Those who felt "maladjusted" can be creative, King said

Mindfreedom International says the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called for "creative maladjustment."

MLK said over and over that the world is in dire need for an "International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment."

Martin Luther King's dream was not, apparently, ever officially realized. Until last year.

MindFreedom International, which works for the human rights of people in the mental health system, intentionally and officially began an "IAACM" as part of its campaign to show "every human being's creative uniqueness and right to be nonviolently different."

"We are proud to be mad, to be vulnerable, to be human beings. We are proud to be maladjusted to a world which believes in war and division, a world which does not value uniqueness, creativity, love, insight and harmony," said Mary Maddock, co-founder of MindFreedom Ireland.

The mental health organization, which prides itself for pushing for mind improvement without medicine, asks people to consider what action they will take to show their "creative maladjustment" as MLK's 80th birthday approaches in 2009.

MLK repeated this theme more than a dozen times in essays and speeches stretching from the 1950s to a keynote speech in front of the American Psychological Association in 1967:

1. MLK said psychologists had a favorite word, "maladjusted."

2. MLK said he was proud to be psychologically maladjusted, that we all ought to be maladjusted to oppression, poverty, war.

3. MLK said the "salvation of the world" lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.