Types of health: physical, mental, psychological, moral, social. Fundamentals of Health

How we understand mental health depends on our understanding of human nature. In the previous chapters I have tried to show that the needs and passions of man arise from the special conditions of his existence. Needs that are common to humans and animals - hunger, thirst, the need for sleep and sexual satisfaction - are important because they are caused by internal chemical processes organism; if not satisfied, they are able to become omnipotent (of course, this applies more to food and sleep than to sexual needs, which, if unsatisfied, never reach the strength of other needs, at least for physiological reasons). However, even their complete satisfaction is not a sufficient condition for sanity and mental health. But both depend on the satisfaction of purely human needs and passions arising from the peculiarities of a person’s position in the world: the need for belonging, overcoming the limitations of one’s own existence, a sense of rootedness, the need for a sense of identity, as well as for a system of orientation and worship. The great human passions: the lust for power, vanity, the search for truth, the lust for love and fraternity, the lust for destruction as well as for creation - every strong desire that drives a person's actions originates in this specifically human source, and not in the various phases of the development of the libido, according to Freud's theory.
Satisfying the natural needs of a person is extremely simple from the point of view of physiology, and if difficulties arise in this, then only of a sociological and economic nature. The satisfaction of specifically human needs is immeasurably more complex, and depends on many factors, of which, last but not least, is the way in which the society in which a person lives is organized, and how this organization determines human relations within society.
The basic mental needs arising from the characteristics of human existence must be satisfied in one way or another, otherwise a person is threatened with the loss of mental health in the same way as his physiological needs must be satisfied, otherwise death awaits him. However, the ways of satisfying mental needs are very diverse, and the difference between them is tantamount to the difference between different degrees of mental health. If one of the basic needs remains unfulfilled, mental illness may occur; if such a need is realized, but in an unsatisfactory (from the point of view of the nature of human existence) way, then, as a consequence of this, a neurosis develops (either explicit or in the form of a socially given inferiority). A person needs a connection with other people, but if he achieves it through symbiosis or alienation, he loses his independence and integrity; a weak, suffering person is overcome by anger or indifference. Only if a person manages to establish relationships with people on the principles of love, he gains a sense of unity with them, while maintaining his integrity. Only with the help of creative labor can a person relate himself to nature, becoming one with it, but without dissolving in it without a trace. As long as a person is still incestuously rooted in nature, in the mother, in the race, his individuality and mind cannot develop; he remains a helpless victim of nature and at the same time completely deprived of the opportunity to feel himself one with her. Only if a person develops his mind and ability to love, if he is able to humanly experience the world of nature and the world of people, can he gain a sense of home, self-confidence, feel himself the master of his life. It is hardly worth saying that of the two possible ways overcoming the limitations of one's own existence, one - destructiveness - leads to suffering, the other - creativity - to happiness. It is also easy to see that only a sense of identity based on the sensation of own capabilities, while the same feeling, but based on the group, with all the diversity of its forms, leaves a person dependent and, therefore, weak. Ultimately, a person can make this world his own only to the extent that he is able to comprehend reality; but if he lives in illusions, he will never change the conditions that give rise to these illusions.
Summarizing, we can say that the concept of mental health follows from the very conditions of human existence and is the same for all times and all cultures. Mental health is characterized by the ability to love and create, liberation from incestuous attachment to family and land, a sense of identity based on the experience of one's Self as a subject and implementer of one's own abilities, awareness of reality outside of us and in ourselves, i.e., the development of objectivity and mind.
This idea of ​​mental health is largely consistent with the precepts of the great spiritual teachers of mankind. From the point of view of some modern psychologists, this coincidence serves as proof that our psychological premises are not "scientific", that they are philosophical or religious "ideals". They seem to find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the conclusion that in all societies the great teachings were based on an intelligent insight into human nature and on the conditions necessary for full development person. But it is precisely this conclusion that, apparently, is more in line with the fact that in the most diverse places on the globe, in different historical periods, the “awakened ones” preached the same norms completely or almost independently of each other. Akhenaten, Moses, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Isaiah106, Socrates107, Jesus affirmed the same norms of human life with only small, insignificant differences.
But there is a particular difficulty that many psychiatrists and psychologists must overcome in order to accept the ideas of humanistic psychoanalysis. They still think in terms of nineteenth-century materialism, which believed that the source (and cause) of all important mental phenomena must be the corresponding physiological, somatic108 processes. Thus, Freud, whose main philosophical orientation was formed under the influence of this type of materialism, believed that in the libido he found just such a physiological substratum109 of human passions. According to the theory presented here, the needs for belonging, overcoming the limitations of one's own existence, etc., do not have a corresponding physiological basis. In this case, it is formed by the entire human personality in the process of its interaction with the world, nature and man; the basis is practical life human, arising from the conditions of human existence. In philosophical terms, we proceed from premises other than the materialism of the 19th century: as the main empirical data for the study of man, we take his activity and interaction with people and nature.
If we take into account what human evolution is, then our interpretation of mental health will lead to some theoretical difficulties. There is reason to believe that human history began hundreds of thousands of years ago with a truly “primitive” culture, when the human mind was still in its infancy, and its orientation system very remotely reflected the truth and reality. The question arises: should this primitive man be considered insufficiently mentally healthy if he simply lacked those qualities that he could acquire only in the course of further evolution? This question could certainly be given only one answer, which opens the simplest way to solve the problem. It would consist in the obvious analogy between the evolution of the human race and the development of the individual. If the relation to the outside world of an adult and his ability to navigate in it is at the level of development of a one-month-old baby, we will undoubtedly classify such a person as seriously ill, possibly with schizophrenia. However, for month old baby the same attitude is perfectly normal and healthy, as it corresponds to his level mental development. Thus, adult mental illness can be defined (as Freud showed) as a fixation on an orientation inherent in an earlier stage of development, or a regression towards this orientation, which no longer corresponds to the level that this person. Analogous would be the idea that the human race, like a child, begins its journey from a primitive orientation, and we would consider all forms of orientation adequate to the corresponding stage of human evolution to be healthy. At the same time, one should regard as "painful" those types of "fixation" and "regression" that are more early stages developments already passed by mankind. However, no matter how tempting such a decision may seem, it does not take into account one point. A month old baby does not yet have an organic basis for an adult attitude to the world around him. Under no circumstances can he think, feel or act like an adult. On the contrary, man, a generic being, for hundreds of thousands of years has already had in physiological terms everything necessary for maturity: his brain, bodily coordination and physical strength have not changed in all this time. The evolution of man depended solely on his ability to transmit knowledge to future generations and thus accumulate it, and it is the result of cultural development, and not organic change. A child from the most primitive culture, transferred to a highly developed culture, would develop in it on an equal basis with all other children, since the only thing that determines his development is the cultural factor. In other words, while it is generally impossible for a one-month-old child to reach the spiritual maturity of an adult (regardless of cultural conditions), any person, starting from the primitive, could come to the perfection acquired by mankind at the peak of its evolution, if he had the necessary for this cultural conditions. From this it follows that to speak of the primitiveness, unreasonableness and incestuous tendencies inherent in man at the corresponding stage of evolution, and to declare the same about a child, are not at all the same thing. However, on the other hand, the development of culture is a necessary condition for human progress. As a result, it may seem that this problem does not have a completely satisfactory solution: on the one hand, we can talk about a lack of mental health, on the other, about early stage development. However, this difficulty appears significant only when considering the problem in the most in general terms; one has only to begin to study the more concrete problems of our time, as it turns out that the situation is much simpler. We have reached a level of individualization at which only a fully developed, mature personality can fully enjoy freedom; if the individual has not developed reason and the ability to love, he, unable to bear the burden of freedom and individuality, seeks salvation in artificially created bonds that give him a sense of belonging and rootedness. In our time, any return from freedom to artificial rootedness in a state or race is a sign of mental illness, since it does not correspond to the stage of evolution reached and undoubtedly leads to pathological phenomena.
Whether we are talking about "mental health" or "mature development" of humanity, the concepts of mental health or maturity are objective, they are obtained from the study of the "human condition" and the human needs and requirements arising from it. Therefore, as I already pointed out in chapter II, mental health cannot be defined in terms of the "adjustment" of the individual to the society in which he lives; quite the opposite: it should be defined in terms of the adaptation of society to human needs, based on whether it promotes or hinders the development of mental health. Whether an individual is healthy or not depends primarily not on the individual himself, but on the structure of the given society. A healthy society develops a person's ability to love people, stimulates creative work, the development of reason, objectivity, and the acquisition of a sense of one's own self, based on a sense of one's creative forces. An unhealthy society gives rise to mutual enmity, distrust, turns a person into an object of manipulation and exploitation, deprives him of a sense of self, which persists only to the extent that a person obeys others or becomes an automaton. Society can perform both functions: both to promote the healthy development of a person, and to hinder it. In almost most cases, it does both; the question is only what is the degree and direction of positive and negative influences.
This approach, according to which mental health should be defined objectively (while society has both a developing and a deforming influence on a person), is opposed not only to the position of relativism discussed above on this issue, but also to two other points of view that I would like here. discuss. According to one of them - undoubtedly the most popular in our time - we are being convinced that modern Western society and especially the "American way of life" correspond to the deepest needs of human nature, and fitness for this way of life is tantamount to mental health and maturity. In this way, social Psychology instead of being an instrument of criticism of society, it becomes an apologist110 for the status quo. With this view of things, the concepts of "maturity" and "mental health" correspond to the desired life position worker or employee in production or business. As an example of this understanding of "fitness" I will give the definition emotional maturity given by Dr. Strecker. He says: “I define maturity as the ability to be dedicated to one's work, to do more than is required in any business; as reliability, perseverance in the implementation of the plan, despite the difficulties; as the ability to work with other people, subject to organization and leadership; as the ability to make decisions, the will to live, flexibility, independence and tolerance"111. It is quite obvious that these, according to Strecker, the distinctive features of maturity are nothing but the virtues of a good worker, employee or soldier in modern large social organizations. Similar characteristics can often be found in job advertisements for small employees.
For Dr. Strecker, as well as for many of his associates, maturity is tantamount to adaptability to our society, and they do not even have a question about adaptability to which lifestyle - healthy or pathological - in question.
This point of view is opposed by another, whose supporters include scientists from Hobbes112 to Freud, a point of view that assumes the existence of a fundamental and unchanging contradiction between human nature and society, arising from the supposedly non-social essence of man. According to Freud, man is driven by two impulses of biological origin: the desire for sexual pleasure and the desire for destruction. His sexual desires are aimed at achieving complete sexual freedom, that is, at the unlimited availability of relationships with women who might seem desirable to him. Through experience, Freud believed, a person discovered that "sexual (genital) love represents ... the strongest experiences of satisfaction, gives him, in fact, a model of any happiness." Therefore, he was forced "to continue to seek the satisfaction of his desire for happiness in the field of sexual relations, to place genital eroticism at the center of vital interests"113.
Another direction of natural sexual desires is the incestuous attraction to the mother, the very essence of which creates conflict with the father and hostility towards him. Freud showed the importance of this aspect of sexuality, arguing that the prohibition of incest is perhaps "the most significant mutilation experienced by the human love life for all the elapsed times."
In full accordance with the ideas of Rousseau115, Freud believes that primitive man has not yet had to, or almost never had to cope with the limitations in satisfying these basic desires. He could not restrain his aggressiveness, but his satisfaction sexual desires was only slightly limited. Indeed, the primitive man "knew no limits to his drives... A cultured man exchanged part of the opportunity to achieve happiness for a piece of reliability"116.
While agreeing with Rousseau's idea of ​​the "happy savage", Freud at the same time follows Hobbes in his assumption that there is an inherent hostility between people. “‘Homo homini lupus est’117, will anyone have the courage, after the bitter experience of life and history, to dispute this position?” Freud asks. He believes that there are two sources of human aggressiveness: one is an innate desire for destruction (death instinct), the other is culturally imposed obstacles to the satisfaction of instinctive desires. And although a person can direct part of his aggressiveness against himself through the superego, and a small part of people are able to sublimate their sexual desires into brotherly love, aggressiveness remains ineradicable. People will always compete with each other and attack each other, fighting if not for material goods, then for "advantages in sexual relations which can become a source of the strongest discontent and hostility among people. If complete liberation sexual life to destroy these advantages too, i.e., to abolish the family, the basic cell of culture, then in this case, of course, it will be difficult to foresee what new paths the development of culture will take, but one thing can definitely be expected: an ineradicable feature of human nature will follow it further» 119. Since Freud considers love to be essentially sexual desire, he is forced to assume that there is a contradiction between love and social cohesion. In his opinion, love is inherently egocentric and antisocial, and solidarity and brotherly love are not primary feelings rooted in human nature, but abstracted from the goal, inhibited sexual desires.
Based on his understanding of man, according to which he is inherent in the desire for unlimited sexual satisfaction and destructiveness, Freud necessarily comes to the idea of ​​​​the inevitability of a conflict between civilization, on the one hand, and mental health and happiness, on the other. Primitive healthy and happy, because nothing interferes with the satisfaction of his basic instincts, but he is deprived of the benefits of civilization. The position of a civilized person is more secure, he enjoys the fruits of science and art, but is doomed to be neurotic because of the constantly imposed restraint of instincts by culture.
From Freud's point of view, social life and culture initially contradict the needs of human nature; man, on the one hand, faces the tragic necessity of choosing between happiness based on the unlimited satisfaction of his instincts, and on the other hand, security and cultural achievements based on the suppression of instincts and, therefore, contributing to the development of neuroses and other forms of mental illness. For Freud, civilization is the result of the suppression of instincts and, as a result, the cause of mental illness.
Freud's notion that human nature is inherently competitive (and extrasocial) is similar to that which we find in most authors who believe that the traits inherent in a person in modern capitalist society are his natural properties. Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex is built on the assumption of the existence of a "natural" antagonism and rivalry between father and sons, challenging each other's maternal love. This rivalry is accepted as inevitable, since the incestuous tendencies inherent in sons are considered natural. Freud only follows this line of thought, believing that the instincts of each person make him strive for the preemptive right in sexual relations and thereby cause bitter enmity between people. It is impossible not to see that the entire Freudian theory of sex is built on an anthropological premise, according to which rivalry and mutual enmity are inherent in human nature.
In the field of biology, this principle was expressed by Darwin in his theory of the competitive "struggle for survival". Economists such as Ricardo120 and the Manchester School121 brought it into the realm of economics. Later it was Freud's turn - under the influence of the same anthropological assumptions - to declare it in relation to the field of sexual drives. Just as the concept of “homo economicus”122 was the main one for economists, so for Freud the concept of “homo sexualis”123 becomes the main one. Both "economic man" and "sexual man" are very convenient inventions; the essence ascribed to them - isolation, asociality, greed and competition - gives capitalism the appearance of a system that is fully consistent with human nature, and makes it inaccessible to criticism.
Both approaches - both the idea of ​​"adaptation", and the idea of ​​Hobbes - Freud about the inevitable conflict between human nature and society - in fact mean the defense of modern society and give a one-sided, distorted picture of reality. Moreover, both of these approaches overlook the fact that society is in conflict not only with the extrasocial properties of a person (partly generated by society itself), but often with the most valuable human qualities, which it suppresses rather than develops.
An objective study of the relationship between society and human nature must take into account both the developmental and the restraining influence of society on man, taking into account the nature of man and the needs arising from it. Since most authors have repeatedly emphasized positive impact modern society per person, in this book I will pay less attention to this side of the issue and dwell in more detail on the sometimes overlooked morbid role of modern society.

Venue: MoscowEvent date: 30-10-2017 - 30-10-2017

Dear colleagues!

We invite you to take part in the scientific-practical conference “Mental health of a person and society. Actual interdisciplinary problems", which will take place October 30, 2017 in Moscow.

Pre-registration online

NB! The event will be broadcast online at - http://www.altaastra.com/events/MSU-zdorovie.html

To register for the online broadcast, please follow following instructions: Instructions for registering in your personal account and webinar

Conference Venue:

Moscow, Lomonosovsky prospect, 27, building 1, Lomonosovsky building of the Moscow state university named after M.V. Lomonosov, metro station "Universitet".

Registration of participants: 08:00-09:00.

For the training event, an application was submitted to the Commission for the Evaluation of Training Activities and Materials for CME for compliance with the established requirements in the specialty "Psychiatry", "Health Organization".
During the conference, all meetings will be webcast, and viewers of the webcast will have the opportunity to receive NMO points (the number of seats is limited). Detailed information about the broadcast will be added later.

Organizers:

• Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov
• Moscow Department of Health
• Russian Foundation for Basic Research
• National Medical Chamber
• Russian Society of Psychiatrists
• Russian Association promoting science
• National Medical Research Center for Psychiatry and Narcology. V.P. Serbian
• Science Center mental health

Presidium

Co-chairs:

• Academician Sadovnichiy V.A., Academician Velikhov E.P., Academician Panchenko V.Ya., Professor Khripun A.I.

Organising Committee:

• Fedyanin A.A. — Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Vice-Rector of the Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov
• Neznanov N.G. – Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Director of the St. Petersburg Research Psychoneurological Institute named after V.I. V.M. Bekhtereva, President of the Russian Society of Psychiatrists.
• Kekelidze Z.I. – Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Director General of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “National Medical Research Center for Psychiatry and Narcology named after N.N. V.P. Serbsky" of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, chief freelance psychiatrist of the Ministry of Health of Russia.
• Klyushnik T.P. – Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Director of the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution “Scientific Center for Mental Health”.
• Kostyuk G.P. – Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Chief Physician of the State Budgetary Healthcare Institution “PKB No. 1 named after A.I. ON THE. Alekseeva DZM, chief freelance psychiatrist of the Moscow Department of Health.
• Zinchenko Yu.P. — Academician of the Russian Academy of Education, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University
• Kirpichnikov M.P. — Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dean of the Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University
• Golichenkov A.K. — Doctor of Law, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University
• Vartanova E.L. — Doctor of Philology, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University
• Osipova N.G. — Doctor of Social Sciences, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Sociology, Lomonosov Moscow State University
• Tkachuk V.A. — Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Dean of the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of Lomonosov Moscow State University
• Remneva M.L. — Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University

About 1000 people are expected to attend the conference. scientific staff and psychiatrists, narcologists, psychotherapists from all regions of Russia. Speakers are leading Russian scientists and practitioners in the field of psychiatry, narcology and psychotherapy.

During the conference, an exhibition of leading pharmaceutical companies producing medicines, as well as an exhibition of samples of medical equipment will be organized.

The Organizing Committee invites youtake part in the exhibition and work of the scientific conference!

Scientific and practical conference "Complies with the Requirements for CMO"(except "Intersectoral collaboration in the prevention of additive behavior", room B-113, time 11.30-14.15)

List with the number of points and specialties:

mental health

We all know what health is – this concept is most capaciously reflected by the phrase “absence of disease”. You can call a healthy person who does not have any disorders in the functioning of organs and systems, diseases, however, in relation to mental health, it loses its meaning, because this definition is not limited to the absence of pathology.

Mental health is a state of psychological and social well-being in which a person realizes his potential, effectively resists life's difficulties and stress, carries out productive conscious activities and contributes to the development of society.

First of all, this is realized due to the stable, adequate functioning of the psyche, as well as the main mental cognitive processes: memory, attention, thinking. There are no clear norms for the concept of mental health, since each of the components can be interpreted subjectively.

Undoubtedly, there is an approved list of mental illnesses, but, as mentioned earlier, their absence does not guarantee complete health, and therefore one is interpreted ambiguously. Despite this, there are certain determinants - social, psychological factors, the presence of which allows us to assert good health.

The functional state of the psyche is determined by such aspects as:

1. Mental performance. cognitive processes at a high level - an indicator of health.

2. The desire for the implementation of conscious activity. training, professional, creative activity, realization of oneself in a different capacity is evidence of the presence of interests, motivation.

There are several opinions about what may indicate mental health and what its components are mandatory. Most researchers have recognized the following features.

What characterizes mental health?

1. The ability to build relationships with others. These relationships are mostly positive, trusting (with a narrow circle of people). The same category includes the ability to love - to accept a person as he is, to avoid idealization and unfounded claims, effectively resolve conflict situations, the ability not only to take, but also to give. This applies not only to marital relations but also parent-child.

An important point is the health of the relationship itself: it should not be threatening, violent, disturbing, destructive. healthy relationships bring only productivity. This also includes "environmental friendliness" - the ability of a person to choose for himself a mostly comfortable environment.

2. Desire and ability to work. This is not only a professional activity, but also creativity, a contribution to society. To create something that is valuable for the individual himself, his family, society is important for mentally healthy person.

3. The ability to "play." Game is a rather broad concept in relation to an adult, so it is important to clarify what it includes:

3.1. free use of metaphors, parables, humor - playing with symbols;

3.2. dance, singing, sports, some other types of creativity - to be not an outside observer, but an active player.

4. Autonomy. A healthy person does not do what he does not want to. He independently makes a choice and bears responsibility for it, does not suffer from addiction, does not try to compensate for the lack of control over one of the spheres of life by hypercontrol in another.

5. Understanding ethical standards. First of all, a healthy person is aware of the meaning and the need to follow them, but is flexible in this regard - in certain circumstances, he can afford to change the line of behavior (within reason).

6. Emotional stability. It is expressed in the ability to endure the intensity of emotions - to feel them, not allowing them to control oneself. In all circumstances, be in contact with the mind.

7. Flexibility of application of protective mechanisms. Every person faces adversity life circumstances, and, being the bearer of such a delicate construct as the psyche, uses the means of its protection. A healthy person chooses effective methods and in different situations makes a choice in favor of the most suitable.

8. Awareness, or, in other words, mentalization. A mentally healthy person sees the difference between true feelings and other people's imposed attitudes, is able to analyze his reactions to the words of another, understands that the other person is a separate person with his own characteristics and differences.

9. Ability to reflect. Turn to yourself in time, analyze the causes of certain events in own life, to understand how to proceed further and what it entails - these skills also distinguish a healthy personality.

10. Adequate self-esteem. One of the components of mental health is a realistic self-assessment, self-perception of oneself according to actual character traits and characteristics, an attitude towards oneself with warmth, a real understanding of the weaknesses and strengths of character.

As a rule, the absence of one or two points is a rare case, since this leads to the destruction of the entire “construction”. So, inadequate self-esteem provokes overestimated or underestimated expectations, interferes with building harmonious relationships with others, and effectively reflecting. Emotional instability does not allow to show awareness in a given situation, to control oneself, and also affects the ability to work.

In fact, the presence of all items is quite rare and only in a certain environment, this does not mean at all that people are basically mentally ill. With regard to the psyche, the “health-deviation (trend)-borderline-disease” scheme is more applicable, so many “omissions” are formed at the stage of a tendency to certain disorders, and the disease itself is still far away. However, the psyche is a rather unstable construct, and even in the absence of disorders during life, there is a high risk of developing negative tendencies, so it is very important to pay enough attention to mental health.

How to improve mental health?

1. Nutrition- the basis of physical health, which, as we found out, has an impact on the psyche. Excess food, foods containing a large amount of sugar, fat, as well as provoking hormonal imbalance in the body can significantly affect the mental state. There are a number of diseases that provoke emotional instability - pathologies thyroid gland and the exchange of her hormones, reproductive diseases, heart disease, etc., and in this case it is very difficult to remain calm and analyze one's own thoughts and behavior.

2. Physical activity. It not only forms the above-described ability to "play", but also has a positive effect on health. Full-fledged sports allow you to saturate the body, and, importantly, the brain with oxygen, cause the release of “happiness” hormones, tune in the right way and eliminate the depressed state.

3. The desire to understand yourself. This is an important component, which forms several processes:

3.1. accepting your strengths and weaknesses- an open recognition to oneself of what one likes and dislikes;

3.2. learning to control your emotions - for this it is important to understand the cause of their occurrence;

3.3. revealing hidden talents and potential for solving certain problems - for this it is important to start trying yourself in several areas of activity, to do what is interesting.

4. Overcoming addictions. First of all, explicit physical ones - smoking, alcohol abuse, even in some cases unnecessary "automatisms" - all this has no place in the life of a healthy person. Here you need to act very carefully, possibly with the help of a specialist, especially if the addiction has become stable and pronounced.

Psychological dependencies are more complex connections, therefore, they also require the intervention of a specialist. As a rule, they are represented by painful relationships with another person.

5. Stress resistance. Stress management is part of learning to control yourself and emotional manifestations, but it is separated into a separate category because it also includes training in relaxation techniques. What is the use if a person understands what events caused certain emotions in him, if he cannot do anything with these events? It is only in his power to effectively resist adverse factors, and this is the key to success.

6. Change the way you think. Performing each of the points, a person, without noticing it, is already starting this process. However, changing your mindset from negative to positive is a comprehensive process that requires daily effort. Important:

6.1. protect yourself as much as possible from negative information- stop watching sentimental programs, communicate with negative people, etc.;

6.2. search positive sides in the surrounding circumstances;

6.3. stop criticizing everything from neighbors and bosses to the government;

6.4. do not give in to despondency, no matter how difficult the circumstances are;

6.5. do not compare yourself with anyone else - except perhaps with yourself yesterday and today;

6.6. positively perceive life in all its manifestations.

It should be remembered that positive thinking is based not so much on the events of the world as on the reaction to them, and we have the power to change it.

The article was prepared by psychologist Poltoranina Margarita Vladimirovna

How we understand mental health depends on our understanding of human nature. In the previous chapters I have tried to show that the needs and passions of man arise from the special conditions of his existence. Needs common to man and animals - hunger, thirst, the need for sleep and sexual satisfaction - are important because they are caused by the internal chemical processes of the body; if not satisfied, they are able to become omnipotent (of course, this applies more to food and sleep than to sexual needs, which, if unsatisfied, never reach the strength of other needs, at least for physiological reasons). However, even their complete satisfaction is not a sufficient condition for sanity and mental health. But both depend on the satisfaction of purely human needs and passions arising from the peculiarities of a person’s position in the world: the need for belonging, overcoming the limitations of one’s own existence, a sense of rootedness, the need for a sense of identity, as well as for a system of orientation and worship. The great human passions: the lust for power, vanity, the search for truth, the lust for love and fraternity, the lust for destruction as well as for creation - every strong desire that drives a person's actions originates in this specifically human source, and not in the various phases of the development of the libido, according to Freud's theory.

Satisfying the natural needs of a person is extremely simple from the point of view of physiology, and if difficulties arise in this, then only of a sociological and economic nature. Satisfaction of specifically human needs is immeasurably more complex, it depends on many factors, of which, last but not least, is the way the society in which a person lives is organized, and how this organization determines human relations within society.

The basic mental needs arising from the characteristics of human existence must be satisfied in one way or another, otherwise a person is threatened with the loss of mental health in the same way as his physiological needs must be satisfied, otherwise death awaits him. However ways satisfaction of mental needs are very diverse, and the difference between them is tantamount to the difference between different degrees of mental health. If one of the basic needs remains unfulfilled, mental illness may occur; if such a need is realized, but in an unsatisfactory (from the point of view of the nature of human existence) way, then, as a consequence of this, a neurosis develops (either explicit or in the form of a socially given inferiority). A person needs a connection with other people, but if he achieves it through symbiosis or alienation, he loses his independence and integrity; a weak, suffering person is overcome by anger or indifference. Only if a person manages to establish relationships with people on the principles of love, he gains a sense of unity with them, while maintaining his integrity. Only with the help of creative labor can a person relate himself to nature, becoming one with it, but without dissolving in it without a trace. As long as a person is still incestuously rooted in nature, in the mother, in the race, his individuality and mind cannot develop; he remains a helpless victim of nature and at the same time completely deprived of the opportunity to feel himself one with her. Only if a person develops his mind and ability to love, if he is able to humanly experience the world of nature and the world of people, can he gain a sense of home, self-confidence, feel himself the master of his life. It is hardly worth saying that of the two possible ways to overcome the limitations of one's own existence, one - destructiveness - leads to suffering, the other - creativity - to happiness. It is also easy to see that only a sense of identity, based on a sense of one's own capabilities, can give strength, while the same feeling, but based on a group, with all the diversity of its forms, leaves a person dependent and, therefore, weak. Ultimately a man can make this world their only to the extent that he is able to comprehend reality; but if he lives in illusions, he will never change the conditions that give rise to these illusions.

Summarizing, we can say that the concept of mental health follows from the very conditions of human existence and is the same for all times and all cultures. Mental health is characterized by the ability to love and create, liberation from incestuous attachment to family and land, a sense of identity based on the experience of one's Self as a subject and implementer of one's own abilities, awareness of reality outside of us and in ourselves, i.e., the development of objectivity and mind.

This idea of ​​mental health is largely consistent with the precepts of the great spiritual teachers of mankind. From the point of view of some modern psychologists, this coincidence serves as proof that our psychological premises are not "scientific", that they are philosophical or religious "ideals". They seem to find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the conclusion that in all societies the great teachings were based on an intelligent insight into human nature and on the conditions necessary for the full development of man. But it is precisely this conclusion that, apparently, is more in line with the fact that in the most diverse places on the globe, in different historical periods, the “awakened ones” preached the same norms completely or almost independently of each other. Akhenaten, Moses, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Isaiah, Socrates, Jesus affirmed the same norms of human life with only small, insignificant differences.

But there is a particular difficulty that many psychiatrists and psychologists must overcome in order to accept the ideas humanistic psychoanalysis. They still think in terms of nineteenth-century materialism, which believed that the source (and cause) of all important psychic phenomena must be the corresponding physiological, somatic processes. Thus, Freud, whose main philosophical orientation was formed under the influence of this type of materialism, believed that in the libido he found just such a physiological substratum of human passions. According to the theory presented here, the needs for belonging, overcoming the limitations of one's own existence, etc., do not have a corresponding physiological basics. In this case, it is formed by the entire human personality in the process of its interaction with the world, nature and man; the basis is the practical life of a person, arising from the conditions of human existence. In philosophical terms, we proceed from premises other than the materialism of the 19th century: as the main empirical data for the study of man, we take his activity and interaction with people and nature.

If we take into account what human evolution is, then our interpretation of mental health will lead to some theoretical difficulties. There is reason to believe that human history began hundreds of thousands of years ago with a truly “primitive” culture, when the human mind was still in its infancy, and its orientation system very remotely reflected the truth and reality. The question arises: should this primitive man be considered insufficiently mentally healthy if he simply lacked those qualities that he could acquire only in the course of further evolution? This question could certainly be given only one answer, which opens the simplest way to solve the problem. It would consist in the obvious analogy between the evolution of the human race and the development of the individual. If the relation to the outside world of an adult and his ability to navigate in it is at the level of development of a one-month-old baby, we will undoubtedly classify such a person as seriously ill, possibly with schizophrenia. However, for a month old child, the same attitude is completely normal and healthy, as it corresponds to his level of mental development. Thus, adult mental illness can be defined (as Freud showed) as a fixation on an orientation inherent in an earlier stage of development, or a regression towards this orientation, which no longer corresponds to the level that the person should have reached. Analogous would be the idea that the human race, like a child, begins its journey from a primitive orientation, and we would consider all forms of orientation adequate to the corresponding stage of human evolution to be healthy. At the same time, those types of "fixation" and "regression" that represent earlier stages of development already passed by mankind should be regarded as "painful". However, no matter how tempting such a decision may seem, it does not take into account one point. A month old baby does not yet have an organic basis for an adult attitude to the world around him. Under no circumstances can he think, feel or act like an adult. On the contrary, man, a generic being, for hundreds of thousands of years has already had everything physiologically necessary for maturity: his brain, bodily coordination and physical strength have not changed during all this time. The evolution of man depended solely on his ability to transmit knowledge to future generations and thus accumulate it, and it is the result of cultural development, and not organic change. A child from the most primitive culture, transferred to a highly developed culture, would develop in it on an equal basis with all other children, since the only thing that determines his development is the cultural factor. In other words, while it is generally impossible for a one-month-old child to reach the spiritual maturity of an adult (regardless of cultural conditions), any person, starting from the primitive, could come to the perfection acquired by mankind at the peak of its evolution, if he had the necessary for this cultural conditions. It follows from this that to speak of the primitiveness, unreasonableness and incestuous tendencies inherent in a person at the corresponding stage of evolution, and to declare the same about a child, are not at all the same thing. However, on the other hand, the development of culture is a necessary condition for human progress. As a result, it may seem that this problem does not have a completely satisfactory solution: on the one hand, we can talk about a lack of mental health, on the other, about an early stage of development. However, this difficulty appears significant only when considering the problem in the most general terms; one has only to begin to study the more concrete problems of our time, as it turns out that the situation is much simpler. We have reached a level of individualization at which only a fully developed, mature personality can fully enjoy freedom; if the individual has not developed reason and the ability to love, he, unable to bear the burden of freedom and individuality, seeks salvation in artificially created bonds that give him a sense of belonging and rootedness. In our time, any return from freedom to artificial rootedness in a state or race is a sign of mental illness, since it does not correspond to the stage of evolution reached and undoubtedly leads to pathological phenomena.

Whether we are talking about "mental health" or "mature development" of humanity, the concepts of mental health or maturity are objective, they are obtained from the study of the "human condition" and the human needs and requirements arising from it. Therefore, as I already pointed out in chapter II, mental health cannot be defined in terms of the "adjustment" of the individual to the society in which he lives; quite the opposite: it should be defined in terms of the adaptation of society to human needs, based on whether it promotes or hinders the development of mental health. Whether an individual is healthy or not depends primarily not on the individual himself, but on the structure of the given society. A healthy society develops a person's ability to love people, stimulates creative work, the development of reason, objectivity, and the acquisition of a sense of one's own self, based on a sense of one's creative forces. An unhealthy society gives rise to mutual enmity, distrust, turns a person into an object of manipulation and exploitation, deprives him of a sense of self, which persists only to the extent that a person obeys others or becomes an automaton. Society can perform both functions: both to promote the healthy development of a person, and to hinder it. In almost most cases, it does both; the question is only what is the degree and direction of positive and negative influences.

This approach, according to which mental health should be defined objectively (while society has both a developing and a deforming influence on a person), is opposed not only to the position of relativism discussed above on this issue, but also to two other points of view that I would like here. discuss. According to one of them - undoubtedly the most popular in our time - we are being convinced that modern Western society and especially the "American way of life" correspond to the deepest needs of human nature, and fitness for this way of life is tantamount to mental health and maturity. Thus, social psychology, instead of being an instrument of criticism of society, becomes an apologist for the status quo. With this view of things, the concepts of "maturity" and "mental health" correspond to the desired life position of a worker or employee in production or business. As an example of this understanding of "fitness," I will quote Dr. Strecker's definition of emotional maturity. He says: “I define maturity as the ability to be dedicated to one's work, to do more than is required in any business; as reliability, perseverance in the implementation of the plan, despite the difficulties; as the ability to work with other people, subject to organization and leadership; as the ability to make decisions, the will to live, flexibility, independence and tolerance. It is quite obvious that these, according to Strecker, the distinctive features of maturity are nothing but the virtues of a good worker, employee or soldier in modern large social organizations. Similar characteristics can often be found in job advertisements for small employees.

For Dr. Strecker, as for many of his associates, maturity is tantamount to adaptability to our society, and they don’t even have a question about adaptability to which way of life - healthy or pathological - they are talking about.

This point of view is opposed by another, whose supporters include scientists from Hobbes to Freud, a point of view that assumes the existence of a fundamental and unchanging contradictions between human nature and society arising from the supposedly non-social essence of man. According to Freud, man is driven by two impulses of biological origin: the desire for sexual pleasure and the desire for destruction. His sexual desires are aimed at achieving complete sexual freedom, that is, at the unlimited availability of relationships with women who might seem desirable to him. Through experience, Freud believed, a person discovered that "sexual (genital) love represents ... the strongest experiences of satisfaction, gives him, in fact, a model of any happiness." Therefore, he was forced "to continue to seek the satisfaction of his desire for happiness in the field of sexual relations, to place genital eroticism at the center of vital interests."

Another direction of natural sexual desires is the incestuous attraction to the mother, the very essence of which gives rise to conflict with the father and hostility towards him. Freud showed the importance of this side of sexuality, arguing that the prohibition of incest is perhaps "the most significant mutilation experienced by the human love life in all the past times."

In full accordance with the ideas of Rousseau, Freud believes that primitive man has not yet had to, or almost never had to cope with the limitations in satisfying these basic desires. He could not restrain his aggressiveness, and the satisfaction of his sexual desires was only slightly limited. Indeed, the primitive man "did not know any restrictions on his drives ... A cultured person exchanged part of the opportunity to achieve happiness for a piece of reliability" .

While agreeing with Rousseau's idea of ​​the "happy savage", Freud at the same time follows Hobbes in his assumption that there is an inherent hostility between people. “Homo homini lupus est”, will anyone have the courage, after the bitter experience of life and history, to challenge this position?” Freud asks. He believes that there are two sources of human aggressiveness: one is the innate desire for destruction (death instinct), the other is culturally imposed obstacles to the satisfaction of instinctive desires. And although a person can direct part of his aggressiveness against himself through the super-ego, and a small part of people are able to sublimate their sexual desires into brotherly love, aggressiveness remains ineradicable. People will always compete with each other and attack each other, fighting if not for material goods, then for “advantages in sexual relations, which can become a source of the strongest discontent and hostility among people. If, by the complete liberation of sexual life, these advantages are also destroyed, i.e., the family, the basic unit of culture, is abolished, then, of course, it will be difficult to foresee what new paths the development of culture will take, but one thing can definitely be expected: an ineradicable feature of human nature will follow after her and beyond. Since Freud considers love to be essentially sexual desire, he is forced to assume that there is a contradiction between love and social cohesion. In his opinion, love is inherently egocentric and antisocial, and solidarity and brotherly love are not primary feelings rooted in human nature, but abstracted from the goal, inhibited sexual desires.

Based on his understanding of man, according to which he is inherent in the desire for unlimited sexual satisfaction and destructiveness, Freud necessarily comes to the idea of ​​​​the inevitability of a conflict between civilization, on the one hand, and mental health and happiness, on the other. Primitive man is healthy and happy because nothing interferes with the satisfaction of his basic instincts, but he is deprived of the benefits of civilization. The position of a civilized person is more secure, he enjoys the fruits of science and art, but is doomed to be neurotic because of the constantly imposed restraint of instincts by culture.

From Freud's point of view, social life and culture initially contradict the needs of human nature; man, on the one hand, faces the tragic necessity of choosing between happiness based on the unlimited satisfaction of his instincts, and on the other hand, security and cultural achievements based on the suppression of instincts and, therefore, contributing to the development of neuroses and other forms of mental illness. For Freud, civilization is the result of the suppression of instincts and, as a result, the cause of mental ill health.

Freud's notion that human nature is inherently competitive (and extrasocial) is similar to that which we find in most authors who believe that the traits inherent in a person in modern capitalist society are his natural properties. Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex is built on the assumption of the existence of a "natural" antagonism and rivalry between father and sons, challenging each other's maternal love. This rivalry is accepted as inevitable, since the incestuous tendencies inherent in sons are considered natural. Freud only follows this line of thought, believing that the instincts of each person make him strive for the preemptive right in sexual relations and thereby cause bitter enmity between people. It is impossible not to see that the entire Freudian theory of sex is built on an anthropological premise, according to which rivalry and mutual enmity are inherent in human nature.

In the area of biology this principle was expressed by Darwin in his competitive "struggle for survival" theory. Economists such as Ricardo and the Manchester School have taken it into the realm of economy. Later, Freud's turn came - under the influence of all the same anthropological premises - to declare it in relation to the field sexual desires. Just as for economists the concept of "homo economicus" was the main one, so for Freud the concept of "homo sexualis" becomes the main one. Both "economic man" and "sexual man" are very convenient inventions; the essence attributed to them - isolation, asociality, greed and rivalry - gives capitalism the appearance of a system that fully corresponds to human nature, and makes it inaccessible to criticism.

Both approaches - both the idea of ​​"adaptation" and the idea of ​​Hobbes - Freud about the inevitable conflict between human nature and society - in fact mean the protection of modern society and give a one-sided, distorted picture of reality. Moreover, both of these approaches overlook the fact that society is in conflict not only with the extrasocial properties of a person (partly generated by society itself), but often with the most valuable human qualities, which it suppresses rather than develops.

An objective study of the relationship between society and human nature must take into account both the developmental and the restraining influence of society on man, taking into account the nature of man and the needs arising from it. Since most authors have repeatedly emphasized the positive impact of modern society on man, in this book I will pay less attention to this side of the issue and dwell in more detail on the sometimes overlooked morbid role of modern society.

Moscow 2005

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The relationship between man and society has long attracted philosophers who sought to determine which of the elements of this binary opposition is primary. Is the individual antisocial by nature, as 3. Freud argued, or, on the contrary, is a person a social animal, as K. Marx believed? An attempt to reconcile these opposing points of view was made by the founder of "humanistic psychoanalysis" Erich Fromm. Society is infected with the depersonalization of the individual: Mass culture, mass art, mass politics are determined by the totality of all the conditions of life of modern industrial society. This disease can be cured only through the acquisition of positive freedom, freedom not in itself, not destructive, but "freedom for something", through the transition from the state of "to have" to the state of "to be". And only a society whose members have positive freedom can be called healthy.

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FROM RELAXATION

NEGATIVE FREEDOM OF A PRISONER OF NATURE

The relationship between man and society has long attracted philosophers who sought to determine which of the elements of this binary opposition is primary and to explore the nature of the relationship between the individual and society. The culmination of the "social" approach to the analysis of these relationships was the theory of K. Marx, who proclaimed man a social animal. According to Marx, a person is a set of social relations, so the opposition of the individual to society is meaningless. The “biological” theory of 3. Freud, who believed that a person is endowed with fundamental antisociality, became a counterweight to the Marxist theory. Society is repressive; threatening sanctions, it suppresses the free expression of instincts, which, expressing the biological nature of man, are immoral from the point of view of society. An attempt to reconcile these opposing points of view on the relationship between man and society was made by the founder of "humanistic psychoanalysis" Erich Fromm.

Fromm saw Freud's mistake in the fact that Freud passed off a contemporary person as a person in general. There is no immutable human nature (namely, this is how Freud approached a person) does not exist. Of course, all people have common and constant needs: hunger, thirst, the need for sleep. But the aspirations and feelings built on top of them: love, hatred, the thirst for power, the craving for pleasure are products of the social process.

Marx, on the other hand, absolutized the social in a person and considered the mind to be decisive, and when approaching society and history, he underestimated psychological factors. Contrary to Marx, who believed that social life (being) determines social

consciousness, Fromm believed that between economic relations and human consciousness there is another element - social character. Its content is the psychological properties of a person, in which his abilities for critical thinking, for subtle experiences are realized and which are expressed in the desire for freedom and justice.

Widespread definitions of man: “man is a rational animal”, “man is a political animal”, of course, reflect certain aspects of human nature, but miss its essence. And the essence of a person is not a certain “thing” that is “hidden” behind phenomena, the essence of a person is determined by his existential situation. And this situation is unique: on the one hand, man is an animal and as such he is an inseparable part of nature, and on the other hand, man is a social being, that is, he is separated from nature by an impassable abyss. This duality of man is the essence of his existence. As Fromm wrote: “A person faces a terrible abyss of becoming a prisoner of nature, while remaining free inside his consciousness; it is predestined to be separated from it, to be neither there nor here. Human self-consciousness has made man a wanderer in this world, he is separated, alone, seized with fear.

This fear gives rise to irrational destructiveness in a person, a craving for destruction as a form of “escape from nature”. This "negative freedom" results in a global catastrophe of relations between people in society and between a person and society as a whole - in other words, in a crisis of society as an institution.

Marx, according to Fromm, was right in pointing out the crisis of human society, but mistakenly considered economic relations and private property to be the cause of the crisis. Society is infected with the depersonalization of the individual: mass culture, mass art, mass politics are conditioned by the totality of all the living conditions of modern industrial society. This disease can be cured only through the acquisition of positive freedom, freedom not in itself, not destructive, but "freedom for something", through the transition from the state of "to have" to the state of "to be". And only a society whose members have positive freedom can be called healthy.

Igor Feoktistov

HEALTHY SOCIETY

©T.V. Banketova, S.V. Karpushina, translation, 1992

ARE WE NORMAL?

There is no more commonplace thought than that we, the inhabitants of the Western world of the 20th century, are perfectly normal. Even with the fact that many of us suffer from more or less severe forms of mental illness, general level mental health is beyond our doubts. We are confident that by introducing better methods of mental hygiene, we can further improve the state of affairs in this area. When it comes to individual mental disorders, we consider them only as absolutely special cases, perhaps a little wondering why they are so common in a society that is considered quite healthy.

But can we be sure that we are not deceiving ourselves? It is known that many residents of psychiatric hospitals are convinced that everyone is mad, except for themselves. Many severe neurotics believe that their obsessions or hysterical fits are normal reaction under unusual circumstances. Well, what about ourselves?

Let's look at the facts from a psychiatric point of view. In the last 100 years, we in the Western world have created more wealth than any other society in the history of mankind. And yet we have managed to destroy millions of people in wars. Along with smaller ones, there were major wars 1870, 1914 and 1939 1 Each participant in these wars firmly believed that he was fighting to defend himself and his honor. They looked upon their opponents as cruel, devoid of common sense enemies of the human race, who must be defeated in order to save the world from evil. But only a few years pass after the end of mutual extermination, and yesterday's enemies become friends, and recent friends - enemies, and we again, with all seriousness, begin to paint them in white or black colors, respectively. At the present time - in 1955 - we are ready for a new mass bloodshed; but if it happened, it would surpass any that have been accomplished by mankind so far. It was for this purpose that one of the greatest discoveries in the field of natural sciences was used. With a mixed sense of hope and fear, people look at the "statesmen" different peoples and are ready to praise them if they "manage to avoid war"; At the same time, they lose sight of the fact that wars have always arisen precisely through the fault of statesmen, but, as a rule, not through malicious intent, but as a result of their unreasonable and incorrect performance of their duties.

Nevertheless, during such outbursts of destructiveness and paranoid 2 suspicion, we behave in exactly the same way as the civilized part of humanity has done over the past three millennia. According to Victor Cherbulier, in the period from 1500 BC. e. to 1860 AD e. At least 8,000 signed peace treaties, each of which was supposed to ensure a lasting peace: in fact, each of them averaged only two years! 3

Our business activity is hardly more reassuring. We live in an economic system where too high a crop is often an economic disaster - and we limit agricultural productivity in order to "stabilize the market", even though millions of people are in dire need of the very products that we are restricting. Now our economic system is functioning very successfully. But one reason for this is that we spend billions of dollars every year on arms production. With some anxiety, economists think about the time when we will stop producing weapons; the idea that, instead of producing weapons, the state should build houses and produce necessary and useful things, immediately entails the charge of encroaching on the freedom of private enterprise.

Over 90% of our population is literate. Radio, TV, movies and daily newspapers are available to everyone. However, instead of introducing us to the best literary and musical works past and present, the mass media, in addition to advertising, fill people's heads with the most low-grade nonsense, far from reality and replete with sadistic fantasies, with which the least cultured person would not even occasionally fill his leisure time. But while this massive corruption of people from young to old is going on, we continue to strictly ensure that nothing “immoral” gets on the screens. Any suggestion that the government fund the production of films and radio programs that educate and develop people would also be outraged and condemned in the name of freedom and ideals.

We have reduced the number of working hours by almost half compared to the times of a hundred years ago. Our ancestors did not dare to dream of such an amount of free time as we have today. And what? We do not know how to use this newly acquired free time: we try to kill it and rejoice when another day ends.

Is it worth it to continue the description of what is already well known to everyone? If a single person acted in this way, then, of course, serious doubts would arise - whether he is in his mind. If, nevertheless, he insisted that everything was all right and that he was acting quite reasonably, then the diagnosis would not raise any doubts.

However, many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to admit that society as a whole can be mentally unhealthy. They believe that the problem of the mental health of society lies only in the number of "unadapted" individuals, and not in the possible "malfunction" of society itself. This book considers just the last version of the problem statement: not an individual pathology, but a pathology of normality, especially in modern Western society. But before embarking on a difficult discussion of the concept of social pathology, let's take a look at some very telling and suggestive evidence that allows us to judge the extent of the prevalence of individual pathology in Western culture.

How widespread is mental illness in various parts of the Western world? The most surprising thing is that there is no data at all to answer this question. While we have accurate comparative statistics on material resources, employment, births and deaths, we do not have relevant information about mental illness. At best, we have some information for a number of countries, such as the US and Sweden. But they only give an idea of ​​the number of patients in psychiatric hospitals and cannot help in determining the comparative frequency of mental disorders. In reality, these data point not so much to an increase in the number of mental illnesses, but to the expansion of the capacity of psychiatric hospitals and improvement medical care there are 4 in them. The fact that more than half of all hospital beds in the United States are occupied by patients with mental disorders, on whom we spend over a billion dollars annually, may rather indicate not an increase in the number of mentally ill people, but only an increase in medical care. However, there are other figures that indicate with greater certainty the spread of rather severe cases of mental disorders. If during the last war 17.7% of all conscripts were declared unfit for military service due to mental illness, then this certainly indicates a high degree of mental distress, even if we do not have similar indicators to compare with the past or with other countries.

The only comparable figures that can give us a rough idea of ​​the state of mental health are the data on suicides, murders and alcoholism. Suicide is without a doubt the most complex problem, and no single factor can be considered its sole cause. But, without even going into a discussion of this problem, I think it is quite reasonable to assume that high percent suicide in a given country reflects a lack of mental stability and mental health. This state of affairs is by no means due to poverty. This is strongly supported by all the data. The fewest suicides are committed in the poorest countries, at the same time, the growth of material well-being in Europe was accompanied by an increase in the number of suicides 5 . As for alcoholism, then it, without a doubt, indicates a mental and emotional imbalance.

Murder motives are perhaps less pathological than suicide motives. However, although countries with high homicide rates have low rates of suicide, the sum of these rates leads us to an interesting conclusion. If we classify both murders and suicides as "destructive actions", then from the tables given here we find that the total indicator of such actions is by no means a constant value, but fluctuates between the extreme values ​​- 35.76 and 4.24. This contradicts Freud's assumption about the relative constancy of the amount of destructiveness, on which his theory of the death instinct is based, and refutes the conclusion that follows from this that destructiveness remains at the same level, differing only in its orientation towards itself or the external world.

The tables below show the number of homicides and suicides, as well as the number of people suffering from alcoholism, in some of the most important countries Europe and North America. In table. I, II and III are data for 1946.

A cursory glance at these tables catches the eye interesting fact: countries with the highest

Table I

Destructive actions

(per 100 thousand people of the adult population, %)

Table II

Destructive actions

Table III

Approximate number of alcoholics

(with or without complications)

suicide rates - Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden and the United States - also have the highest overall homicide and suicide rates, while other countries - Spain, Italy, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - also have the lowest homicide rates, and the number of suicides.

Table data. III show that the countries with the highest number of suicides - the USA, Switzerland and Denmark - also have the highest rates of alcoholism, with the only difference being that, according to this table, the USA ranks 1st, and France - 2nd place, respectively, instead of 5th and 6th places in terms of the number of suicides.

These figures are truly frightening and alarming. After all, even if we doubt that a high suicide rate in itself indicates a lack of mental health in the population, then the significant overlap in the data on suicide and alcoholism, apparently, shows that we are dealing here with signs of mental imbalance.

In addition, we see that in the countries of Europe - the most democratic, peaceful and prosperous, as well as in the United States - the richest country in the world, the most severe symptoms mental deviations. The goal of all socio-economic development of the Western world is a materially secure life, a relatively equal distribution of wealth, a stable democracy and peace; and it is precisely in those countries that have come closest to this goal that the most severe symptoms mental imbalance! True, these figures do not prove anything by themselves, but they are at least staggering. And before going into a more detailed examination of the whole problem, these data lead us to the question: is there something fundamentally wrong in our way of life and in the goals to which we aspire?

Could it be that the well-to-do life of the middle class, while satisfying our material needs, causes us a feeling of unbearable boredom, and suicide and alcoholism are just painful attempts to get rid of it? Perhaps the given data is an impressive illustration of the truth of the words “man does not live by bread alone” and at the same time shows that modern civilization is not able to satisfy the deepest needs of man? And if so, what are those needs?

In the following chapters, we will try to answer this question and critically assess the influence of Western culture on the spiritual development and psyche of people living in Western countries. However, before proceeding to a detailed discussion of these problems, we seem to need to consider common problem pathology of normality, since it is precisely this that serves as the starting point for the entire direction of thought set forth in this book.

CAN SOCIETY BE SICK?

PATHOLOGY OF NORMALITY 7

To argue that society as a whole may lack mental health is to start from a controversial assumption, contrary to the position of sociological relativism 8 shared by most representatives of the social scientists of our time. These scientists proceed from the fact that every society is normal insofar as it functions, and that pathology can only be defined as an individual's insufficient adaptation to the way of life of his society.

To speak of a "healthy society" means to be based on a premise different from sociological relativism. This only makes sense if we accept that a mentally unhealthy society is possible; this, in turn, presupposes the existence of universal criteria of mental health applicable to the human race as such, on the basis of which one can judge the state of health of any society. This position of normative humanism 9 is based on several main premises.

Man as a species can be defined not only in terms of anatomy and physiology;

representatives of this species are characterized by common mental properties, the laws governing their mental and emotional activity, as well as the desire for a satisfactory solution to the problems of human existence. However, our knowledge of a person is still so imperfect that we cannot yet strictly define a person in psychological terms. The task of the "science of man" is, finally, to compile an exact description of what is rightly called the nature of man. What was often called human nature turned out to be just one of its many manifestations (moreover, often pathological); moreover, as a rule, these erroneous definitions were used to protect this type of society, presenting it as an inevitable result, corresponding to the mental make-up of a person.

In contrast to this reactionary use of the concept of human nature, liberals since the 18th century. emphasized the variability of human nature and the decisive influence on it environment. Such a formulation of the question, for all its correctness and importance, prompted many representatives of the social sciences to assume that the mental make-up of a person is not determined by his own inherent properties, but is like a blank sheet of paper on which society and culture put their writings. This assumption is just as untenable and destructive to social progress as the opposite. The real problem is to establish from the many manifestations of human nature (both normal and pathological), as far as we can observe them in different individuals and in different cultures, to establish its basis, common to the whole human race. In addition, the task is to reveal the laws immanent in human nature, as well as the inalienable goals of its transformation and development.

This understanding of human nature differs from the generally accepted meaning of the term "human nature". Transforming the world around him, man at the same time changes himself in the course of history. He seems to be his own creation. But just as he can only transform and modify natural materials according to their nature, so he can only transform and change himself according to his own nature. The unfolding of potentialities and their transformation to the extent of one's abilities - this is what a person really accomplishes in the process of history. The point of view presented here cannot be considered either exclusively “biological” or only “sociological”, since these two aspects of the problem should be considered in an inseparable unity. It rather overcomes their dichotomy 11 by assuming that the basic passions and urges of man stem from the totality of human existence, that they can be identified and defined, some of them leading to health and happiness, others to illness and unhappiness. No social system creates these fundamental aspirations, but only determines which of the limited set of potential passions is to be manifested or prevailed. No matter how people appear in each given culture, they are always a vivid expression of human nature, but such an expression, the specificity of which, however, is its dependence on the social laws of the life of a given society. Just as a child at birth has all the potential human capabilities that have to develop under favorable social and cultural conditions, so the human race develops in the course of history, becoming what it potentially is.

The normative humanist approach is based on the assumption that the problem of human existence, like any other, can be solved right and wrong, satisfactorily and unsatisfactorily. If a person reaches full maturity in his development in accordance with the properties and laws of human nature, then he acquires mental health. The failure of such development leads to mental illness. It follows from this premise that the measure of mental health is not individual fitness for a given social system, but a certain universal criterion valid for all people - a satisfactory solution to the problem of human existence.

Nothing is more misleading about the state of mind in a society than "unanimous approval" of accepted ideas. At the same time, it is naively believed that if the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings, then the validity of the latter is proved. Nothing is further from the truth than this assumption. Unanimous approval in itself has nothing to do with reason or mental health. Just as there is "folie a deux" 12 , there is also "folie a millions" 13 . Indeed, because millions of people are subject to the same vices, these vices do not turn into virtues; because many people share the same delusions, these delusions do not turn into truths, but because millions of people suffer from the same forms mental pathology, these people do not recover.

There is, however, an important difference between individual and social mental illnesses, which implies a differentiation between the concepts of inferiority and neurosis. If a person fails to achieve freedom, spontaneity 14 , true self-expression, then he can be considered deeply flawed, as long as we admit that every human being objectively strives to achieve freedom and immediacy of expression of feelings. If the majority of the members of a given society do not achieve this goal, then we are dealing with a socially predetermined inferiority. And since it is inherent not to one individual, but to many, he does not realize it as an inferiority, he is not threatened by the feeling own difference from others, similar to rejection. His possible loss in the richness of life's impressions, in the genuine experience of happiness, is compensated by the security that he gains by adjusting himself to the rest of humanity, as far as he knows him. It is possible that this inferiority itself is elevated by the society in which he lives to the rank of virtue and therefore is able to strengthen his sense of confidence in the success achieved.

An example of this is the feeling of guilt and anxiety that the doctrine of Calvin aroused in people 15 . A person filled with a sense of his own powerlessness and insignificance, constantly tormented by doubts whether he will be saved or condemned to eternal torment, is hardly capable of genuine joy, and therefore can be considered deeply flawed. However, it was precisely this inferiority that was set by society: it was especially highly valued, since with its help the individual was protected from neurosis, inevitable in the framework of a different culture, in which the same inferiority would cause him a feeling of complete inconsistency with the surrounding world and isolation from it.

Spinoza 16 very clearly formulated the problem of socially given inferiority. He wrote: “Indeed, we see that sometimes one object acts on people in such a way that, although it does not exist in cash, they are sure that they have it in front of them, and when this happens to awake person, then we say that he is crazy or insane ... But when a miser thinks of nothing but gain and money, an ambitious man thinks of nothing but fame, etc., then we do not recognize them as crazy because they are usually painful to us and are considered worthy of hatred. In fact, stinginess, ambition, debauchery, etc., are types of madness, although they are not ranked among diseases.

These words were written several centuries ago; they are still true, although at present different kinds inferiority is predetermined by society to such an extent that they usually no longer cause irritation or contempt. Today we are confronted with a man who acts and feels like an automaton, he never experiences experiences that are really his own; he feels himself exactly as he thinks others think he is; his artificial smile replaced sincere laughter, and meaningless chatter took the place of verbal communication; he experiences a dull sense of hopelessness instead of actual pain. There are two things to note about this person. First, he suffers from a lack of spontaneity and individuality that may be irreparable. At the same time, he is not significantly different from millions of other people in the same position. For most of them, society provides behavioral models that enable them to maintain health, despite their handicap. It turns out that each society, as it were, offers its own remedy against the outbreak of obvious neurotic symptoms, which are the result of the inferiority generated by it.

Let us suppose that in Western civilization the cinema, radio, television, sporting events were canceled for just four weeks, newspapers were stopped. If in this way the main escape routes are blocked by flight, what will be the consequences for people left to their own devices? I have no doubt that even in such a short time, thousands of nervous disorders and many thousands more will find themselves in a state of intense anxiety, giving a picture similar to that which is clinically diagnosed as "neurosis" 18 . If, at the same time, we eliminate the means that make it possible to suppress the reaction to socially given inferiority, then we will face an obvious disease.

For a minority of people, the model of behavior offered by society turns out to be ineffective. This usually happens to those who are more susceptible to individual handicaps than the average person, with the result that the funds provided by the culture are insufficient to prevent an open outbreak of the disease. (Take, for example, a person whose life goal is to achieve power and glory. Although this goal in itself is clearly pathological, there is nevertheless a difference between one person making an effort to practically achieve what he wants, and another more seriously ill who remains in the grip of infantile claims, does nothing to fulfill his desire in anticipation of a miracle, and, experiencing more and more impotence as a result, comes in the end to a bitter sense of his own uselessness and disappointment.) But there are also such people who, by the structure their character, and consequently their conflicts, are different from most others, so that the means effective for the greater part of their brethren cannot help them. Among them, we sometimes meet people who are more honest and sensitive than others, who, precisely because of these properties, cannot accept the “soothing” means offered by culture, although at the same time they do not have enough strength or health to, in spite of everything, live peacefully in their own way. .

As a result of the above distinction between neurosis and socially determined inferiority, one may get the impression that as soon as society takes measures against the outbreak of obvious symptoms, everything turns out to be in order, and it can continue to function without hindrance, no matter how great the inferiority generated by it. However, history shows that this is not the case.

Indeed, unlike animals, man exhibits an almost limitless adaptability; he can eat almost anything, he can live in almost any climatic conditions and adapt to them, and there is hardly a mental state that he could not bear and in which he would not be able to live. He can be free or a slave, live in wealth and luxury or lead a half-starved existence, he can lead a peaceful life or a warrior's life, be an exploiter and a robber or a member of a brotherhood bound by ties of cooperation and love. There is hardly a mental state in which a person could not live, and there is hardly anything that could not be done to a person or for which he could not be used. It would seem that all these considerations support the assumption that there is no single human nature, and this would actually mean that "man" does not exist as a species, but only as a physiological and anatomical being.