Introduction
The term “abnormal” has played a subtle and powerful role in psychological discourse, making use of its capacity for three meanings: different, pathological, or irregular. We use it all the time, often without further thought. Yet some aspects of the history of the term are urgently relevant if we are to understand its usage: an effective definition of the term is, necessarily, an etymology.
Definition and History
The 1884 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was so aghast at the word “abnormal” that it described the word itself as pathological. In the eyes of the OED, the word itself was different, bad, and irregular: “few words show such a series of pseudo-etymological perversions.” For, broadly speaking, beginning in the sixteenth century, the Latin word abnormis turned into “abnormous” or our word “abnormal.” However, in the process, it began to be confused with two Greek words anomos and anomalos, taking on some of the meaning of each (Orrù, 1986). These...
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Duschinsky, R., Chachamu, N. (2014). Abnormality, Overview. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_496
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