On the dangerous edge of things
John Henshall
BIZARRE BEHAVIOURS: BOUNDARIES OF PSYCHIATRIC DISORDER by Herschel Prins Routledge, £25, f9.99, pp.111 'For years I have been increasingly convinced that many more people engage in a range of strange activities than ever see the light of day, let alone the glare of media publicity.' Thus writes Herschel Prins, a member of the Mental Health Review Tribunal and a practising, teaching psychiatrist for 40 years. In his engrossing, if necessarily selective survey of the weird- er variations of human behaviour, he concentrates on the misty borderline where prejudice and often naked fear supplant reasoned analysis, and where the point at which 'sanity' ends and 'madness' begins is tantalisingly blurred.
Prins continues: `As to claims that I may be playing into the hands of the prurient or voyeuristic, I maintain there are elements of these phenomena in all of us, and the sooner this is recognised the better.' In- deed, it is a central, cogently argued thesis of his 'directory of deviance' that many such behaviours are but extensions of habits and practices in fact regarded as perfectly normal in the various societies where they occur.
Prins is particularly concerned with vam- pirism, which I suspect many regard as fiction, but which is a real, if rare psychiat- ric condition (in suburban Britain and America, too, not just in what we patroni- singly call 'primitive' societies). Reactions to it are almost inevitably violently polar- ised. Either people prefer to ignore it, or they become pathologically obsessed with it. Prins argues this colours reactions to most psychiatric illnesses. Also, he makes sure throughout that we always remember Jung's dictum about our own 'dark side', and our private devils.
Vampirism apart, Prins covers lycan- thropy, 'demonic' possession, delusional jealousy, 'speaking in tongues', eating disorders, sexual and ritual murder, necro- philia, Munchausen's syndrome, where perfectly healthy sufferers persistently admit themselves to hospitals, and perso- nality disorders.
These last include the Capgras syn- drome, where the patient believes that someone close to him or her has been replaced by an exact replica, and the syndrome of subjective doubles, where the sufferer imagines another individual has been transformed into his or her own self. Prins sets the deviances he considers against the background of perfectly 'nor- mal' people's ugly little psychological trea- sures and tormenting insecurities. Regard- ing vampirism, he asks simply if it is any wonder that in a society where it is thought normal to indulge in 'love bites', unsightly as they are, and where partners freely say `You're so nice I could eat you all up' , some individuals take things rather further.
Prins also considers phenomena from foreign cultures which tell us something about our own. He covers Zombiism (which probably does occur), amok (associated with Malaysia, but linked to `unexplained' Western mass killings and serial murders), koro (fear that the penis is shrinking, found in Africa and the Far East), and latah (where a sudden `start' triggers uncontrollable laughter, obscene gibberish or imitative behaviour, com- monest in the USSR, Mongolia and Japan).
I believe it is quite impossible to under- stand whatever it is we think we mean by sanity, unless we at least try to compre- hend madness. Herschel Prins helps us do this in a lucid, accessible book aimed as much at laymen and women as at profes- sionals.
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