Westmount High School
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Sanity and Insanity
What is sanity? In other words, what does sanity entail?
In 1736 Lord Matthew Hale offered some interesting insight into how one might define sanity in his treatise History of the Pleas of the Crown when he wrote;
Man is endowed with these two great faculties, understanding and liberty of will [...]. The consent of the will is that which renders human actions either commendable or culpable.
In other words, one’s mental wellness can be assessed and determined by examining whether one demonstrates a socially acceptable and rational understanding of their surroundings and of events. Additionally, mental wellness can be assessed by taking account of what one does with their various liberties (http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.140.6.681?journalCode=ajp). In both cases there are socially constructed parameters, and when one deviates too far beyond those parameters the state of their mental health may be questioned.
Sanity is perhaps most succinctly defined via the Latin term Compos Mentis, which literally translates to “Having full control of one's mind,” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/compos_mentis).
What is insanity? In other words, what does insanity entail?
Insanity is actually a legal term that pertains to a defendant's ability to determine right from wrong when a crime is committed.
According to law.com insanity is: “mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior,” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-therapy/200907/the-definition-insanity-is).
Insanity is perhaps most succinctly defined via the Latin term Non Compos Mentis, which literally translates to “not having control of one's mind,” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/non_compos_mentis).
Definitions of mental health and wellness can sometimes be determined by context and social norms. For example, in Western society if one would go around claiming to converse with spirits of the dead, to have visions of dead spirits, to have access to and influence over good and evil spirits, they could easily be at least referred for a psychiatric evaluation under suspicion of potentially displaying symptoms schizophrenia. However, if a person displayed the aforementioned traits in a tribal society, they might find themselves regarded as a Shaman.
"Shamanism is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world. A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing," (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism).
I am oversimplifying the matter somewhat for the sake of expeditiousness, but I hope the point resonates all the same.