NORMALITY
Positive psychology
 A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-
being from World Health Organization
Behavioral Normality
 Patterns of behavior or personality traits that are
typical or conform to a standard, proper and
acceptable ways of behaving
 George Mora
o A pszchiatrist, devised a szstem to describe
the diferrent behavioral manifestations
o Defined different terms in different context
Figure 1. George Mora’s Normalitz in Context
MENTAL HEALTH
 "a state of well-being in which the individual realizes
his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal
stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully,
and is able to make a contribution to his or her
community" by World Health Organization
 Absence of psychopathology and synonymous with
normal
 Alleviate gross pathologic signs and symptoms of
illness.
 Kaplan: Absence of psychopathology and synonymous
with normal. It can also be defined as an antonym of
mental illness.
DEFINING MENTAL HEALTH
1. "Average is not healthy"
 Average is the mixture of healthy and
psychopathology
2. Healthy sometimes depends on geography, culture and
historical moment
3. Is it a trait or state?
 Trait is the characteristic behavior and feelings that
are consistent and long lasting.
 State is the temporary behavior and feelings that
depends on a person’s situation and motives at a
particular time.
4. "Contamination by values"
 The last and most important step is to appreciate
the two-fold danger of contamination by values.
MODELS OF MENTAL HEALTH
6 Different Approaches
1. Above normal and a mental state that is objectively
desirable
 Sigmund Freud’s definition of mental health, which is
the capacity to work and to love.
2. Maturity
3.
4. Emotional intelligence and successful object relations
5. Subjective well-being
 Subjectively experienced as happy, contented, and
desired.
6. Resilience
 Capacity for successful adaptation and homeostasis.
MODEL A: Mental Health as Above Normal
 Differs from the traditional medical approach to health
and illness
 Health refers to a reasonable, rather than optimal,
state of functioning.
 Mental health is not normal; it is above average.
MODEL B: Mental Health as Maturity
 Brain development = Mental health
o Optimal brain development requires almost a
lifetime, so does positive mental health.
 Adult mental health reflects a continuing process of
maturational unfolding (e.g. physically healthy 70
year old are mentally healthier than 30 year old)
o The association of mental health to maturity
is probably mediated not only by progressive
myelination but also by the evolution of
emotional and social intelligence through
experience.
o Erik Erikson
 conceptualized that such
development produces a widening
social radius.
 Evolution of emotional and social intelligence through
experience
Erik Erikson: "Widening Social Radius"
 "Identity vs Identity Diffusion"
 "Intimacy vs Isolation"
 "Generativity vs Stagnation"
 "Integrity vs Despair"
A. Identity
 Adolescents must achieve Identity that allows them to
become separate from their parents
 Mastering the last task of childhood: Sustained
separation from social, residential, economic, and
ideological dependence of family of origin
B. Intimacy
 Permits them to become reciprocally, and not
selfishly, involved with a partner.
C. Career Consolidation
 Usually mastered together with or that follows the
mastery of intimacy.
 Permits adults to find a career as valuable as they
once found play.
 Four crucial developmental criteria that transform job
or hobby into career: 4Cs
o Contentment
o Compensation
o Competence
o Commitment
  schizophrenic and individuals with severe personality
disorder
o Often manifest a lifelong inability to achieve
either intimacy or sustain gratifying
employment.
D. Generativity
 Demonstration of a clear capacity to care for and
guide the next generation.
 Between age 35 and 55 years old
o Need for achievement declines
o Need for community and affiliation increases
 The capacity to give the self away
 Strongly correlated with successful adaptation to old
age
E. Integrity
 Task of achieving some sense of peace and unity with
respect both to one's life and to the whole world
MODEL C: Mental Health as Positive or "Spiritual"
Emotions
 Defines both mental and spiritual health as the
amalgam of the positive emotions that bind us to
other human beings.
 Important positive and "moral" emotions
o Love
o Hope
o Joy
o Forgiveness
o Compassion
o Faith
o Awe
o Gratitude
Figure 2. positive vs negative emotions
Evidence for Positive Emotions
 Paul MacLean (1950s)
o Limbic structures govern the mammalian
capacity to remember (cognition), play (joy),
cry out of separation (faith/trust), and to
take care of one's self (love)
 fMRI studies
o Individuals subjectively experience existential
states of fear, sadness, or pleasure, blood
flow increases in limbic areas and decreases
in many higher brain areas
 Various studies have located human pleasurable
experiences in limbic areas, especially in the
orbitofrontal region, anterior cingulate and insula.
LIMBIC SYSTEM
 Anterior cingulate gyrus
o Links valence and memory to create
attachment
o Brain region most responsible for making the
past meaningful
o Receives one of the richest dopaminergic
innervations
o Crucial in directing who we should approach
and who we should avoid
 Prefrontal Cortex
o ln charge of estimating rewards and
punishment
o Critical role in adapting and regulating
emotional response to new situations
o Prefrontal lobes are deeply involved in
emotional, "moral", and "spiritual" lives
o Take note: A surgical or traumatic ablation of
the ventro- medial prefrontal cortex can turn
a conscientious responsible adult into a
moral imbecile.
 Insula
o Medial cortical gyrus located between the
amygdala and frontal lobe
o Active in the positive emotions of humor,
trust, and empathy
o Contains neurons that appear to mediate
empathy insula
MODEL D: Mental Health as Socioemotional
Intelligence
 Views mental health as socioemotional intelligence
stating that if you have high socioemotional
intelligence, it reflects as above average mental
health.
 In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined
socioemotional intelligence as:
o "Anyone can become angry - that is easy.
But to be angry with the right person, to the
right degree, at the right time, for the right
purpose, and in the right way - that is not
easy."
 Seven emotions currently distinguished according to
facial expressions
o Anger
o Fear
o Excitement
o Interest
o Surprise
o Disgust
o Sadness
 The capacity to identify these different emotions in
ourselves and in other play an important role in
mental health.
 Social and emotional intelligence can be defined by
the following criteria:
o Accurate conscious perception and
monitoring of one's emotions
o Modification of emotions so that their
expression is appropriate
  Capacity to self-suit personal
anxiety and to shake off
hopelessness
o Accurate recognition of and response to
emotions in others
o Skill in negotiating close relationships with
others
o Capacity for focusing emotions toward a
desired goal.
 involves delayed gratification and
adaptively displacing and
channeling impulse
Advances in Studying Emotional Intelligence
 Three important empirical steps have been taken into
our understanding of the relationship of
socioemotional intelligence to positive mental health
2. Conscious cognitive strategies
3. Adaptive involuntary coping mechanisms ("defense
mechanisms")
 Distort our perception of external and internal reality
in order to reduce subjective distress, anxiety and
depression
Involuntary Coping Mechanisms
 "Defense mechanisms"
 Reduce conflict and cognitive dissonance during
sudden changes in internal and external reality.
 Shields us from sudden changes in the four lodestars
of conflict:
o Impulse
o Reality
o People
o Social learning.

First step 1. Impulse

 fMRI studies and neurophysiological experimentations  Restore psychological homeostasis by ignoring or
 Advances in the understanding of the integration of deflecting sudden increases in the lodestar of impulse
prefrontal cortex with the limbic system - affect and emotion.
 Prefrontal cortex: working memory  Termed:
 Frontal lobes, amygdala, hippocampus and other o Psychoanalyst:"id"
limbic structures: emotional learning o Religious fundamentalists:"sin"
o Psychologist:"hot cognition"
Second step
o Neuroanatomists: hypothalamic and limbic
 Conceptualizing and measuring "emotional
regions of brain
intelligence"
2. Reality
Third step
 Provide mental time-out to sudden changes in reality
 Use of videotape to chart emotional interaction
and self-image, which cannot be immediately
integrated
MODEL E: Mental Health as Subiective Well-Being
 A positive mental health does not just involves being
3. People
joy to others. One must also experience subjective
 Can mitigate sudden unresolvable conflict with
wellbeing
important people.
 Subjective well-being is not just the absence of
misery, but the presence of positive contentment.
4. Social Learning
 "Happiness"
 The fourth source of conflict or anxious conflict is
 In some instances environment can be important to
social learning or conscience
subjective well being
 Termed:
 The maintenance of self-efficacy, agency, and
o Psychoanalyst:"super ego",
autonomy make additional environmental
o Anthropologist: "taboos"
contributions to subiective well-being
 The maintenance of self-efficacy, agency, and o Behaviorist: "conditioning”
autonomy make additional environmental o Neuroanatomist: associative cortex and
contributions to subjective well-being amygdala
PLEASURE  Formed by our whole identification, with culture, and
 In the moment sometimes by irreversible learning resulting from
 Closely allied with happiness overwhelming trauma.
 Satisfaction of impulse and biological needs
 Satisfaction of senses and emotions Healthy Involuntary Mental Mechanisms
 HUMOR
GRATIFICATION o Makes life easier
 Involves joy, purpose, and the satisfaction of "being o Discharge of emotion without individual
the best you can be" discomfort and without unpleasant effects
 Satisfaction of aesthetic and spiritual needs upon others
 ALTRUISM
o Individual getting pleasure from giving to
MODEL F: Mental Health as Resilience others what the individual would have liked
 Three coping mechanisms used to overcome stressful to receive.
situations:  SUBLIMATION
1. Consciously seeking social support
 o Energy associated with unacceptable
impulses or drives is diverted into personally
and socially acceptable channels

 SUPPRESSION
o Modulates emotional conflict or
internal/external stressors through stoicism.
o Defense most highly associated with other
facets of mental health.
o Stoicism
 Endurance of pain or hardship
without the display of feelings or
without complain.
 ANTICIPATION
o Capacity to keep affective response to an
unbearable future event in mind in
manageable doses