair clip these are all small small artifacts but they would carry and then you know their native community will take pride oh great you have brought something great to us okay I can now groom myself oh you have brought a mirror I can see myself okay and gradually what happened it was realized that the society did not look at the act that made them go to the jail rather society took pride in the fact oh he has served six months in the jail and now he has brought these many artifacts we know the usage of comb because he went to jail okay the act of theft which otherwise you know will be considered to be prescribed act not to be replicated act not to be performed act suddenly has suddenly makes you socially celebrated okay I'll take this example little later there is a village in UP very close to us close means few hundred kilometers where the whole village is into the act of prostitution okay legally it is banned in our country socially it is considered to be an immoral act but then that very village in modern India okay still has this practice because they take pride they say that this is our tradition and on the name of the tradition you continue with it and the male members of the family take pride in the fact know that see women in my family they are engaged in this business this is our traditional business it's equivalent to being goldsmith for generations okay business being a business tycoon for generations and then you know it's very difficult that where do I draw the line even for idealistic concepts because the moment you know move few kilometers on this side or that side the norms changes hence it is always suggested that when you are trying to look at the adjustment pattern of an individual do take the social context into account you cannot know make the person move out of the context and then say that the whether this behavior is good or not I took the example of divorces in our country no I am sure some of you must be aware of this there is increasing concern in our country over Indian women getting married to Indian men who are settled abroad usually it's those who have shifted to the US in certain region of our country you find a very very absurd pattern gradually coming in two types of patterns I like to highlight here family as a unit was given at most importance in our country and you would find a large number of people who would say that you know they their carrier got ruined which they do not care about because they did want to stay with their own parents parents were older they wanted to take care of them and therefore they didn't pursue the carrier which was very bright which could have led to lots of money lots of success but they simply you know didn't take it up because they wanted to stay back with the family I don't know how far it is true but I am told that in Assam and other nearby region in the northeast there happened to be a strong practice in earlier years when they would take up a government job government of India job which is an all India transferable positions no so they will take up a job in Assam the moment they are shifted they are posted it outside the region they will resign so you do not care for your job what you care for is that I don't want to be dislocated this is one end of the story the other end of the story where in Punjab I won't name the village there is a village which has only elderly people why because all people in the middle age and the younger age they have shifted to Canada or to US so the village has very good houses all types of facilities that you can think of but it is a village with no caregiver it is all elderly people and you understand elderly people would have certain type of needs for caring them and many many issues like this this is another extreme of it the whole act of divorce I was saying know that usually the courts in India would recommend you that first you meet a marriage consular see if you know something can be walked out so overall the emphasis is that you should retain the this tie up of this bond of marriage the weird pattern that has started coming in and it is really cause of cause of concern is few people in and this is true for again a selected region of this country the boy is somewhere in US comes to India marries a girl takes hefty dowry the girl remains here after marriage the boy goes there and then suddenly one day one of the courts in that country sense that you know you have been divorced now you do not have an option of an appeal because you are you know say for example in a small village in one of the isolated corners in other in India you cannot even you do not even have that exposure to understand where this court exists in which part of the world so forget about going to that court making an appeal but then there are large number of such women coming in that very region and therefore it is a cause of concern that you are wed your parents paid for your marriage and then after two three days you are deserted and one day you realize that you have been legally divorced this is again an absurd pattern but then what I am trying to say with this example is that there is another part geographical location in this world where you have problem your husband snores fine get separated I remember an European country where the rule says that you have to be together for a month after you file a divorce petition you have to be together for a month and after a month you come to the court and say that yes we still want to be separated now there are variable type of norms know one country we took the example where no no no no please see if something can be worked out one country we says remain together for one month still if you think getting separated fine get it other country where oh she is not here but you want to get it go ahead so too liberal to too restricted all types of variations the problem comes when you have somebody from culture x moving to culture y and then his adjustment is being evaluated and I would take one or two examples but if you are interested you can find many such examples in the books of social psychology cross cultural psychology and nowadays there is a very interesting branch in psychology it is called cross cultural psychiatry where you look at psychiatric issues from cultural viewpoint and then you take diverse culture into account therefore it is called cross cultural psychiatry where you take symptoms of a particular disorder and evaluate whether this is a disorder in this culture whether it is a disorder in the other culture and you find there is a gross mismatch and that is very interesting because as a medical practitioner you take an oath that you would be following certain tradition and you would be doing this you would be doing that and you realize that the social context does not allow you to do that because the interpretations are different and I would not go to psychiatric symptoms but I will come to some of the socially accepted and celebrated concepts take for example the concept of beauty and usually beauty is associated with women in the human race men are usually not supposed to be beauty or they are largely not at all attractive in terms of appearance physical appearance minus few now one of the construct of beauty is know that you should have a lip in a particular format now what it should be that is very difficult to be suggested but then no you should not have a very long or protruding lip now there is a tribe where not in India it is abroad where the construct of beauty is that the more stretched your lower lips are the more beautiful you are so what they do just like you know in our country the girl child they have you know tricking in their nose their ears they put bangles these are now just to decorate yourself to look much more appealing in that culture what they do they cut the lower lip here and insert a small ring so as a child when you know your lip is cut and ring is fixed the cells will grow in this direction so gradually what will happen I would not do that it would look very ugly but what would happen gradually is that your lower lip will start not taking this shape and I have seen photograph of the most beautiful women you saw here 1994 Miss Universe the most beautiful beautiful women in that tribe okay and her lower lip was such that a full thali that we use for consuming our food can be fitted into it and that is the construct of beauty where your lip comes up to this level for us many of us probably this would be one of the most horrifying type of image you cannot accept it as beauty at all but in another culture it is perfectly okay it is that this is how beauty has been defined and this is how people feel attracted towards women know with longer lower lips in arc situation it would be a very very difficult for the parents to find a match for the girl it will be difficult for the girl because she will be you know listening to multiple comments from colleagues friends classmates okay because we do not describe beauty in such formats okay so that is interesting thing that I wanted to discuss with you with this we come to an end of the first module where we basically focused on biomedical model first then we talked about the deviation okay from the biomedical model the need that was felt by the psychologist that behavioral practices needs to be looked at differently and not you know completely complying to the biomedical norms then we talked about this process of adjustment and after discussing the process of adjustment the most important thing perhaps we discussed was that how do we define normality okay and whether you are adjusted or not that would depend on whether you are considered normal by your society or not okay I will leave you with couple of examples so next week when we meet we would start with fresh module you would be talking about the dimensions of subjective adjustment but today I would leave you with a few interesting things so that you can start thinking now look at certain you know types of behavior that you see people usually following for example you know putting pen in your you know mouth and then chewing it at times biting nails on certain occasions okay cutting your own lips cutting your own lips at certain occasions say pulling your locks multiple times okay refreshing your mail multiple times I am sure many of you must have seen or probably you yourself do it no at every two three minutes you refresh your mail as if as if the world is looking at you how many mails do you receive in a day okay people who are you know impulsive in terms of replying to the mail okay that you read the mail and by the time you come to the last word you click reply and you type you do not allow yourself the time to think or people who are fond of clicking not on reply but reply all and you do not know who all were there you know who this mail was addressed to what you ensure is that my mail will always have reply I know somebody as an individual his mail used to have a disclaimer that the content of this mail you know he has the copyright over it okay and happen to be well established man I must tell you I cannot name him cannot say where he is what he is but of course one of the successful men okay in one of the good places okay and I have seen his mails nowhere you know you have the disclaimer saying that the author has copyright over the content of the mail and most of the times his mails used to be obnoxious you would write all types of weird things and claim that this is my copyright things now why I am taking such examples are that when you look from a clinical perspective you realize that such type of behavior needs certain type of moderations you need certain type of attentions by specialists okay who will help you overcome this type of behavioral concerns no but then such things are you know so gladly accepted by a larger chunk of the society okay that you do not find anything wrong in it