Authenticity
Is It a Behavioral Peculiarity or Psychiatric Disorder?
If someone refers to you as “weird,” they might be paying you a compliment.
Posted August 13, 2026 Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Key points
- Eccentricity is not listed as a mental disorder in psychiatric manuals.
- The eccentric’s brain usually functions well, just in a peculiar way.
- Distress and social dysfunction, not just odd behavior, define true psychiatric disorders.
Most of us are inveterate people labelers. Introduce us to a new person, and the labeling commences: What category—niche—best describes them? Are they extroverted? Are they easy conversationalists and relaxation-inducing? Or do they come across as overly reserved, laconic, inept practitioners of the art of small talk? And if their general “vibe” is an especially negative one, what psychiatric diagnoses might best fit them?
Of course, in an era of relaxed social and cultural expectations, one has to be cautious about negatively labeling anyone. Psychiatrists and psychologists aren’t exempted from this caution. In fact, as a general rule, the more familiar one is with the fine points of the DSM, the more likely and frequent the tendency to describe people in psychiatric terms.
One popular tack is to attach a mental health label to the most extreme personalities and accept all lesser personality variations as “normal.” Although this is one option, it makes it that much harder to answer a key question: At what point does a behavioral peculiarity become a psychiatric disorder?
Take Joshua Abraham Norton, who appointed himself emperor of the United States by an edict he published in the San Francisco Bulletin on September 17, 1859. Along with disbanding both Democratic and Republican parties, Norton printed his own currency, which came to be accepted in many shops and restaurants in San Francisco. For over 20 years he patrolled the city sidewalks in the interest of seeing to it that they remained unobstructed. In the course of these perambulations, Emperor Norton dressed himself in a blue military uniform with golden epaulettes, along with a tall plumed beaver hat, a sword, and a rosette.
When Morton died in 1880, the San Francisco Chronicle headlined his passing as “Le Roi Est Mort.” All flags in the city were flown at half-mast, and 30,000 mourners were in attendance at a lavish graveside service.
While most American psychiatrists today would unhesitatingly label Morton as suffering from a psychotic delusion, the clinical psychologist David Weeks suggests that Norton was not psychotic or delusional at all, but a classic example of an eccentric.
As Weeks noted, the diagnosis of eccentricity was almost unknown when he began his training at Edinburgh in 1984, and “actual scientific knowledge about eccentrics was virtually non-existent. Further, eccentricity is taken on by free choice and is something positive and pleasurable to the individual.” It’s also clear, Weeks claims, that eccentricity and psychosis are not the same thing. “The psychotic state severely disrupts thought processes, leaving the person dysfunctional, whereas the eccentric’s brain usually functions perfectly well—it just does so in peculiar and largely unknown (but not unknowable) ways.”
Eccentricity can involve a panoply of unusual beliefs and behaviors: odd preoccupations, unusual speech, mannerisms or interests; disregard for day-to-day niceties; unconventional dress or appearance; and an intense focused interest in intellectual, artistic, or scientific topics. How does this differ from interests and behaviors based on a psychiatric disorder?
In almost all instances, mental illness is accompanied by internal distress and behaviors that seriously interfere with normal relationships and social functioning. In short, a designation of mental illness can never be based solely on what is deemed unusual behavior (largely a social rather than a psychiatric construct), but must always involve one or more significant disturbances in cognition, emotional control, or behavioral organization.
If eccentricity does evolve into mental illness, it does so in distinct progressive stages: eccentric, increasingly eccentric, and maximally eccentric. Only the extremes of eccentricity may represent a definite psychosis.
Currently, neither the DSM nor the World Health Organization ICD-11 lists the diagnosis of eccentric disorder or eccentric personality. In other words, two of the main psychiatric diagnostic manuals don’t list eccentric behavior as a mental health issue. British psychiatrists in particular remain open to the concept that eccentricity is an extreme of normal personality rather than an indication of psychopathology. Nor should this come as a surprise.
British culture historically showed more tolerance than our own for eccentricity, which is often regarded with wry amusement. In addition, British cultural stereotypes of eccentricity were well established long before psychiatrists on either side of the “pond” made the case that eccentricity was or was not a form of mental illness. Think of Dickens, whose works contain a human menagerie of eccentric characters. Dickens’ depictions of British eccentrics were based on social, rather than medical, observations and were often treated as fascinating, amusing, and even celebratory (shades of Emperor Norton). Or consider the essayist and dictionary kingpin Samuel Johnson, who exhibited a cornucopia of odd mannerisms, tics, and distinctly unorthodox mental preoccupations. Rather than arousing concern or uneasiness among his friends and acquaintances, Johnson’s personal eccentricities were accepted as harmless traits in an amusing though puzzling personage.
According to recent research, eccentricity isn’t always a negative personality dimension. If you substitute the word “weird” for eccentric, you include some of the most productive and creative figures in the 21st century, such as Elon Musk, Tony Hsieh, and the late Steve Jobs.
During his tenure at Zappos, Hsieh was notorious for asking job applicants how weird they were on a scale of 1 to 10. According to Jun-Yeob Kim, an assistant professor at the Department of Management at the University of Central Florida, who maintains a keen interest in weirdness, “Consistent with Zappos' hiring strategy, weirdness can be defined as entrepreneurial creativity...” Kim defines weirdness within an entrepreneurial setting as “an individual difference characterized by failing to adhere to widely accepted social norms regarding one's appearance, speech, or behavior, such that one is considered odd, strange, or abnormal.”
Of course, a voluntary adoption of eccentricity can be guaranteed to attract attention, which is certainly a fundamental requirement for success. But one selectively takes on eccentricity at some peril, at least here in the United States.
As Kim more than hints, weirdness—the contemporary form of eccentricity—can be employed as a magic token for increasing one’s chances for success. But it also leads to a so far unanswered binary question: Is the person acting weirdly because he wants to be seen as special, gifted, and destined for storied success—perhaps the nation’s next trillionaire? Or, alternatively, does his eccentric weirdness, taken in its totality, suggest nothing more than that he is a very disturbed person indeed?
Richard M. Restak, M.D
