Attended a talk related to mental health issues this morning. Some good points made with an appealing explanation of the notion of us occupying an insecure position on a shifting continuum of mental health. But I was struck by a paradoxical aspect of that model. Whilst it's straightforward enough to identify the negative pole of the continuum it's not so easy to give a convincing account of what might be seen as optimal mental health. The version we were given was essentially, and understandably, functional in nature - the idea that the mentally healthy individual can function socially with success.
Now it's easy to see the logic of this, and in some ways the model is useful. But isn't it missing something, a sense that there may be possibilities beyond simply functioning, fitting in, as it were? Yet getting a clear picture of what that optimal state might be is, almost by definition, beyond us since it's so hard to recognise what we ourselves don't possess.
Could it be that the state we're thinking about is such that it escapes definition, yet we somehow know it when we see it in somebody else - if we're lucky enough to meet someone who's truly, deeply sane?
No comments:
Post a Comment