Psychopathology As Destructive Extremism

Both the body and the mind are meant to be in 'homeostatic balance'. You can view this two word concept as a redundancy if you want because 'homeostasis' is basically the technical biological and psychological term for balance. 'Balance' is the more common term that we hear and use in our common, every-day language.

Health is balance. Illness is imbalance. Extremism often can be equated with imbalance. Therefore extremism can often -- although to be sure not always -- be associated with illness. Often superior human performances requires elemnts of extremism. I am thinking of people like Mother Teresa and Dr. Norman Bethune and their lifelong dedication to humanitarianism. I'm thinking of most great performers regardless of their field who have to usually spend thousands of hours doing what they do before they are recognized as great performers -- from philosophers (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche...) to psychologists (Freud, Adler, Jung, Perls...) to entertainers to sports athletes (Jordan, Gretzsky, Henin...).

A 'homeostatic spectrum' exists on almost whatever subject we wish to talk about.

We could talk about biological homeostasis, psychological homeostasis, philosophical homeostasis, religious homeostasis, political homeostasis, economic homestasis, creative homeostasis...Indeed, most of my 25 or so blogsites deal with different types of homeostatic issues. And their opposites. Different types of pathology in whatever subject we are talking about pertaining usually to different types of non-homeostatic extremism in human thinking and behavior.