DISCONTINUITY THEORY : COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL SEARCHES FOR RATIONALITY AND NORMALITY-MAY LEAD TO MADNESS

A theoretical framework is presented to understand the fundamental process of adapting lo experiential discontinuities that are ol personal significance lo one's self-concept. The central dynamic of this approach is the motivation triggered by perception of a discontinuity, which is defined as a violation of expectation in any domain of functioning highly valued by the self. Such discontinuities may arise from the experience of failures, deficits or transformations ill intellectual, social, sexual, sensory, physical, or career domains. The motivation to understand the cause of a discontinu- ity, and to appear rational to one's self and others, generates a cognitive search process, while the motivation to appear normal, to be like others, generates a social search process. A hehaviorally oriented search may be generated to lake actions to suppress the arousal and deflect or ignore the distress associated with discontinuities. Although these three search processes arc variants of what makes humans smart, connected, and fune tional, they may become biased in their operation in ways that distort their typically adaptive use. When that happens, various forms of social pathology and psvchopathology may emerge in people without evident premorbid dispositions. These pathologies are referred to as aspects oi "madness. This broad term is used to cover a continuum from ordinary irrationality, fears, anxieties, obsessions, compulsions, addictive behaviors, prejudice, and mass hysteria, to more extreme forms of mental disorders such as phobia, paranoia, and depression. Direct links arc posited between the kinds of search process biases activated in some people and the specific forms of pathology that appear as people try to make sense of, or cope with, their discontinuity.