Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness (1996) by Dr. David Weeks and Jamie James

​A delightful study on delightfully strange people. I thought myself an eccentric at some points in my life; I now know myself mistaken—the eccentrics in this study are truly strange. Weeks and James litter the book with dozens and dozens of curious anecdotes from both historical sources and primary sources alike.
 
EX1. “Norton discovered his true vocation: ruling an empire. He began confiding to his friends that he was really Norton I, emperor of California. In 1856, the same year he filed for bankruptcy, he also issued his first imperial edict, imposing a monthly tax of fifty cents on sympathetic merchants in San Francisco to bankroll the fledgling empire…” (p. 4).
 
Who are eccentrics? Weeks and James offer a list of terms in their search for a definition, including “nonconforming,” “creative,” “strongly motivated by curiosity,” “idealistic,” “intelligent,” “opinionated and outspoken,” “noncompetitive,” “single,” and “unusual in eating habits and living arrangements” (p. 27-28). Eccentrics are present in all areas of creative human endeavour, often making significant contributions to science, the arts, and music.
 
EX2. “Erik Satie, whose compositions are spun from the gossamer of whimsy, exhibited a whole panoply of eccentric traits. He first came to prominence as a member of an occult society, the Rose + Croix, which was led by a mage named Josephin Peladan… in 1914 the publisher Lucien Vogel tried to commission Stravinsky… Stravinsky refused because the fee was too small. The publisher approached Satie, who turned it down, although desperately poor, saying the fee was too high!” (p. 82).
 
While eccentricity shares some of the characteristics of mental disorders (e.g., neurosis, schizophrenia, etc.), it is a different phenomenon. Eccentricity can be confused with the latter given its near non-existent in modern medicine; their study is the first on the topic. They verify this using the Present State Examination (PSE), which is designed to test for mental illness. They found that “our results were tangible proof that the mental life of the eccentric is unlike anything that psychology has yet described” (p. 143), and that there is no connection between eccentricity and mental illness.
 
EX3. “One of the classic instances of an eccentric scientist having his ideas at first ridiculed and then ultimately vindicated is James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714-99). Lord Monboddo was a Scottish jurist and amateur natural historian and linguist who published a learned, six-volume treatise called The Origin and Progress of Language, the first scientific work to suggest that man is descended from the apes…” (p. 102-103).
 
I found particularly interesting their notes on eccentric speaking patterns. Eccentric thinking is expressed in an original manner of speaking; eccentrics are idioglots.
 
EX4. “I have since resolved to actually Sherlock Holmes a manuscript, anticipatory, of many practicing psychiatry, this conjectural profession, none to date have concentrated their probes into the mind’s cognitive faculties, which… I suspect…is… as it were, a high-octane, rather than the typically average petrol…that circumstances, IQ and health, is responsible for neurosis. Is it a key to the wonderful fulfillment of this gift of life? Whiter light needs darker shadow. The grayest gap in psychiatry is that it must accept creative individuals are left to stew in their own portentous juices to work out their eccentricity unaided” (p. 202).
 
Weeks and James write their study not to pathologize eccentrics, but to celebrate them. They venture to suggest that eccentrics are necessary for a healthy society; their originality offers a flow of new ideas into the social body. There is a lot that “normal” people can learn from their example: eccentrics are more joyful, happier, healthier mentally and physically, and live more fulfilling lives. 

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