... Rosenhan's experiment. Different types of people and different cultures have different ideas of sanity and insanity. This does not however question deviant, anti-social or abnormal behaviour nor does it disagree with the fact that the person in question may be experiencing extreme distress or depression, because such pain and grief is indeed real. The concept of distinguishing between sanity and insanity, according to Rosenhan's article 'On Being Insane in Sane Places', "is a simple matter: do the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in which observers find them?" (2). Previously the belief was firm that such patients' symptoms can be categorised and the sane and insane distinguished. Yet, as more research was carried out and assessed, it has become apparent that psychological categorizing of a person's mental state of mind is futile and dangerous whilst falsified at its worst points. ...

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