Sanity (from la, sānitās) refers to the soundness, rationality, and health of the human mind, as opposed to

insanity Insanity, madness, lunacy, and craziness are behaviors performed by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity can be manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person or persons becoming a danger to themselves or t ...

. A person is sane if they are

rational Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an abi ...

. In

modern society Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the "Age of Reason ...

, the term has become exclusively synonymous with ''compos mentis'' ( la, compos, having mastery of, and la, mentis, mind), in contrast with ''

non compos mentis ''Non compos mentis'' is a Latin legal phrase that translates to "of unsound mind": ''nōn'' ("not") prefaces ''compos mentis'', meaning "having control of one's mind." This phrase was first used in thirteenth-century English law to describe peop ...

'', or

, meaning troubled conscience. A sane mind is nowadays considered healthy both from its analytical - once called ''rational'' - and emotional aspects. According to the writer G. K. Chesterton, sanity involves wholeness, whereas insanity implies narrowness and brokenness.

Psychiatry and psychology

Alfred Korzybski Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (, ; July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950) was a Polish-American independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, the field of s ...

proposed a theory of sanity in his

general semantics General semantics is concerned with how events translate to perceptions, how they are further modified by the names and labels we apply to them, and how we might gain a measure of control over our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioral respons ...

. He believed sanity was tied to the logical reasoning about and comprehension of what is going on in the world. He imposed this notion in a map-territory analogy: "A

map A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

''is not'' the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a 'similar structure' to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." Given that science continually seeks to adjust its theories structurally to fit the facts, i.e., improves its maps to fit the territory, and thus advances more rapidly than any other field, he believed that the key to understanding sanity would be found in the study of the methods of science (and the study of structure as revealed by science). The adoption of a scientific outlook and attitude of continual adjustment by the individual toward their assumptions was the way, so he claimed. In other words, there were "factors of sanity to be found in the physico-mathematical methods of science." He also stressed that sanity requires the awareness that "whatever you say a thing is, it is not" because anything expressed through language is not the reality it refers to: language is like a map, and the map is not the territory. The territory, or reality, remains unnamable, unspeakable, and mysterious. Hence, the widespread assumption that we can grasp reality through language involves a degree of insanity. Psychiatrist Philip S. Graven suggested the term "un-sane" to describe a condition that is not exactly ''insane'', but not quite ''sane'' either. In ''The Sane Society'', published in 1955, psychologist Erich Fromm proposed that not just individuals, but entire societies "may be lacking in sanity." Fromm argued that one of the most deceptive features of social life involves "consensual validation":

It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth... Just as there is a ''
folie à deux Folie à deux ('folly of two', or 'madness haredby two'), also known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder (SDD), is a collection of rare psychiatric syndromes in which symptoms of a delusional belief, and sometimes hallucinations, ...
'' there is a ''folie à millions''. The fact that millions of people share the same
vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character t ...
s does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

Law

In criminal and

mental health law Mental health law includes a wide variety of legal topics and pertain to people with a diagnosis or possible diagnosis of a mental health condition, and to those involved in managing or treating such people. Laws that relate to mental health incl ...

, sanity is a

legal term {{Short pages monitor