10 Meta: Wacko

[partly]

tvrealm has a prompt where you are supposed to claim 10 words and do something off of them. "Meta" was one of the choices, so I'm going with that. This post's prompt: Wacko.

One of the more interesting tropes in Supernatural is the thought that Dean and Sam are insane -- their behaviors, their attitudes and their relationships are all dysfunctional, their actions deranged. Quite honestly if they would live in our world, that assessment would be right, but I’m always drawn back to R. D. Laing’s statement.

“Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” - R. D. Laing

It’s not paranoia if everyone is really out to get you. Co-dependency is necessary when both of the brothers have to survive in order for, well, the world to survive. And you really can’t call it “delusions of grandeur” when they actually have killed gods and stopped the apocalypse. Dean’s willingness to sacrifice himself could be considered a psychological problem -- if he wouldn’t always have a way that his sacrifice wasn’t the only way to make the situation work out for the best. Sure, Sam sees Lucifer everywhere, but quite honestly, that is probably the least psychologically damaged thing that could have come from being in locked in the cage.

The problem with establishing a psychological “norm” is that you can’t apply it to people who don’t live in our “normal” world. It’s the reason why our psychological diagnoses don’t always travel well to other cultures. Its why people who have lived outside our “norm” for any length of time have such a hard time readjusting when they return. Ask any combat vet -- and I’m not even talking about PTSD, I’m just talking about adjusting to the noise and chaos of our everyday life.

Sure if Dean and Sam were just siblings who grew up in average-world America their behavior would definitely be insane. But they didn’t, they grew up in completely bat-shit crazy America -- their “insanity” is perfectly sane.