Erich Fromm on Mental Health (1960)

if we continue with our kind of mental health for a few Generations more then I think we are uh at a point where psychologically any productive society would break up and deteriorate um in fact I want to say one thing it's one thing whether a person has symptoms and is aware of not being well and it's quite another thing whether a person has very little of psychic well-being but is not a aware of it because he is able to kill himself by all sorts of avenues of escape and I believe that a great number of so-called normal people objectively speaking are more sick than a number of people who consider themselves neurotic because they aware of their symptoms how in fact can this be Dr F that a person can be sick and yet feel no effects have no symptoms of this sickness for a very simple reason in the first place because everybody El is just as sick and like in Well's uh short story of the land of the land of the blind uh people consider normal that which everybody else shares with them but specifically our culture offers a great number of avenues of Escape so uh if people would uh stay alone by themselves for 3 days without radio and drinking and cigarettes or anything else we would have 100 thousand of nervous breakdowns but we offer to our population under the name of fun and pleasure and Leisure Time consumption and whatnot we offer such an amount of Escape escapes of uh Avenues of Escape that people most people forget themselves in fact I would say they forget that they are human in a deeper sense we're talking here about the mental illness mental health let me come right to the point what do you mean by mental health well what I mean by mental health I afraid is different from what many other psychiatrist or psychologists mean by mental health I don't mean to be unfair and I certainly don't mean that this is the opinion of uh all other psychiatrists I hope there are many who don't share this opinion but certainly the opinion of many is that mental health is actually the same as adjustment the same as not being sicker than the average guy the same as being reduced to the socially Uh current level of unhappiness not to be uh not to stick out from the picture of the general run of people now there is another aspect to it many people today Define mental health actually by the absence of sickness sickness uh again defined very often in terms of adjustment lack of adjustment or at least in terms of concrete symptoms like insomnia alcoholism this that and the other I would Define mental health not in terms of absence of sickness but in a positive sense of Wellness of well-being what does this well-being embrace it's a very funny thing what well-being is is very elusive but you see it when you see it in fact you don't have a chance to see it very often because the people who really show a state of well-being are rare today I would say you see it first of all by the vitality and energy in another person but not energy of an obsessional kind uh by the energy in the person who can be alone with himself who can be alone with another person without trying to run away you can see it in the joy of a person but at the same time in his capacity to be sad when there is a reason to be sad you can see it in his unending interest and response to people and to things you can seed in the clarity of his awareness of other people and of situation uh you might even eventually measure it in the mus in the tonus of their muscles you might eventually even measure it physiologically and maybe uh physiologist would have already measured it if they were more interested in well-being rather than the absence of sickness can one measure it in terms of a subjective feeling is this what does it involve this essentially no I think like with any other opinions about oneself most of what people think about their well-being is the delusion there are many people today feel well because they take tranquilizers or Badin or this or that or a drink uh or they have to have fun or they have to act in some obsessional way uh what the statement people make about their own state of well-being or happiness are utterly unreliable if this subject Ive feeling is a poor Criterion and elusory and deceptive one can you give us a positive and accurate Criterion what does it involve I would say the intensity and Clarity of awareness and response to the world the lack of egocentricity and at the same time the intensity of energy and vitality it leads towards a kind of realism then does it with regard to the perception of thing yes indeed uh I would say one could Define well-being also from one angle as a capacity for realism of experiencing the world and oneself as it is and responding to it let's follow up this lead for a moment do you think that uh American society is a realistic Society indeed I don't think that at all I think uh we are probably one of the most unrealistic societies which have ever lived under the sun now in what respect well uh we kid ourselves about love we kid ourselves about our aims we kid ourselves about our individuality when actually we are conforming all the time but I could give uh and I want to give a much more decisive and important example and that is our attitude toward the threat of the self-destruction of the whole world we sit here we know that there is a good chance that not only this country but the whole our whole civilization all we stand for our children and grandchildren will be destroyed completely destroyed by an atomic war and we yet we talk gly about it we have signs for shelter in cities in which we know there will be no shelter if a hydrogen bomb falls on them uh we uh talk about all sorts of measures we talk about Victorious War we talk gly about if War comes then without an awareness except merely intellectually that if War Comes This is the end of all of us and for whole society and this is not only America this is practically the whole world if you would find one person in New York City or any other big city who plays around with a bomb which could kill only thousands of people and uh there's a 50/50 chance that it might go off and he would say well I'm just trying it out and uh well if the people get killed it's just too bad I would regret it but it might be necessary you know very well where the this man would land while practically our whole population behaved in the same manner everybody knows the possibility of the suicide of the human race and only very few people are truly aware of it if that is not lack of realism I don't know what it is you have spoken of this lack of realism as one thing in our society working against mental health are there other things yes uh Mr SM I would say practically everything our culture is concerned primarily with production and consumption of things and in this process of being primarily concerned with things the ever increasing production the ever increasing consumption we ourselves transform ourselves into things without knowing it we lose our individuality in spite of the fact that we talk a lot about it we follow leaders who don't lead we believe that we are acting on our own impulses and convictions and opinions when actually we are manipulated by a whole industry by slogans and yet nobody has any true aim we are alienated from ourselves we don't feel feel much certainly we don't feel intensely all we are after is not to be different and we are frightened to death to be just 2T away from the her and yet we are deceiving ourselves about this Reality by talking all the time in terms of our traditional Heritage of the judeo-christian tradition of humanistic philosophy of individuality and whatnot what is the role Ro of the mental health movement and psychiatry in this situation are they helping well I would hope they did but I'm not so convinced I'm sure some help and some want to help but I'm afraid there is a great danger also in the mental health movement today as there is in Psychiatry psychoanalysis and psych psychology I'm afraid the role of the mental health movement and the role of psychology and Psychiatry are to help to adjust man somewhat more to make him function more smoothly you might say psychology and mental health today is in danger and psychologists are in danger to become the priests of industrial system that is to say to help people adjust to a system where they are supposed to produce and consume in masses in groups directed by Central organization and slogans and yet at the same time not to be aware they are dissatisfied with that they suffer from it they suffer from what the french already called the 18th century L Lal the illness of the century from boredom from the meaninglessness of life now there is a danger in that that they might get sick that they might have manifest symptoms that they might protest that they might might want to make life more meaningful and then many psychologists come and say you shouldn't be dissatisfied if you are dissatisfied that means you're neurotic and will adjust you so that you accept a meaningless life without rebelling against it without symptoms and you will have a nice funeral anyway usually Dr FR we reserve the word insane for individuals do you think it's possible that some societies might be ins Ane but if we mean by in dashane insane a lack of Sanity then indeed I think all societies can be insane and many societies have been insane and I'm afraid we are on the way to a to unless some drastic changes occur but I have to add one remark here there are two concepts of Sanity a society can be sane in the sense that people adjust themselves to it and to its Norms but it can be insane in the Universal sense of what is good for man as he exists in fact all the great Norms whether you take the Ten Commandments or the teachings of Buddha or the teaching of Christ are norms of human sanity which refer to human existence to Mankind and they are all based on the idea also that the loyalty to man and the values in men are higher than the loyalties to Any Given societies and the values represented by it Dr f is it possible for a man to remain sane in today's world yes indeed I think it is and uh certainly men like Dr schwi are a wonderful example that it is possible now most of us are not schwiers in fact this is very rare to be have the genius of a man like Scher but I think it is possible if one tries in the first place to see that certain disappointments certain a certain sense of isolation is a necessary consequence of remaining sane in a world in which there is so little sanity and secondly if one overcomes the sense of isolation by a deep sense of solidarity and Oneness with all those men who have lived on the earth and who have been saned Dr schweiter would be one of them but many of the Great philosophers and religious leaders and great spiritual leaders of the human race whether that Socrates or Buddha or any other have been sane and there are even a few people today quite a few who are sane and who at least are willing to be saan what matters is to have the courage to see reality to speak out and to feel identified with that part of humanity whether it's today or in the past who had one outstanding quality that of being realist in the S sense I have been talking about of seeing the truth and at the same time of not despairing what Dr FR do you see as the prospects for the future I see only one terrific danger and that is that of a war in which we which would end with the extinction of the human race of civilization or at best if one could call it that way with universal fascism whoever wins and for me therefore the question of avoidance of war is the one overriding ethical question which men are confronted with today if we avoid it I am very hopeful about the future because I think man has developed to a gree of rationality and of knowledge and of insight which if he overcomes his one-sided concentration on production of things will then lead him to a culture with a depth of satisfaction which we have never had on Earth

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Keywords: Epistemology, Ontology, Philosophy Overdose, Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy, Marx, Marxism, Political Theory, Frankfurt School, Theory, Socialism, Interview, Freud, Libertarianism, Individualism, Culture, Capitalism, Materialism, Historical Materialism, German Philosophy, Critical Theory, Philosophy, Dialectical Materialism, Alienation, Erich Fromm, Fromm, Psychology, Humanism, Character Orientation, Social Theory, Psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy, Mental Health, Human Nature

Id: QhbSUeL-foU

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2024