Abnormal leisure: Invasive, mephitic and wild forms

Twinning leisure with positive experience is the field orthodoxy. There are good reasons for this. In bidding for scarce resources, leisure profession als need to emphasize the social benefits of leisure investment. The cost i s that our understanding of leisure is distorted by accentuating the positi ve side of experience. This paper argues that leisure studies have allowed the parameters of leisure to be defined by a medical model of social practi ce. Abnormal leisure has been treated as the sphere of medical practitioner s, psychoanalysts and criminologists. There is no substantive reason why th is is the case. Indeed the paper suggests that the relaxation of rules and inhibitions associated with many forms of leisure means that there is an el ective affinity between leisure and deviant activity. In order to correct t he medicalized view of leisure it is necessary to challenge both the view o f leisure professionals that leisure, is about positive experience, and the category of abnormal behaviour. The paper offers a preliminary basis for m ounting this challenge by identifying three forms of abnormal leisure: inva sive, mephitic and wild. The purpose of the paper is not to criticize leisu re professionals or for that matter medical practitioners. Rather, the aim is to restore balance and richness to the field. It is argued that this bal ance was lost in the 17th century when the medicalized model of human behav iour began to gain ascendancy.