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)