ABSTRACT
Abnormality, as regards the individual, consists in any departure, in mental state or reaction, from that average which is found in the mass of society. It includes such varying types as the idiot, the imbecile, the man of affairs, the genius,the diseased and physically deficient, and the insane. From the social standpoint, the abnormal is one who is unable, or unwilling, to adapt himself to the society in which he lives. He is one who has failed to make the required social adjustment; who is, in a word, socially inadequate. The classes here are as with the individual, though men of genius, inventors and originators—men of supermentality—might be better and more practically described as socially unusual, rather than as abnormal. If not amenable to all the social conventions, they are, at least, to the social necessities.
