Misfit minds: why mental illnesses and learning difficulties can be useful
7 responses to “Misfit minds: why mental illnesses and learning difficulties can be useful”
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This is a bit of a pet subject of mine, both because I have people within my immediate circle of family and friends who have (or who are) dealing with mental health issues, and because my better half was working at the Institute of Psychiatry when we met.
The crucial thing here is that most ‘disorders’ come on a spectrum – it’s arguable that a good proportion of research scientists are at least somewhat on the autistic spectrum. Some excellent developers, too. Much of our approach to mental health is rooted in the industrialisation of society – so those who would have been tolerated in smaller societal structures, found no place in the rigid hierarchies of the industrial society. As recently as the middle decades of the 20th century, severe epileptics were being institutionalised. It’s a vaguely more civilised approach to the “drive out or execute as demon-possessed” approach that earlier societies took to people on the extreme end of the bell curve.
It seems possible that, as we shift to a knowledge-work based economy, that those with different brain chemistry, as long as they remain within the bell curve of tolerable – if not always acceptable – behaviour, may have a crucial role to play in driving innovation. But it will require both a societal shift in attitudes to differing mental states, and organisational structures that can accomodate them.
(While I hate to use the example everyone’s using: Steve Jobs was clearly someone whose mental make-up wouldn’t fit in traditional company hierarchies, and who had to shape a company around his distinctive quirks.)
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“Society is better off with a healthy fringe of freaks, geeks and misfits because while much of what they might say and do amounts to nothing, that is where new ideas, options, perspectives come from.”
I can’t figure out whether you’re saying that, or making fun of the ridiculousness of the idea.
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Yes, I’m saying that. But now I can’t work out if you’re saying the idea’s ridiculous or that that sentence isn’t clear enough. or both…
The irony!
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Great comment, Adam – thanks, and I agree with you.
My sense is that we are more diverse, more quirky and divergent in the ways we think than we let on. Perhaps this is down to conformist cultures, which are more common in organisations in some industries and professions than others.
“On the spectrum”? Mostly people are probably on one spectrum or another at one time or another. A different attitude to difference and to mental health issues would benefit us all, ultimately.
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Sorry, Antony. I thought the idea ridiculous. That could of course be my misreading.
“In short, boardrooms and cabinet meetings are better off when they aren’t overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged because they will have more perspectives, more ideas, more options and make better decisions. Society is better off with a healthy fringe of freaks, geeks and misfits because while much of what they might say and do amounts to nothing, that is where new ideas, options, perspectives come from.”
Here were the bits I thought odd there:
1. Lumping people with mental illness, or those with learning difficulties (the topic of this blog post) into a category called ‘freaks, geeks and misfits’ feels a bit 1950s.
2. The idea that – other than their ideas and perspectives – “much of what they might say and do amounts to nothing” also feels pretty harsh. (not sure whether the category here is people with ‘Aspergers, autism, ADD and dyslexia’, or the entirety of the non-white, non-male, non-middle-aged population :)I thought there was a nice point somewhere in the original Schumpeter article, but that it largely fell for this old trap: http://www.disabilityplanet.co.uk/super-heroes-and-the-tragic.html
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Thanks for unpacking that, Dan – really useful.
In that post I am playing fast and loose with language and thinking aloud, and in the process mixing up a lot of issues – that leaves some holes in my argument and some places where I am wide open to misinterpretation.
Couple of points to add clarity, hopefully, on what I was thinking about…
* I’m thinking about diversity and edge culture – I appreciate those aren’t always the same thing (more clearly for your points). I’m switching between talking about the two, but – I appreciate – need to be careful about conflating them.
* “Freaks, geeks and misfits” could well be taken the wrong way – but those are now labels that a lot of people feel comfortable owning, and don’t see as negative at all. I’ve described by people as a couple of them and haven’t been too troubled.Thanks again for calling me out on these points – this is an issue – or cluster of issues – I need to think through and articulate more clearly. That said, I expect in exploring them one will always cause offence to someone – such are the sensitivities around them.
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Thanks, Antony, that’s a brilliant reply.
dan
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