[xmca] Re: mental health

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Your English is just fine, Armando.
The question that remains, which perhaps others can contribute to, is what
you mean by healthy.
>From your remarks below, you emphasize, with respect to individual
subjectivity,

Those contradictions generate a lot of discomforts, anguish, anxieties,
maladjustment, and hopelessness.

Since in some degree, each of these characteristics are part of everyone's
subjective experience of
the world (e.g., the experience from the perspective of the individual),
what is NOT healthy? My initial guess is that
maladjustment is not in the same category as the other characteristics you
name, and that "unhealthy" may be
as much defined by the social group.

In USSR, Zeigarnik studied extreme conditions of mental illness in cultural
historical tradition. Vasiliuk's book on
Perezhivanie, which takes Raskolnikov as a central object of analaysis is
certainly relevant. Bratus has work
on alcoholism that is probably relevant. At least some of this work is
probably available in article form, and some
must be in Spanish.

Its a lot fo think about. Thank you for the clarification. Lets see what
others have to say and i will try do so as well.

mike
On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Armando Perez <armandop@uclv.edu.cu>wrote:

> IN ORDER TO AVOID CONFUSION I HAVE CHANGE THE HEADING OF THE E-MAIL
>
> Mike, this is my answer to your question.
>
> It´s very difficult for me to answer your question directly.
>
> --In the scope of mental health, I should want to work the relation between
> person, culture and society from the point of view of subjectivity, but
> taking into account that there are a dialectics (from Hegel, Marx, Lenin)
> between individual subjectivity, collective subjectivity and social
> subjectivity (an interpenetration of one in another; as mediational)
>
> For me mental health is the health of a person integrated in a healthy
> ¿context?
>
> That why I will stay on this idea, idea that I have work from community (or
> we, in the Center for Studying Community). We work from the communitarian
> as
> a quality of human groups, a specific quality. By no way could be an
> individual healthy without a healthy environment (collective, social). I
> speek about a healthy subjectivity and studying this I´m studying the
> system
> of contradictions in which a huan being (a community) develops its life.
> Those contradictions generate a lot of discomforts, anguish, anxieties,
> maladjustment, and hopelessness. That why for considering that a person, a
> community is becoming health they need to integrate the critical reflection
> of its contradictions and fight with effort in order to transform itself,
> his community. (Or the community as a whole).
>
> In my mind, there are no possibilities to articulate the mental health in
> an
> unique axis for working it.
>
> There is a dialectics bet/ intrapersonal, interpersonal and social
> relationships and its reflection and praxis looking for transformation.
> (this means the transformation of everyday life) That is mental health,
> that
> creates mental health. To identify contradictions through a critical
> consciousness and work for practical purpose as a way of transforming
> ¿context?. That is a mentally healthy human being, a subjectively healthy
> people. Of course, also a subjectively healthy community.
>
> That is why I'm in needs of ideas, commentaries, research that were done
> from the point of view of Cultural Historical Psychology and/or CHAT.
>
> Armando
> Sorry for my Writing English
>
>
>
> Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas. http://www.uclv.edu.cu
>
> - IV Conferencia Internacional de ECOMATERIALES. Hotel Sierra Maestra.
> Bayamo, del 24 al 27 de noviembre de 2009
> - Universidad 2010, La Habana, del 8 al 12 de febrero de 2010.
> http://www.universidad2010.cu
>
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