In recent years, mental health has begun to be regarded as nothing more than a product similar to a healthy diet, which should include having a proper proportion of love and security, constructive toys, healthy companions, frank sex education, normal venting of emotions and proper control. This kind of psychological feast with balanced nutrition will inevitably remind people of boiled vegetables in nutritionists' kitchens, which are rich in nutrition, but can't lift their appetite. The child cultivated with this psychological feast is likely to grow into a well-adapted but boring person.
However, what we call mental health is not only the product of a nutritious psychological feast, but the result of a complex psychological system constantly acting on personal experience, reacting, adapting, absorbing and integrating it, and persistently maintaining the balance between our internal needs and external needs. Mental health depends on the balance between physiological needs, instinct and external requirements, but this balance can never be regarded as immutable. The process of adjusting instinct, desire, desire and pursuing pure self-centeredness according to social norms occurs in higher psychological activities. It is the part of personality that is most closely related to consciousness and reality that performs this important function. It is the conscious self that undertakes these functions of adjustment and mediation, and it will do so as long as it is awake in one's life.
Don't mistakenly think that satisfaction, that is, "happiness", is the standard of mental health. Mental health needs to be judged not only by the proportion of the relatively harmonious part of human self, but also by the degree of the highest social value that a civilized person can achieve. If a child takes getting rid of fear so seriously that he dare not take risks for an ideal or principle all his life, then such mental health is useless to human happiness. If a child is "safe" but has no other pursuit except personal safety, then this kind of safety itself is worthless. If a child "completely adapts to the group", but this adaptation is achieved by uncritically accepting and obeying the opinions of others, then this adaptation also violates the original intention of human freedom. If a child "adapts well in school" but only has mediocre ideas and common sense in his mind, what kind of culture will value this child's "adaptability"?
The highest state of mental health means that a person can freely use his intelligence to solve his own problems and the human problems facing the society. The free use of intelligence needs to remove self-satisfaction and self-centeredness from the higher human psychological process of reasoning and judgment as much as possible.
The training of children's mental health must include the training of intelligence. Children's emotional health depends not only on meeting their basic physiological needs, but also on making full use of their intelligence. The highest level of mental health must also include a stable and complete value system, which is the combination of people's moral sense and ideal self, deeply rooted in the inviolable and indestructible personality structure. In a personality lacking such a value system, we cannot talk about mental health. If the mental health is assessed by such imprecise standards as "personal satisfaction" or "group adaptation", it can be predicted that a juvenile offender may achieve personal satisfaction to the greatest extent when pursuing his own goals, and his adaptation to criminal gangs will be as satisfactory as you think.
On the one hand, it is people's basic needs and self-centered desires, on the other hand, it is the limitation of moral sense and social needs. Therefore, in theory, mental health depends on the individual's maintenance of the balance between the two. Usually, we don't realize these two forces in our character. However, when we have some impulses or desires in our minds that go against the moral sense, or realize that these impulses or desires cannot be satisfied in reality for various reasons, conflicts arise. In this case, the ego will play the role of referee or mediator in these two opposing forces.
A healthy self, like a wise and fair judge, will try to find a solution that satisfies both parties to the dispute. When there is no conflict between personal desires and moral sense or social needs, ego will allow personal desires to be directly satisfied; Otherwise, the ego will guide individuals to indirectly satisfy their wishes in a flexible way. For example, if a person finds himself aggressive to an overbearing boss and feels that he can't express himself directly without serious consequences, then if he has a healthy self, this self can put the energy contained in this forbidden impulse into the action of finding constructive solutions. At least, he can daydream and force his boss to be quiet and get comfort from it. If he has an unhealthy self, he will lack mediation ability and be powerless to such conflicts, so he may give up his duties and let himself vent his dissatisfaction in a neurotic way.
Whenever a potential personality conflict shows signs of an open outbreak, people's expectation of danger will cause anxiety. Then, anxiety will start the neurotic defense mechanism again in the process of self-protection and compromise. In fact, anxiety plays an extensive and beneficial role in personality adaptability.
Anxiety is not always harmful.
In the normal development of human beings, real and imagined dangers will be manifested in various forms. If the ego can't find a way to deal with danger, it will fall into long-term helplessness and panic. The instinctive reaction to danger is anxiety. At the beginning of life, babies act as if any accident is dangerous to them. For example, a sudden loud noise or sudden exposure to strong light may make him "stunned." Later, as the baby's attachment to his mother deepens, he will feel anxious about his mother disappearing from his sight, which is still a reaction similar to shock. A lot of similar situations can cause baby's anxiety. If the baby's reaction to all this is always frightened and helpless, then it is almost impossible for him to survive in this world.
However, we will soon find that the number of such "dangers" has decreased. Repeated experience can help the baby overcome the sense of danger, and the "stunned" reaction will weaken to a slight surprise or surprise. At the same time, babies have begun to develop another ability to deal with "dangers" (these dangers are dangerous for babies, but not for us adults). He learned to foresee "danger" and prepare for it. Moreover, he is preparing for danger with anxiety! In the later stage of the baby's development, once he gets close to his bed or even walks into his room, he will have some anxiety, then cry and protest. He had foreseen that his mother would leave this terrible thing and prepared herself by generating anxiety before it happened. This anxiety caused by expectation can help him cope with the pain of separation from his mother.
Therefore, we should realize that anxiety itself is not a pathological condition, but a necessary and normal physical and psychological preparation taken by individuals when dealing with danger. In fact, in some cases, lack of anticipation anxiety may lead to neurosis! Those who were scared away by the tragic war, for one reason or another, did not develop the necessary anticipation anxiety to prepare them for the danger, so they could not avoid traumatic neurosis. In some cases, anxiety is crucial to human survival. Lack of awareness of the danger and lack of preparation may lead to disastrous consequences. In addition, we find that anxiety helps people achieve their highest goals. In fact, the anxiety of performing artists before they take the stage may prompt them to play the highest level.
Anxiety is conducive to children's social development, and it is one of the motives for children to gain conscience. It is precisely because those who are afraid of being loved criticize and desire to be loved that children form a conscience; It is precisely because of the fear of conscience condemnation that people are prompted to act in line with moral standards. At first, out of fear of genocide, different human groups lived closely together for each other's safety. We can continue to prove this danger and the necessity of resisting it with a long list of human inventions and human systems, and how they provide impetus for human beings to pursue the highest level of civilization.
Of course, we know that anxiety is not always beneficial to individuals or society. Failure to cope with danger will make people feel helpless, lose confidence and lead to escape or anti-social behavior. Only under these circumstances can we regard anxiety as pathological. However, to be more accurate, this way of solving problems or trying to solve problems in this way is morbid.