“"Normal" people are the sickest.”
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst
Kontext:
Normal people are the sickest, and sick people are the healthiest. That may sound witty or perhaps exaggerated, but I’m quite serious, it’s not just an amusing formula. The sick person reveals that certain human things aren’t yet so suppressed, that they come into conflict with the cultural patterns, and create symptoms through this friction. The symptom, like pain, is only an indication that something is wrong. One is lucky to have a symptom. The symptom, like pain, is only an indication that something is wrong. One is lucky to have a symptom. One is lucky to be in pain when something is wrong. We know if you did not feel pain, you’d be in a very dangerous situation. But a great many normal people have adapted so much that they have abandoned everything that is their own. They’ve become so alienated, so much instruments and robotic, that they no longer sense conflict at all. That is, their actual feeling, love, and hate are so much repressed or so much atrophied that they give the image of a chronic mild schizophrenia.
Source: Rozhovor viz https://www.instagram.com/p/DHB6yIZM_HN/
