GILMAN L. Sander, Seeing the Insane

"We learn to perceive the world through those cultural artifacts which preserve a society's stereotypes of its environment. We do not see the world, rather we are taught by representations of the world about us to conceive of it in a culturally acceptable manner. It is not merely flora and fauna, sunset and seascape which are seen through the prism of culture. We also see man in his infinite variety through the filters of stereotypical perspective. Throughout the history of any given culture the structure most often applied to categories of man is that of the polar opposite. Each category is perceived as either the embodiment or the antithesis of the group which has provided the category." (Introduction, i)