Positive Mental Health, Western Society and the Family

Abstract

POSITIVE mental health is used as a bio-adaptive concept, operationally defined in terms of four components : emotional capital (EC), autonomy (A), self-regula tion (SR) and competence (C). It is argued that the current adaptive crisis of Western man is due, amongst other factors, to the failure of key social institutions in Western Society, including the family, to provide conditions conducive to the development and/or exercise of these components of mental health. Western man's solutions to this adaptive crisis are shown to fall into two categories—one, representing destructive (anarchist) and the other, a constructive approach. The position is taken that the latter approach needs to be applied more extensively in the functional rehabilitation of the family.