After some thinking this is what I've come up with. I think the question of whether something should be "treated" is twofold:
1) Does the behavior make it difficult/impossible to function within society?
2) Is this difficulty due to the nature of the behavior itself (and not due to the unwillingness of society to accommodate the behavior)?
If the answer to 1 is NO (as is the case for left-handedness), then it's clearly not something that needs treatment. A left-handed person will have little trouble functioning within society, so there is no need for treatment.
If the answer to 1 is YES and 2 is NO, then this is a societal problem. This is the case for homosexuality - living as an openly gay person may make it more difficult to interact with many people, get a job, find a lasting relationship, etc. But these are not issues inherent to the behavior itself, but an issue with how society deals with the behavior. It's society that should be treated for this, not the individual.
If the answer for both is YES, then that means that the individual has trouble functioning within society due to the nature of the behavior itself. This is the case with something like extreme schizophrenia - with symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thought, etc, it is incredibly difficult to function because of the schizophrenia itself. It's not something that society can really accommodate like homosexuality.
Now we can consider incestuous tendencies within this model. Excluding things like rape, coercion, and pedophilia (things I am NOT okay with), I don't see how incest inherently conflicts with society. Any friction that would result of a consensual incestuous relationship would be a product of people's reactions to the relationship. That's something that would be ideally fixed by, say, group therapy between the entire family or just a reasoned discussion.
Just my opinion though. Haven't really thought this through for that long.
I think those two questions are definitely a good way of determining how abnormality is seen in society and why:)
I wonder whether people would react the same way if they were raised to view incest as acceptable, because I don't think they would be so repulsed by it. Maybe a little bit because I think it's almost instinct to not be attracted to family, but I think a lot of people may accept it.
When you look at the treatment gay people received 100 years ago and compare it to now, it's clear that we're more accepting, because we've been raised to believe homosexuality is acceptable, because it is. Maybe in 100 years people will be thinking the same and wondering why it was so frowned upon. I'm not sure if it ever will, but maybe that's because I've been raised to believe so.
The (Im)morality of Incest?
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After some thinking this is what I've come up with. I think the question of whether something should be "treated" is twofold:
1) Does the behavior make it difficult/impossible to function within society?
2) Is this difficulty due to the nature of the behavior itself (and not due to the unwillingness of society to accommodate the behavior)?
If the answer to 1 is NO (as is the case for left-handedness), then it's clearly not something that needs treatment. A left-handed person will have little trouble functioning within society, so there is no need for treatment.
If the answer to 1 is YES and 2 is NO, then this is a societal problem. This is the case for homosexuality - living as an openly gay person may make it more difficult to interact with many people, get a job, find a lasting relationship, etc. But these are not issues inherent to the behavior itself, but an issue with how society deals with the behavior. It's society that should be treated for this, not the individual.
If the answer for both is YES, then that means that the individual has trouble functioning within society due to the nature of the behavior itself. This is the case with something like extreme schizophrenia - with symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thought, etc, it is incredibly difficult to function because of the schizophrenia itself. It's not something that society can really accommodate like homosexuality.
Now we can consider incestuous tendencies within this model. Excluding things like rape, coercion, and pedophilia (things I am NOT okay with), I don't see how incest inherently conflicts with society. Any friction that would result of a consensual incestuous relationship would be a product of people's reactions to the relationship. That's something that would be ideally fixed by, say, group therapy between the entire family or just a reasoned discussion.
Just my opinion though. Haven't really thought this through for that long.
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bananaface
12 years ago
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I think those two questions are definitely a good way of determining how abnormality is seen in society and why:)
I wonder whether people would react the same way if they were raised to view incest as acceptable, because I don't think they would be so repulsed by it. Maybe a little bit because I think it's almost instinct to not be attracted to family, but I think a lot of people may accept it.
When you look at the treatment gay people received 100 years ago and compare it to now, it's clear that we're more accepting, because we've been raised to believe homosexuality is acceptable, because it is. Maybe in 100 years people will be thinking the same and wondering why it was so frowned upon. I'm not sure if it ever will, but maybe that's because I've been raised to believe so.