Talk:Mentally healthy mind

Created. Diagrams coming soon. Perhaps needs a copyedit for flow.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 23:23, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Note the diagrams I did, for some reason, don't always come out; maybe they're being processed or take time, I don't know. I'll check on the diagrams tomorrow. But what is happening is that removing the "underscore" characters in the picture filenames has weird effects; some pictures show, and then other pictures don't show. don't understand this. --Thomas Wright Sulcer 23:48, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Challenges of the article

Tom, I respect your taking this on; it's a bold task. Let me make some general comments.

Care must be taken to avoid having this come across as an essay.

Agreed. My bias I think is pro-Spinoza, like he's my favorite philosopher. But I'm aware of this bias, and want to include contrasting viewpoints, so this thing kept expanding.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 08:40, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

What is the role of Freud and his disciples? Just a correction -- he was a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. Of his closest disciples, Jung split off into a more culturally and spiritually based model. Adler, perhaps, was more of a social psychologist. Some call Freud's model pseudoscience, but I tend to think of it more as prescientific, the next generation or so (e.g., Gestalt, or even Jung's Man and his Symbols) moving into broader context. Of course, today's neuroscience goes in powerful new directions. Where, for example, does an underdeveloped amygdala and poor impulse control fit?

Good stuff. Let me add these perspectives. the underdeveloped amygdala would be in the physical aspects of the brain section.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 08:40, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

While I do believe Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I think it needs better integration and development.

Howard C. Berkowitz 00:41, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Help me improve it? It originally started off kind of what I thought was a simple task, that is, instead of everybody defining mental health in terms of lack of disease, I wanted to positively state what a healthy mind mentally was. The thing kept expanding, however, when I realized how many perspectives there are on this. How to be fair to all of them, and yet knit them together? I thought the idea of using philosophical thinking as a way to help what many consider to be a psychological issue would keep the argument tight, but it kept expanding, since there are different takes on it. I posed it as a kind of challenge to myself to keep me thinking to see how to pull it all together, but maybe the problem is too big, and maybe specific topics should be split off? My thinking is what it needs now is to get even bigger with more references, to try to hone many of the details, and then copyedit it back to size with honing, and see what to do from there. Thanks for reading it.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 08:26, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm looking over it, and I think the key to make it less essayish is more references, more information. But I have the sense that this thing somehow grew beyond my grasp, like I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 14:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Also I'd like to do with this what you (HB) did excellently with Cloud computing, that is, kept making it better and better, as well as Philosophy of Spinoza which needs selective revamping. What I find is when I work on parts of it, it's tough keeping the big picture in mind. Howard, do you have any thoughts in this regard?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 14:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

When I first contributed a chapter to a textbook, my mentor and primary author figuratively flogged, scourged, and clubbed me whenever I used a term without first defining it. Of course, that was a paper book without the possibility of links. As you may see in explosives and some of its thicket sounds dangerous, I have been making a point to keep Related Articles at least updated with new terms, and often stop writing in order to fill in those terms at least as lemmas. Note here, however, that you and I have different styles in deciding if something is a "new term"; I am less prone to linking what I consider to be "ordinary words".

There's no doubt in my mind, however, that people mentioned should be linked. A little later...I am quietly at the keyboard hoping Mr. Clark, my cat, will emerge from hiding so I can give him his medicine...I'll go to Sigmund Freud/Related Articles and fill in both the breakaway disciples such as Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, and others such as Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. I'm not sure I can adequately do a history, though, of the next generation, with people such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Abraham Maslow. Fritz Perls and gestalt psychology are a little later, but are focused more on wellness than treatment, and the Human Potential Movement went even further in that direction.

I've had conversations with Roger Lohmann about the "medicalization of social work", which, I think, fits in here somewhere. As originally designed, social work was a wellness discipline, to integrate people into society. My mother was a social worker who did psychotherapy, but considered psychotherapy one of her tools rather than the core of her work. Today, a great many social workers seem to want to be pure psychotherapists, which I consider the proper discipline of clinical psychology or a pure "counseling" education.

So, think of Related Articles as a way on staying on focus, and also the chronological evolution of the idea of mental health. I suspect we might come up with a branching and merging timeline, beginning with some of the social workers and social reformers, then changes with Freud's effects, and the start of a wellness divergence with Perls, or perhaps the National Training Laboratories in 1947 (i.e., educational theorists also get involved). Howard C. Berkowitz 16:03, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Excellent ideas. Let me know what I can do. (Right now the weekend I have errands & such). Maybe a history of mental health issues would be a good article here? I think the others -- Jung and Adler and Perls and maybe more, belong in here too. What I was thinking of adding was a section on interpersonal relations -- this is definitely part of mental health, but it introduces complications too (since people are emotional). But I think a big part of being optimally mentally healthy is having good relationships, and this leads in to other topics I'm working on, such as romantic love and love and others I plan to write such as friendship. --Thomas Wright Sulcer 20:07, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I was planning to expand CZ's stuff on the emotions to work in conjunction with articles like this one as well as Philosophy of Spinoza, maybe somewhat of a thicket. About the wikilinks for people: definitely agree. About wikilinks for ordinary words; I write so quickly that I don't have time to ponder in each instance whether it might be helpful or not to some future topic. The word act, for example, sounds ordinary, but it links up both theater as well as philosophy (Hamlet talked about acting as not only a way my play a role, but to achieve things, and Shakespeare thought of acting in both of these senses.) It might relate to a future article in Spinoza's philosophy of active vs. passive, which further relates to here on this topic of mental health. But I didn't think about this when wikilinking the word "action" or "active" or "act"; rather, I just did it. But most of the time I'm writing so quickly, and don't have time to think wikilink or not, and put it in; it's not hard to yank them out later. But I agree we probably don't need lemmas about every mundane subject which we can probably safely assume that people already know. When I think about whether to write a lemma (1 line) or short stub article (paragraph or two) then I can consider for a moment if it's a good choice. If it's unusual, people unlikely to know what it means, or if it's potentially important to other subjects, then I'll probably do it.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 20:07, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. Further complicating things about relationships -- interpersonal, or perhaps the I-thou relationship of a cloistered nun or monk? Is an artist or scientist in a self-actualized state, which is totally centered on creativity and leaves no room for interpersonal relationships, healthy?

Vaguely apropos of Freud's disciples, if one doesn't know the proper pronunciation of Karen Horney's name, one can argue she lived too soon. Assuming the presumably "obvious" pronunciation, how could Dr. Phil or Dr. Ruth competed? --Howard C. Berkowitz 20:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I sat in a theater one row behind the actual Dr. Ruth. My mother was with me there in NYC. I wanted so badly to lean forward and engross her in some kind of conversation in order to hear her say the word eee WRECK she own. I love hearing her say that word. But out of politeness and since I bet, as a celebrity, she's bothered all the time by people, I kept mum. --Thomas Wright Sulcer 20:26, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

About the questions about the artist or scientist vs cloistered nun or monk. I think it all depends on our value systems. My sense is most famous or powerful people, in order to meet the demands of fame and the burdens of celebrity, often have very little time for families or love or others; they must be exceptionally driven to succeed. What about you: do you see yourself as a mentally healthy person?

Well, I was declared sane by the U.S. Department of Defense. Bwahahaha!

More seriously -- it's a work in progress. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Myself: I think I'm healthy in some ways, but could use tweaking in others. But I think it's up to each of us to pick some kind of value system, find what makes us happy (whether it's being famous, having a family, etc) and then working to that. I think the less optimally happy people are ones who know what they'd like, or what would make them happy, but don't get there.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 20:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Another part of this is: when environment and background and health holds people back. Like, I couldn't choose my parents; you couldn't choose yours. A person may be born with substandard IQ. What then? Life isn't fair. It's hard for people with troubled backgrounds to realize their full potential.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 20:26, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Again on the slightly silly, I have an odd mixed-family-adoption background, so, arguably, I did have some choice in parents -- didn't necessarily make the best choices, though.

Again more seriously, look at your definition of living well, and contrast it with the Buddhist ideal of doing away with emotion and pain. Thing of Stoic or Spartan models. I could go on, but I think you are focused on a specific culture -- and a far liberal and a libertarian would disagree as well. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Stoic, Spartans, Buddhism, good stuff, will put in. Expanding offline. Plus it needs more outside perspective from journals & academic sources & such. Then it will need some kind of copyedit for flow, when it gets too big, it sometimes gets chunky, you know what I mean. Cool that you could choose your parents somewhat, didn't think of it that way.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:52, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Expansion underway

It's getting bigger (offline). If others are interested in working on this, let me know, but it's still growing at this point. (Monday apr 26)--Thomas Wright Sulcer 11:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Update. It's better, still not perfect, and I have the feeling that I'm too close to it like I don't have enough perspective? Does it still sound like an essay? And is there a way to fix this? I tried to add new perspectives. It has more references now. My sense is the best thing for me to do at this point is let it sit and perhaps come back to it in a month or so, re-read it, and see what pops out at me then about how to fix it. In the meantime, if others have comments or suggestions, I'll interested, but I don't plan to work on this for a while.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC)