While I feel that I am pretty normal, and that it is other people who are strange, I have been occasionally told that I am somewhat eccentric. People in academic life often have more freedom than most to nurture their quirks of behavior, and probably a few professors would not be able to get or keep a job if they were not working in a university. I’ve known some very smart people who seemed to find it extremely hard to maintain ordinary conversations, who live strange lifestyles, and have some rather odd hobbies. So I come to Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness with both relevant experience and a vested interest.

David Weeks is careful to distinguish eccentricity from neurosis and simple weirdness. He specifies that eccentricity is taken on at least partly by free choice, and the eccentric lifestyle is pleasurable to the person who lives it. He claims that eccentrics are on the whole happier and healthier than the general population. It is tempting to think that most eccentric people are rather less connected with the real world and cannot or will not deal with the demands of everyday living, and so, even if they may not be mentally ill, they do have some kind of problem in living. But Weeks is more inclined to admire eccentrics for their non-conformist attitudes.

Eccentrics is full of examples of the strangest people. The book starts off with Emperor Norton, who lived in San Francisco in the second half of the nineteenth century. Joshua Abraham Norton declared himself emperor of the United States. in 1859. He was a well-known figure in his city, going around in his “blue military uniform with golden epaulettes, … with a tall, plumed beaver hat, a sword, and a rosette.” (p.5). There are scientists, explorers, philanthropists, artists, activists, and other enthusiasts who can be classified as eccentric. Eccentricity is no guarantee of being good at what one does: indeed, often what makes a person eccentric is persisting in an activity despite being demonstrably bad at it.

Weeks says that he has done one of the few scientific studies of eccentrics, and he includes some of his results among the general discussion. While interesting, the study can’t claim to be a particularly scientific, since participants were found largely by putting advertisements in newspapers, people volunteering after they have seen news articles about the study in progress, and by getting volunteers simply by word of mouth. While Weeks says that they eliminated hoaxers and people who were not eccentric, he says very little about what counted as eccentricity. All sorts of biases may have entered into the sample selection: what sorts of people would volunteer to participate in a survey about eccentrics?

But even if Weeks’ scientific results are a little suspect, they are still interesting. They fit in nicely with the more general idea that being unusual can be good. Scientists may be rather obsessional in their checking results, and artists may literally see the world in different ways from most other people. Maybe the most valuable theme in Weeks’ book is that we should be tolerant of difference and eccentricity, at least when it does not harm other people. Not only does tolerance make the life of eccentrics easier, but it probably will enrich the rest of society too.

Categories: General, MentalHealth, Philosophical