The gender stereotypes we associate with worn traditions and out of date policies are not a thing of the past. The roles of male and female are just as pronounced now as they were 100 years ago, and in some ways even more so. Although there are now equal voting rights and supposed equal opportunity, females and males are still placed in different categories for separate strengths and weaknesses simply based on their gender rather than their ability. In her book Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine explains the significance of modern technology and research in pushing the legitimacy of the genetic differences between genders instead of proving them wrong. She lays out facts where science went wrong, and insists that the vast majority of the gender stereotypes are purely a creation of the environment. While Fine can be overly dismissive of many scientific discoveries, her points arguing the prevailing notions of gender uncover the truly sexist society we live in. Although some physical differences of gender are based on genetics, the “mind” cannot be categorized from birth only by innate differences in sex. Such baseless judgment appears as if we are fighting another civil rights battle where “separate but equal is inherently unequal,” even while our society should be far past that.
When I was young, I rejected all the pink flowery dresses and baby dolls my grandmother showered me with. I was what society calls a tomboy, but in my mind I was just a kid. Parents expect children to exhibit gender roles from an early age, and many only encourage behavior that is typical for their child’s sex. A girl plays with dolls because “it’s only natural”, while if a boy played with the same toy, it would be taken away and the child would learn to avoid it. These children are also, like me, only exposed to the toys that associated with our gender. The gender schema theory explains this phenomenon by saying that children learn the concept of male and female from their cultures, and change their behavior to fit those roles. The result is a positive feedback cycle of boys and girls that are exposed to a set of behaviors specific to their gender, who grow up to be adults who act same way. Fine says, “Gender associations are automatically activated and we perceive them through the filter of cultural beliefs and norms. This is sexism gone underground – unconscious and unintended”. In the question of the nature and nurture in raising a child, Fine argues that nurture overtakes nature, and we grow up to become what society expects.
Even if our genes make our bodies different, and our environment tells us who we should be, there is something striking about the fact that we instantly judge someone for the gender we are. There is so much more to being an individual than just being a female, and no person has the right to deny or exclude someone from a position only on the basis of sex, as many people are. We are a product of both nature and nurture, but we are also each our own person. We are stuck in a battle between our conscious politically correct selves and our unconscious sexist ones, yet still trying to find a concrete biological answer to hold on to. I wonder how we can still assume brain type by gender when so many times successful female scientists, or empathetic stay at home fathers have proved us wrong. Unfortunately, unless society can forget centuries of predispositions and stereotypes that have shaped our culture, it will be impossible to raise children who do not adhere to at least some social gender characteristics, and people will always think of you in the context of your gender.
Fine, Cordelia. Delusions of Gender: How our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010
There is something intriguing about the mental hospitals of past times. The curiosity in the people housed there, the disgust at the treatment of patients, or simply the fear that we may be crazy enough to be stuck in one ourselves. The grim notions that are so tied to the idea of an asylum now are stark contrast to the intentions of the people who pioneered the effort to build these facilities. The idea that with special attention and care, they could help the mentally unstable, and make the treatment available to anyone who needed it.
From mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, the United States built hundreds of public institutions for the insane, and thousands of Americans were treated. There were asylums everywhere across the country to remove these "disturbed" people from society, to help them heal and push them to reenter the world. While a noble cause, the scientific knowledge needed to truly help their patients was still not available, and the public started seeing these hospitals as negative places of practice.
Even while in the height of their existence, asylums had bad critics like Ken Kesey who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, a novel primarily focusing on the evils of state hospitals, and the bureaucracy that controls the lives of the patients. He questioned the use of electroshock therapy, lobotomy, and other treatments, and portrayed them as punishment rather than remedy in his novel. This era was the beginning of the end of state-run institutions.
Eventually new drugs and a shift in policy helped lessen the patient population in these hospitals, and they soon lost funding and importance in American society. After the peak of the 50's, the era of deinstitutionalization saw very few of these asylums survive. Many of the beautifully built, immense buildings are still standing, but are of no use to us because of the distinctive nature in which they were structured, and the stigma attached to their history. Now, with peeling paint and rotting machinery, they are scarier than ever, and remind us of a place that nobody wants to end up.
Payne, Christopher; Oliver Sacks. Asylum: Inside the closed world of State Mental Hospitals. Cambridge MA: MIT press, 2009.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper follows one woman’s decent into insanity as the subconscious takes control over her mind while locked in a solitary room with ugly yellow wallpaper. The treatment forced on the narrator allows her to give in to the hidden desires for freedom, a feeling manifested in the walls of her isolated room.
A few clues given to the reader indicate possible diagnoses. Her mentions of anxiety and crying episodes coupled with the fact that she recently had a baby suggest postpartum depression, a condition caused by hormone changes after a woman bears a child. However, as her symptoms start to trend toward manic, a doctor could propose postpartum psychosis; this more severe condition would explain her hallucinations of the woman in the wallpaper and her emotional attachment to the ugly yellow design.
While putting names to her symptoms may lead to treatment in the present day, it would not help the damage already inflicted on the woman, damage that could have been avoided. Perkins says that in writing this story, she intended not to “drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy” (18), and by showing one woman’s spiral into insanity, she exposes the wrongs in psychological treatment in the late 19th century. The story alludes to other psychiatric patients before the narrator who have lost their minds in the very same room, whose ghosts still linger in the walls. This short story wasn’t about a singular woman’s struggle with insanity, but an entire population’s struggle with psychiatric treatment. Gilman wrote the story to set right the doctor that almost made her crazy, and to prevent people from falling to the same fate.
While reading George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984, I was struck by the ease at which citizens would submit to such obvious manipulation and deceit by the governing body, “the Party.” How could these people consciously accept the fake world around them when they themselves are creating the lies? I figured it was exactly that. It wasn’t conscious. Something in their subconscious was letting them live in this fake world.
The character Syme commented to Winston, “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” The only thing that matters in the workers’ lives is what the authority tells them is important: war, and nationalism. This society is eerily similar in concept to B.F. Skinner’s infamous worldwide community of psychologically conditioned citizens. In his experiments focusing on the malleability of the human mind by positive enforcement training, he introduced the idea of “behavioral engineering” to control an entire society. Of course, the idea wasn’t very popular when it came out in the 1960’s, and the terrifying example set in the novel doesn’t help support his cause.
Though there is still another lingering question. Even if humans’ actions are able be controlled by behavioral engineering, what is the explanation for the ability of the government to control the beliefs of the citizens? The Party relies on “doublethink,” explained as, “The ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forgot that one has ever believed the contrary.” This sounds like Cognitive Dissonance, discovered by Leon Festinger.
He found that because man is a rationalizing being, he must logically tie his own attitude to the ones of those around him. People will avoid or disregard information that will contradict this accepted belief system so he will not experience the dissonance of thought. This is exactly how the citizens of Oceania deal with the conflict between the reality of life around them, and what the Party tells them is true. “The prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.”
Because this seemingly impossible world is backed by such grounded psychological studies, it scares me even more than when I had first read the book. I thought at first Big Brother could never get in my head. However, now I fear the changeability of my own mind. I fear the ease that I may be brainwashed. And I fear most, that I will not know it when it happens. For now, I can only be informed, and hope such a future does not loom.
Slater, Lauren. “Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century” New York: Norton Paperback, 2005.
In memory of J.D. Salinger, who died only a week after I finished his most famous novel Catcher in the Rye, I thought it appropriate to write a little about his influential story, especially the character Holden who I learned to both love and hate. In spite of his adamant refusal to be psychoanalyzed, I was intrigued by the workings (or in my annoyance, apparent non-workings) of his mind, and looked up a few common disorders a psychiatrist may diagnose him with.
Antisocial Personality Disorder: Holden's failure to conform to social norms, compulsive lying, impulsivity, and irritability (especially with those social norms he disregards) all point to this disorder.
Borderline Personality Disorder: People with this often see others, and the world around them in "black-and-white" terms, each situation falling on the extremes of the spectrum, either being completely good, or completely bad. Holden's attitudes towards his sister, his 'friends', and the girls he sees all seem to lay on an end of a spectrum because he cannot see the mixture in every person.
Bipolar, or Manic-Depressive Disorder: Holden's continuous shifting back and forth between being mad at society, sad at being lonely, or happy at the thought of a brighter future suggest the rapid cycling of moods seen in this disorder.
Panic Disorder: While it is seen really only once when wandering the streets of New York calling to his brother Allie "Don't let me disappear...", it is a memorable scene where Holden's extreme anxiety takes over, and he himself knows he can no longer survive alone the way he has. This condition has been found to exist together with Bipolar disorder as well.
However, because Holden is still a teenager, the biological changes and growth cause emotional issues as he develops his psychological identity. While adolescents do experiences many of these disorders, it is much harder to diagnose and may not be permanent.
What you start to realize is that attempting to give a name to every personality issue makes all humans appear to be harboring a mental illness. The new American culture in this novel that idealizes a societal ‘norm’ is what Holden tries to defy in his venture in New York because he feels that not all things different from this norm are curable. Those shiny perfect American identities that people seek simply unobtainable, but people hang on to a concrete named reason for why life didn’t work out. However, Holden would call the reasons phony. Bipolar mania? Of course not, Holden just has a range of emotions. Panic attacks? Holden simply didn’t get enough sleep. Sociopathic? Holden just likes being alone. Borderline personality disorder? Holden is only a teenager, and he is still searching for who he is.
In a way, it is the culture itself that forces these so called psychotic breaks onto Holden and others like him. The youth culture of America encourages the shallow judgments of other people that often distance Holden from his peers. He recognizes that Stradlater is better looking than him, and he almost hates him for it, yet he also distances himself from Ackley because he is disgusting in his appearance and manners. Holden himself can’t live up to this social idealism either, and constantly puts himself down for not living up to expectations because he isn’t smart enough, or he isn’t strong enough. He suffers from an inferiority complex that America had pushed upon him, and he lacks the sense of self he needs to escape its grasp.
In the end, Holden wants only to live as an individual making his way in a harsh world instead of forcing himself to be anything that he isn’t. While he is still lost in many parts of his life, he realizes that his problems are his own and not something to be taken apart and examined. Doing so would not help Holden to any recovery, but would only show him the more failure in his identity.
Patrick Rothfuss: The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1)
Christopher Payne: Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals
Lauren Slater: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Daniel J. Levitin: This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
