Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to propose a sociological definition of mental health problems and practices. Due to the wide range of practices (from psychosis to self-help), this task is approached as a global idiom, enabling the formulation of multiple tensions and conflicts of contemporary modern life, and providing answers for acting on them—in the family, work and workplace, between couples, in education, etc. The centrality of emotional issues in our society can be described as a form of “mandatory expression” (Marcel Mauss), which characterizes an attitude toward contingency or adversity in a global context where autonomy is the supreme value. From this perspective, mental health can be seen as an individualistic way of dealing with what the ancients called the ‘passions’; it is the name individualistic society has given to what was referred to as the ‘passions’. Mental health is concerned with our ways of being affected by our ways of acting, and our ways of acting on these afflictions. A transversal viewpoint is presented, of which depression is only one aspect, at three intertwined levels of changes regarding: (1) the configuration of values and norms; (2) the concept of mental health; (3) the type of knowledge that dominates psychiatry and mental health fields, that is, the progressive replacement of psychoanalysis by cognitive neuroscience as the main type of knowledge of the human mind since the 1980s.
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Notes
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My translation.
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A recent example among many: “In recent years, however, dyslexia research has taken a surprising turn: identifying the ways in which people with dyslexia have skills that are superior to those of typical readers. The latest findings on dyslexia are leading to a new way of looking at the condition: not just as an impediment, but as an advantage, especially in certain artistic and scientific fields.” A. M. Paul, The Upside of Dyslexia, The New York Times, February 4th, 2012. One week later, John Tierney published a “What’s New? Exuberance for Novelty Has Benefits”, The New York Times, February 13th, 2012: “Those are the kinds of questions used to measure novelty-seeking, a personality trait long associated with trouble. As researchers analyzed its genetic roots and relations to the brain’s dopamine system, they linked this trait with problems like attention deficit disorder, compulsive spending and gambling, alcoholism, drug abuse and criminal behavior. Now, though, after extensively tracking novelty-seekers, researchers are seeing the upside. In the right combination with other traits, it’s a crucial predictor of well-being.” “It can lead to antisocial behavior,” declares a psychiatrist, “but if you combine this adventurousness and curiosity with persistence and a sense that it’s not all about you, then you get the kind of creativity that benefits society as a whole .”
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Ehrenberg, A. (2016). Beyond Depression: Personal Equation from the Guilty to the Capable Individual. In: Wakefield, J., Demazeux, S. (eds) Sadness or Depression?. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7423-9_4
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