"Personality Problems and Personality Growth", an essay in, The Self : Explorations in Personal Growth (1956) by Clark E. Moustakas, p. 237, later published in Notes Toward A Psychology of Being (1962).
1940s-1960s
Context: I am deliberately rejecting our present easy distinction between sickness and health, at least as far as surface symptoms are concerned. Does sickness mean having symptoms? I maintain now that sickness might consist of not having symptoms when you should. Does health mean being symptom-free? I deny it. Which of the Nazis at Auschwitz or Dachau were healthy? Those with a stricken conscience or those with a nice, clear, happy conscience? Was it possible for a profoundly human person not to feel conflict, suffering, depression, rage, etc.?
In a word if you tell me you have a personality problem, I am not certain until I know you better whether to say "Good" or "I'm sorry". It depends on the reasons. And these, it seems, may be bad reasons, or they may be good reasons.
An example is the changing attitude of psychologists toward popularity, toward adjustment, even toward delinquency. Popular with whom? Perhaps it is better for a youngster to be unpopular with the neighboring snobs or with the local country club set. Adjusted to what? To a bad culture? To a dominating parent? What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave? A well-adjusted prisoner? Even the behavior problem boy is being looked upon with new tolerance. Why is he delinquent? Most often it is for sick reasons. But occasionally it is for good reasons and the boy is simply resisting exploitation, domination, neglect, contempt, and trampling upon. Clearly what will be called personality problems depends on who is doing the calling. The slave owner? The dictator? The patriarchal father? The husband who wants his wife to remain a child? It seems quite clear that personality problems may sometimes be loud protests against the crushing of one's psychological bones, of one's true inner nature.
“I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society.”
In the Belly of the Beast (1981)
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Jack Abbott 7
Author, criminal 1944–2002Related quotes
“I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.”
March 25, 1933
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.
1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)
"Social Justice and the Emerging New Age" http://www.wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/MLK.pdf address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)
1960s
Context: There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize — I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to — segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence. But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence…
“It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
As quoted in The Eden Express https://books.google.com/books?id=o89v2m2ybCEC&q=%22well-adjusted+to+a+profoundly+sick+society%22 (1975) by Mark Vonnegut, p. 208
1970s
Discussing two separate pre-season shoulder injuries, sustained, respectively, in February 1968 to the right shoulder, and in March 1969 to the left; as quoted in "A Sounder Clemente Has New Outlook; Buc Super Star May Play On and On" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=JFAOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4H0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7168,1534716 by Charley Feeney, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, August 12, 1969), p. 18
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1969</big>
