Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health

The Need to Look Elsewhere for Standards of Good Psychological Health

Steven James Bartlett

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780313399312
• eBook ISBN: 9780313399329
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How do you define good mental health? This controversial, counterintuitive, and altogether fascinating book argues that "psychological normality" is neither a desirable nor an acceptable standard. Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health: The Need to Look Elsewhere for Standards of Good Psychological Health is a groundbreaking work, the first book-length study to question the equation of psychological normality and mental health. Its author, Dr. Steven James Bartlett, musters compelling evidence and careful analysis to challenge the paradigm accepted by mental health theorists and practitioners, a paradigm that is not only wrong, but can be damaging to those to whom it is applied—and to society as a whole. In this bold, multidisciplinary work, Bartlett critiques the presumed standard of normality that permeates contemporary consciousness. Showing that the current concept of mental illness is fundamentally unacceptable because it is scientifically unfounded and the result of flawed thinking, he argues that adherence to the gold standard of psychological normality leads to nothing less than cultural impoverishment.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Conventions
• Introduction
• Part I. Normality and Mental Health
• Part II. Psychology During a Collapse of Culture
• Part III. Beyond Long-standing Facts
• Part IV. In Retrospect
• Appendix I. An Apology to Lovers of Humanity?
• Appendix II. Practical Speculations, or Speculative Practices
• Appendix III. The Distribution of Mental Health
• References
• Index