Psychology

It seems my non-rigorous use of the word "normal" has created a bit of confusion.
Average personality traits are relatively stable across time and between cultures; they are determined mostly by genetics and partly by culture itself. From this it follows that societies can organise themselves in a manner in keeping with average genetically determined personality traits with a bit leeway from cultural inculcation. These are functional, stable and long lasting ("normal") societies.
What I meant in was to say that whether people are considered "normal" or not depends on which society they belong to. A "normal" person in a dysfunctional society would be a dysfunctional person in a functional society, '''but these societies tend to be short-lived and depend on mass deception and a huge repression apparatus to continue existing.''' e.g. sociopaths in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia could rise to positions of power and prestige because their trait profiles were aligned with those of the societies they inhabited.
So most
>psychologists draw the line between what is a personality trait and what is a mental illness
differently in different societies.
Some, however, manage to define fundamental features of the human psyche (imo Jung, Nietzsche & Freud for example did this at least in part) and hence the mostly unchanging genetic core of what it is to be human.
My more rigorously defined (and shamelessly based off of J.B.Peterson's work) definition of normalcy is that it is "the set of traits which result in behaviours that will allow a person to comfortably function within a large number of societal hierarchies, and function best on the hierarchies found in those societies most closely aligned to the genetically determined human trait average."

>mostly by genetics
I doubt it

it's in the dsm
it's like if it affects your life in a negative way or something like that

(cont.)

>Are psychologists the dictators of what constitutes as acceptable social actions
No, society is.
>do dictionaries create language
>did the nfl invent american football
you get my point

>So, it could differ from one society to another? Someone could be considered mentally ill in Canada, but in a tribe in Africa they would be considered normal?
Yes
>Is homosexuality a mental illness? Wanting to fuck another guy in the ass or be fucked in the ass does not seem normal to me.
Does wanting to get fucked in the ass impede their day-to-day functioning in our society? What about societies throughout history? It mostly doesn't. Tellingly, in those societies which disapprove of homosexuality, it would barely affect their lives if they kept it secret.

>Psychology
not science or math

Genetics is almost everything. A human and a monkey show radically different behaviours regardless of societal pressures.

they probably examine which conclusion will help make them more money, and then chose that one

I think youre misconstruing it abit. Therea a difference between a diagnosed illness and what society deems abnormal or crazy or whatever. Mental illnesses are defined globally through ID and DSM. Not all cultures even have a concept of mental illness.

Environment is also everything. You cant have a behaviour to begin with without an environment to shape the behaviour and many different environments will result in different behaviours using the same set of genes.

And i think these ideas of mental illness are increasingly independent of society too.

Arbitrarily, or based on whatever suits their philosophical presumptions at the moment, or based on whoever's ass they're kissing at the moment.

>Environment is also everything. You cant have a behaviour to begin with without an environment to shape the behaviour and many different environments will result in different behaviours using the same set of genes.
>chicken and egg
What I mean is, there are behaviour patterns which can be identified as "human" and these are always found regardless of culture.

>I think youre misconstruing it abit. Therea a difference between a diagnosed illness and what society deems abnormal or crazy or whatever. Mental illnesses are defined globally through ID and DSM. Not all cultures even have a concept of mental illness.
Idk, societies have always had a concept of normality and hence abnormality. Mental illness is just extreme abnormality.

>And i think these ideas of mental illness are increasingly independent of society too.
read what I said in
What is considered abnormal is defined by society by definition. Whether what society thinks is aligned with the fundamental characteristics of the human psyche or not is beside the point, and there are reasons to argue that the west is moving away from this alignment, too. Case in point: transsexualism and the growing acceptance towards it.

If a substantial portion of people is willing to pay psychotherapy for treatment, we call it a mental disorder. If there is no such will, you can refer to it as a personality trait. Look it up in the DSM.