--- Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> You're misunderstanding what I mean by
> "psychopathological". There
> is a continuum of psychopathological thinking,
> willing and acting
> from the psychotic at one end to "the
> psychopathology of everyday
> life" at the other.
>
> The key measure of the degree of psychopathology in
> this sense is the
> extent to which the dominant anxiety is paranoid.
> This is the basis
> of the judgment that the thinking, willing and
> acting of Russian
> peasants are "extremely psychopathological".
>
> Since the conditions, including the social
> relations, within which
> individuals develop and live determine the degree to
> which the
> "normal" individual in a given social context will
> be
> psychopathological, normality can be extremely
> psychopathological.
> The conditions characteristic of the Russian peasant
> commune are
> consistent with this way of understanding the origin
> of their shared
> psychopathology.
>
OK. What's the definition of psychopathology here? As I understand it, it is a mode of insanity, extreme dislocation from reality. I don't think belief in witches etc. classifies with that, as such things were the common knowledge, received wisdom, of the day, believed in by everyone much as everybody today thinks things are composed of atoms. Belief in Jewish Blood Libel was common sense to an everyday Russian peasant in 1850 -- they killed Christ after all, our priest told us that; they speak a funny language and dress weird; they refuse to accept the Truth of Orthodoxy and its rites, which are what guarantee the harvest and keep us from starvation; why _wouldn't_ they kill Christian children, they are obviously in league with the Devil?
Now I will agree that peasant society sucked, and that it was plenty brutal (still is, in its current updated form). I would not want it back, my fascination with the Cossacks notwithstanding. But what we are talking about is a premodern mindset, which still exists in many parts of the world.
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