Psychologically Healthy Mind

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scameter18

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This isn’t particularly about religion or theology, though it is philosophical I think; I think it’s more just a curiosity of mine.

Psychology and psychiatry are mainly meant to treat disorders, and thus they diagnose mental health problems as “unhealthy”, psychologically. But, I have been wondering recently: if psychologists know what is unhealthy, what is the definition of a mind that is healthy? What would be the ideal of a healthy mind?

Psychologists talk about things that are mentally unhealthy, like the various neuroses and psychoses they have discovered, such as schizophrenia, OCD, multiple personality disorder, etc. All of these are attributes of an unhealthy mind. But what makes a mind healthy, and what would be the ideal of a healthy mind? If extreme attachment is unhealthy, would it be healthy for a mind to be only partially attached emotionally to people and things, willing to let them go but still attached enough to care about them appropriately? If having strictly different personalities within yourself is unhealthy and disordered, would it be healthy to have one specific, ordered, coherent and consistent personality that only changes by logical stimuli such as aging or extreme events? If responding to a certain event, like someone insulting you, with too much anger is unhealthy, would it be healthy to respond with calm acceptance and civility?

I’m just curious about an ideal of a healthy mind based on psychology, and what it is based in, if anyone could inform me. 🙂
 
I don’t know what the ideal is, if there even is one. I’m sure there are various ways of judging what the perfect mind would be. For example, according to depressive realism, people with depression have a more accurate view of reality. Ideally, we should correctly perceive reality, but we also want to be free from depression.
 
scameter18 said:
I’m just curious about an ideal of a healthy mind based on psychology, and what it is based in, if anyone could inform me. 🙂
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In psychology it is referred to as “well adjusted” and is really determined by the ethos of the day. Much like an IQ score, there is an expected norm which sets the standard for that decade. “All is relative”. 😃
 
Psychology does seem to be somewhat socially-determined sometimes, which is one of my few problems with it. For example, they will base alot of their conclusions on surveys, and to me those just aren’t very reliable. Some psychology is quite reliable though, like specific behavioral analysis, which to me is much more scientific than some psychological studies. It seems that psychology is specifically meant to address disorders, not just observations, and so that is what it’s good at. I think psychology should leave observation to sociologists to be honest.
 
  1. understand how a mind functions
  2. understand its limits
  3. use its limits to manipulate and control
  4. create ethic standards
  5. begin thinking about why
The US Army and Air Force have possibly the largest and most effective psychology programs on Earth. Why study something if you have no intention of using what you learn?

Social engineering and “reality programming” have almost become a fad these days. The story of psychology and especially psychiatry makes the religions seem as lambs in the woods as arbitrary paradigms are developed blind to true rationality.

I find it interesting that those who study and manipulate mentality have so little understanding of its purpose.

“Health is what we convince you it is.”
 
Well, despite some conspiracies, there is some validity to psychology/psychiatry. There are legitimate mental disorders, and those fields do for the most part simply try to heal them and help people who have them to at least live with their problems. I was simply wondering if they have a view of an ideal, healthy mind that they are working towards when fixing those problems and helping people with their issues. I don’t think it necessarily goes against or uses religion to use psychology, no more than using normal medicine does. The Church has used psychology for two thousand years by simply studying and observing human behavior, trying to fix problems and help people to live as best they can. This is all psychology does; it just uses science in modern times without any spiritual concern, whereas the Church more wisely used both.

But I didn’t want for this topic to be a religious debate. I wanted it to remain completely scientific and philosophical, based around my original question which I feel has nothing to do with religion per se, within itself.
 
The paradigm of the day is that all things are relative and the human exists merely to serve the species.

Any Science that hints different than that, will not be promoted.
 
Many things are defined as disorders if they bother you, and not disorders if they do not. For example, a sexual fetish is not a paraphilia unless it bothers you. Depression is the same way, I think – if you don’t find being depressed disturbing, then bully for you. Hence, some depressed people who commit suicide do not apparently have clinical depression.

Presumably, then, health is the state of being where nothing bothers you at all. Does this mean ideally healthy person is a dead one? 😉
 
Prodigal_Son said:
Many things are defined as disorders if they bother you, and not disorders if they do not. For example, a sexual fetish is not a paraphilia unless it bothers you. Depression is the same way, I think – if you don’t find being depressed disturbing, then bully for you. Hence, some depressed people who commit suicide do not apparently have clinical depression.

Presumably, then, health is the state of being where nothing bothers you at all. Does this mean ideally healthy person is a dead one? 😉
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Largely true. 😉

But “all things are relative”. They just left out what it is they are to be relative to. 😛

When it comes to depression, you are clinically depressed “if you are less actively involved in the system than the declared average for your type (race, gender, age, and religion)”. But being depressed is not an illness or disorder “unless it bothers you”.

If you are willing to pay, it will be treated (for as long as you are willing and able to pay).

How healthy you are is only a measure of how well you can serve the species compared to the others of your type. How healthy you remain is a function of how much you can pay. It is no different than medicine.
 
Mental health professionals don’t usually engage in debates about “what is a healthy mind?” They base their treatment on the notion that to be “psychologically healthy” means a person can function in the reality of the world (not psychotic, delusional, manic, severely depressed) and also in the interpersonal and situational aspects of everyday life. Having obsessive-compulsive disorder, incapacitating anxiety or depression fall into the second category of healthy or unhealthy. Mental health professionals also assess whether a person has the coping skills to move through life in non-destructive ways, is at peace with a difficult past, and has the capability to form significant relationships. Sound treatment does NOT include trying to convince someone of a philosophy or religion or tenants of a religion in order to be what a particular therapist or physician considers “healthy,” although that happens often and must be recognized as a danger to ones values and religion.

PS. Most people who commit suicide have some sort of mental disorder unless they belong to a fanatical religion or a culture where suicide is valued under certain conditions (some Eastern cultures for example). The National Catholic Partnership on Disability (www.NCPD.org) would have more info on suicide.
 
Bailey2 said:
Mental health professionals don’t usually engage in debates about “what is a healthy mind?” They base their treatment on the notion that to be “psychologically healthy” means a person can function in the reality of the world (not psychotic, delusional, manic, severely depressed) and also in the interpersonal and situational aspects of everyday life. Having obsessive-compulsive disorder, incapacitating anxiety or depression fall into the second category of healthy or unhealthy. Mental health professionals also assess whether a person has the coping skills to move through life in non-destructive ways, is at peace with a difficult past, and has the capability to form significant relationships. Sound treatment does NOT include trying to convince someone of a philosophy or religion or tenants of a religion in order to be what a particular therapist or physician considers “healthy,” although that happens often and must be recognized as a danger to ones values and religion.
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Well, that makes complete sense to me. I think you answered my question completely. It seems that to have a healthy mind is to have one that allows you to “function in the reality of the world (not psychotic, delusional, manic, severely depressed) and also in the interpersonal and situational aspects of everyday life”. Thanks for your answer. 🙂
 
Freud was asked this question: What should a healthy mind be able to do well? He replied: to love and to work. I agree, but would add also: to suffer.
 
Hm. That definitely makes sense too. It seems that many mental problems people have is because they can’t deal with suffering and suffer well, whether it’s because they don’t know how or just don’t want to.
 
part 1

Scameter, unlike many on here, I think yours is a wonderful question. Two quotes, for some reason, immediately popped into my mind:

“I wanted an ideal, so I chose God. Why not go with the best?” Woody Allen, in Manhattan

“Divine Mind, which created the Universe, must be the interpreter of the Universe.” Mary Baker Eddy, in one of her writings.

It seems to me that the key word in your question is “order.” Order is a basis for harmony. Disharmony equals disorder. Disorder happens when things are at odds with one another, or at odds with a system. Things can be at odds with a system, and yet be part of a greater order. A virus can attack and destroy a human body, but the virus and body are yet parts of a greater order. Creation seems to appear in orders of elements, each including, yet transcending the one it is “composed” of. Energy vibrates and is a mystery even to modern physics. sub- and atomic particles make up atoms, though they can exist without that form of organization. Atoms make up molecules, but atoms can exist without being molecules. Molecules can be in compounds, but molecules don’t need to be in compounds. Etc., etc., on up through and including Man.

Man displays Consciousness, or a sort of ghost in the machine, something we call “Soul.” We can call the individuated quality of consciousness “awareness,” as it is composed of experiences discreet to individuals, while common as a general factor. This accounts for our ability to say “I,” and understand that it refers to the life factor of a person as common amongst us, and to say “me,” referring to my particular experience.

“I” is a given. No person can say “I am not.” Only “I am” is possible as a statement of Identity. Yet, because we are born into very particular and extremely variable circumstances, we acquire different contents as the elements included in our awareness.
So, “I” is common and allows communications between individuals about the contents and perspectives in space/time of “me.”

These contents are enormously variable, ranging, say, form the experience of a feral child abandoned of family, through the time and culture parameters of familial relationships called in various locals “normal.” through the individual experiences of such as Saints and Sages.

But what is “psychologically healthy?” Basically and superficially, it might be the ordering of an individual mind in a way that does not cause turbulence in the group it belongs to, and neither experiences turbulence in doing so. That ideal is learned, as we can see in children who fight the impositions of their parents, both in functioning in a social setting as family, etc, and as the teen struggle for individuation and personal responsibility.

In that setting, and later as adults, much is acceptable as “healthy” behavior, meaning that sanctions on behavior do not have to be invoked. But that is very minimalist. It just means that things are not broken in a major way, as too often happens in all of our history at every level of experience. But why is this?

It must be, in your terms, due to a lack of common ordering. Indeed, things in human cultures are ordered in terms of survival, even at time at the expense of our fellows. This applies to both individuals and groups, both physically and ideologically. There is always some sort of contention. Look even at the pages of these fora, which represents to some extent a cohesive group with much in common. But there are differences due to many factors. The chief of these is ordering by means of original impression, or in common terms, “the values and perceptions we grew up with.”

Now, since we do grow up with them, and use them, and they work to some extent for us in our situation, we tend do think that those are common factors for everyone. In other words, we tend to distribute our parochial values over the whole of the population we are familiar with. This is good and necessary, as we need some ad hoc measures to deal with our immediate survival, weather as a person, a family, a village, or on up. It is a matter of getting along with the cards we are dealt so we can survive and hopefully prosper.

But then there is a clash. Different minds ordered to different parochial considerations meet and must resolve differences. Usually this is done by force of arms, superior culture, and various forms of pressure. These pressures are rooted in the feeling of “me” being central, and the activities of “me” being necessary for “my” survival, well being, or prospering. This idea even extends to good will and cooperation, to the extent that one person perceives the good of another as their own.

That inclusion of the well being of another being as necessary as our own is the first step, albeit similar to herd or hive instinct, to the kind of maturity of mind that is going in the direction of the health you speak of. And as humans, we wish to account for that feeling of love, good will, and inclusively as distinct from the arbitrary clashes with forces of whatever kind that bring disruption. That accounting is often in religious terms, rightfully attributing the sense of unity to a Source which feels and is needed to be included and acknowledged in relationship.

But here is our current problem: all of our parochial systems for this acknowledgment are now clashing, due to the erasure of the boundaries of distance and communication. Minds as individuals and as groups are deeming other minds as individuals and groups as not only “unhealthy,” but as dangerous. Without going into relative values, we can simply say that different systems of ordering have met, and there is a need for arriving at a commonality of ordering on a heretofore unseen scale.
 
part 2

This can be approached on an individual, group, or larger scale. But we have seen that both science (psychology, in this case,) and religion have failed in practice to meet this need on the required scale. No religion or political system has met the criterion of immediate attraction necessary to dissolve the perceived parochial differences of ad hoc survival on a level fundamental enough to be clearly and easily perceivable by all mankind.

But what could that properly ordered mind behave like? It would have to be ordered on Principles commensurate with the laws of the Universe and with recognition of the commonality of the “I” of each one, irrespective of the contents of “me.” This is a tall order, an an order likely even beyond the cognizance of most individuals. But is ti at this time radically necessary, or the human experiment of igniting the spark of the Divine on this planet may very well fail in abject materialism, even if that materialism is called religion, and like so many of them claims to be the “One, True, and Only.” That in itself is a threat to success, as is abundantly apparent.

But more later. I have an appointment to get to.art
 
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