A Different Way Of Thinking About Sanity

The following is a transcript excerpt from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle With God” tour. In this segment, he explains the problem with the historical definition of sanity — being a well-constituted individual — is its sole reliance on the individual. He establishes a difference between being depressed and not being situated in the hierarchy of social order (having an intimate partner, family, job, and so forth). Social interaction is critical to finding meaning. Dr. Peterson’s extensive catalog is available on DailyWire+. 

Our Protestant, liberal definition of sanity is wrong. We tend to think of sanity in terms of internal psychological organizations. We think you are sane if your psyche is well-constituted or if you are biologically healthy in relationship to neurological function, as an individual thing: A well-constituted psyche means you are sane. The idea of self-actualization goes along with that. If you are a sane person, you are a sane individual: Sanity is the description of the well-constituted individual. 

One of the corollaries might be that you could regard any social constraint on the flowering of your individuality as antithetical to your sanity. I would say corrosive criticisms of social institutions tend to presume that axiomatically: “Nothing should interfere with my self-actualization. All social constraint is antithetical to that spontaneous organization and to sanity itself.” I do not think that is the correct notion of sanity. It is too atomistic; it is too individual. For example, how sane are you going to be in a terrible marriage? I do not care how well-constituted you are individually. This is a different question. 

When people would come to me and they were depressed, I would try to find out if they were depressed or if they just had a horrible life. Those are not the same questions because if you are depressed, you have a life that, in principle, should work but is not. So if they said, “Look, I have a lot of things going for me. I have a good job, I have a good family, my wife loves me. But man, I am miserable all the time,” we would delve into that a bit more deeply. That sounds like depression. But they might come and say, “I am miserable. I am suffering. I don’t even want to be alive.” Then I might ask:

“Well, do you have an intimate partner?”

“No, not really. And I have a history of catastrophic relationships.”

“Do you have any friends?”

“Well, I have this one person I phone once every month or so, but other than that, no I don’t really see anyone.”

“Do you have any close family?”

“No, my family is pretty fractured. I don’t get along with my mom and dad. I don’t see my sisters or my siblings much.”

“How about a career or, failing that, a job?”

“Well, I’ve always kind of been under-employed, and I just lost my job and that is not going very well.”

And so on.

You can walk through someone’s life and find out if they are reasonably embedded in a hierarchy of social institutions. If they are not — no intimate partner, no family, no children, no friends, no job, no career, no educational pathway, no engagement in civic responsibility, no church attendance, no spiritual life, no routine — then they are not depressed; they just have a horrible life, multidimensionally. It is no wonder they think they are depressed; there is nothing in their life that is working. But that is not exactly a diagnosis at the level of the individual; it is a diagnosis of the relationship between the individual and the structure containing social institutions. If you do not have an intimate partner, a family, any friends, a career or a job, any civic involvement or any involvement with religious institutions, and no creative striving, all you have left is pain. That is what you have.

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There is a different way of thinking about sanity. Sanity is not being well-constituted as an atomized individual. Sanity is what makes itself manifest if you are properly situated in the hierarchy of social order. Now, some of that is internal because of your mess of fragmented subpersonalities. For example, anger can pull you in one direction, anxiety can pull you in another direction, impulsive enthusiasm can pull you in another direction, and lust can pull you in a different direction — those are all subpersonalities in some real sense. They are ways of perceiving and acting in the world. You need to integrate them within yourself so that as an individual, you are integrated. But the nature of that integration is dependent on your integration within the broader social context.

You can think of sanity as a distributed phenomena. That is another reason you do not want to casually denigrate social institutions because we are social creatures — deeply social creatures. You can tell that because you can take the most anti-social people, the most violent predatory and parasitic criminals, and punish them by putting them in solitary confinement. Think about that: The people who like other people the least, who are most likely to pathologize their social relationships, and who would be long-term, habitually sadistic, violent criminals find it virtually unbearable to be forced into isolation. We are unbelievably social. One of the corollaries of being miraculously social is that to be well-constituted, you have to be a harmonious player in a multidimensional symphony of social interaction. 

It is very hard to stay on the straight and narrow without a partner who does not share your blindspots and correct you constantly. Now, that is annoying because there is tussling about it; there is a fractious, adversarial element to that because you are married, and you do not see eye to eye — and thank God for that because sometimes in your foolish instance of being right, you are wrong and wrong in a way that will take you out. So you better have a partner who does not think the same way you do. Fortunately, if you have a partner who does not think the same way you do, if you can get the dialogue flowing, that is a mutually corrective mechanism. Then, the truthful dialogue between partners in a marriage is actually the process by which sanity itself is generated, which I mean technically. You are too complex to regulate yourself — period — so you need other people to help you do that. If you have a wife or a husband, someone who knows you who is there for the long-run, you can help each other find the meaningful path and stay on it. You cannot do that alone.

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Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. From 1993 to 1998 he served as assistant and then associate professor of psychology at Harvard. He is the international bestselling author of “Maps of Meaning,” “12 Rules For Life,” and “Beyond Order.” You can now listen to or watch his popular lectures on DailyWire+.

Be sure to PRE-ORDER Dr. Peterson’s newest book: “We Who Wrestle with God.” (Portfolio/Penguin. November 19, 2024.)