Eccentricity, R.I.P

'Unfortunately, we have so extensively labeled ourselves that we
havelimited who we are and pathologized our personalities . . . No longer
are we allowed to have interesting personality quirks or oddities.
Psychopathological terms have crept into our everyday language. Casually,
we declare that "you're paranoid" or "he's crazy." We are sure that the
neighbor who spends hours on his stamp collection is an
obsessive/compulsive or the friend who feels moments of excitement and
then is down in the dumps must be bipolar. You cannot risk being
eccentric, unusual, or march to a different drummer without being thought
of as missing some dots on your dominoes".

Christopher McCullough, Ph.D., Nobody's Victim (1995. Clarkson
Potter)