Examples Of Stigma In The Elephant Man

False fronts and pretending to be something you are not is a timeless issue. All humans lie and put up false fronts for personal gain, although not everyone realizes they are doing it. In 2013 Psychology Today published an article titled “Be Yourself vs. Being Somebody Else” and Dr. Fredric Neuman explains that, “persons with a secure sense of themselves can pretend—in certain situations, in certain ways—to be someone a little different without feeling untrue to themselves.” Neuman also mentions that doing this is like “putting on a costume and playing a role”.

“We all have a social mask, right? We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image. But behind that social mask is a personal truth, what we really, really believe about who we are and what we're capable of.” Sometimes people can use mask’s to change how they look, feel, and what they think. Everyone has their own mask that they use so that other people do not judge them on who they are. People also mask themselves if they do not think they meet any standards that other people have. It is more beneficial than harmful to mask yourself.

We first need to ask ourselves what stigma actually is. The government of Western Australia Mental Health Commission defines stigma as, “… a mark of disgrace that

In actual fact, people have a certain view or conception about what somebody is. This view is quite different from what the individual himself has. But then the harm in all this is that this state of affairs has a great impact on what an individual is supposed to become in life especially when he doesn’t have a great sense of objectivity or when he is not determined to achieve his life goal regardless of the opposition or the influence exerted upon them by society. . . Often times, this conception of somebody makes him loose his self-confidence and try to comply with what others want him to be or think he is. In trying to reajust his nature in

Goffman (1963) refers to stigma as being a disorder that an individual carries, it is a mark of shame in which something unusual or ‘bad’ about the person is exposed. When people express an impression to the manner they want to present their self, they play a virtual identity to avoid exposing their actual identity because it might be stigmatized. Goffman (1963) also mentions when people are stigmatized they worry about how others see them, which is the similar to how we feel when performing a certain role to keep what we consider ‘normal people’ from finding out the truth about our shame—a characteristic of what we think is abnormal/weird to other people. Glacalone & Rosenfeld (1989) compare social situations to interviews, an approach where an individual selects the perception and behavior to reflect their ‘good’ qualities to the person they are performing for. Despite trying to give a reasonable impersonation of one self, people run the risk of being discreditable, which is a stigma that is not readily perceivable to others. Allan (2014) also discusses that some people are already discredited, when ‘normal people’ are readily aware about a person’s stigma as they try to pretend that they do not notice, or the person who is already stigmatized plays it off to show or perceive their shame

don 't fit in. Others pretend to be something they truly aren 't. No matter which

Because people thrive to fit in with others and be allowed to participate in the social realm, they each hide certain parts of themselves so that they represent a socially acceptable form of a person. According to Nietzsche, this is the first step to reaching man’s desire for truth (81). This rule also sheds light on identifying a lie or a liar: when a person applies this representation to situations in which he makes something that is unreal appear to be real. For instance, a man claiming that he is rich when he is truly poor would be considered a

The idea of stigma and what it is like to be a stigmatized person was conducted by sociologist Erving Goffman. He analyzed how stigmatized individuals feel about themselves and their relationships with people that are considered “normal”. Stigmatized individuals are people who are not socially accepted and are constantly eager to alter their social identifies: physically deformed people, mentally ill patients, drug addicts, homosexuals, etc.

There are three main categories of stigma: physical disfigurements, individual character flaw, and membership in a “tainted” group. A tainted group includes a particular race, ethnicity or religion. In the modern times, people with STDs, pregnant teenagers and people with disabilities are also tainted groups. People who belong in a stigmatized group and has a stigmatized identity falls either into two groups: “the discreditable” or the “discredited”. Discreditable individuals include people who have deviant characteristics that they are able to hide such as sexual fetishes.

Whether we are talking about a tangible mask, or a metaphorical mask, we are constantly wearing them. It may not seem like it, but we are always have some form of a mask on us. People wear masks to hide themselves. We wear a mask when we don’t express our true selves. When we don’t act like ourselves, our mask is shielding the world of our greatness. A mask is present when we don’t express what we are really feeling. The poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar says, “with torn and bleeding hearts we smile.” While we may be hurting inside, we put on a masked smile to make everything seem like it is alright, to make us seem stoic. When we can’t stand something or feel the urge to yell something else, we limit our actions with a mask and stay quiet. A mask is like a restriction. It inhibits what we say, do, the way we act. We wear a mask when we feel uncomfortable or when we don’t want to be seen.

Why do people feel the need to hide their true forms? What are the reasons for doing so? “For many people, a significant disconnect exists between their outward identity and their true selves. People desire the freedom to be themselves but more often than not, the fear of rejection or disapproval drives

While one might choose to wear a mask perpetually, it is not ever bound to the skin of the face; there may be various ways and contexts in which it can be removed. Individuals may choose to only wear their masks in places that they deem that they could never be accepted or in front of specific people, while putting less effort into managing their communication in places and in front of those deemed to be safe (Goffman, 1963, p. 81). Often, one with a stigma might make an effort to carefully conceal an attribute in front of strangers, but would remove their mask when they are with those whom they are intimate with (p. 74). However, there is not a strict dichotomy between public as unsafe and private as safe. An individual might need to reveal a stigma to certain members of the public while revealing himself to others in the same space (p. 73). Likewise, he might choose to remove their mask for a particular member of their family, but not

Deceiving society with a false personality in order to maintain a well accepted reputation can be satisfying, but it is only temporary because a loss of true identity will cause distress.

Social stigma is the extreme disapproval of (or discontent with) a person or group on socially characteristic grounds that are perceived, and serve to distinguish them, from other members of a society. Stigma may then be affixed to such a person, by the greater society, who differs from their cultural norms.Social stigma can result from the perception (rightly or wrongly) of mental illness, physical disabilities, diseases such as leprosy, illegitimacy, sexual orientation, gender identity, skin tone, education, nationality, ethnicity, ideology, religion (or lack of religion) or criminality. Attributes associated with social stigma often vary depending on the geopolitical and corresponding sociopolitical contexts employed by

Goffman (1963) defined stigma as any condition, attribute, trait, or behavior that is deeply discrediting and reduces the bearer from a whole and usual person to a tainted and discounted one. . Stigma consist of an attributes that marks people as different leading to devaluation. Stigma is socially constructed (Major & O’Brien, 2005) thus is dependent both on relationship and context. In fact, Goffman (1963) emphasized using the “language of relationships” (p. 3) when considering stigma. A subsequent framework proposed by Corrigan, Markowitz, and Watson (2004) expands the social mechanisms of stigma by describing the structural determinants of stigma that arise from economic, political, and historical sources.