The International Congress on Mental Health, and the Layman
- Author:
WALLIS
Hon. Secretary, Windsor Mental Health Association Men and women whose daily work is not in the field of Mental Health are looking to the forthcoming International Congress* with increasingly hopeful interest. Why is this and how far are they justified ?
Firstly, the very concept of Mental Health represents to the layman something constructive. Beset by specialists, bureaucrats and planners, all emitting their own jargon, he longs to hear someone talk sense about things which matter in his daily life, someone who realizes we are still individuals and not mere hypothetical units. And the layman knows something the experts sometimes forget, that common-sense is only talked by those who understand human nature. If Mental Health means anything at all, he reflects, it must surely mean just that, understanding human nature.
Next, the layman has noticed that at any rate three of the agencies concerned with human nature have successfully amalgamated. In an age of analysis, specialization and splitting-up of knowledge, he regards this achievement as almost * International Congress on Mental Health organized by the National Association for Mental Health, to be held in London, August 11th to 21st, 1948.
portentous. At the very lowest it must signify a common objective and that, in a period of post-war disillusion, strikes him as decidedly encouraging. Thirdly, he has noticed that two oltf ding-dong controversies have been quietened, namely, mind versus body and individual versus environment. The word Psychosomatic has sent the former back to the detached realms of philosophical and abstract dispute (where it is harmless), and the trend of interpreting human affairs in terms of relationships has unclenched the fists of the latter arguments and joined their hands. Mental Health seems to whisper that, after all, we are not entirely battlegrounds or resultants but men and women to whom creative co-operation is still a possibility. Fourthly, psychiatrists themselves have been seen and heard on the public lecture platform and have even entered into discussion with laymen on matters of equal importance to both. They have been heard to talk common-sense, to be undogmatic and yet constructive and helpful. Most important of all, they have been seen to be human and their influence has enormously widened. Moreover, social workers have come on the scene, to help in practical ways and to act as interpreters in theoretical matters. The idea of a team, as in Child Guidance work, reinforces in the layman the growing feeling that Mental Health has an intelligible contribution to make to our difficulties and that its workers mean business. We have advanced far from the widespread feeling among the uninitiated that is expressed by a quip of Mr. Noel Coward’s, about ” enduring months of expensive humiliation only to be told at last that at the age of four one fell in love with the rocking-horse “.
Unfortunately, however, knowledge that emerges from laboratory, clinic or consulting-room to ” capture the imagination ” of laymen has a way of being over-valued and misrepresented as a panacea. That mankind is today searching not so much for a solution to its problems but for a direction in which solutions may be found, is obvious. That the field of Mental Health holds some promise is certain. The coming International Congress gives point to the question: How much help can we reasonably expect from Mental Health, not only in individual difficulties, but in sociological problems that are inseparable from them ? This is the question behind the public attention which will presently bear upon the deliberations of the delegates. What are the prospects ?
A glance at the provisional programme must at least absolve the organizers from any charge of lacking courage. Topics for the Mental Hygiene conference include Problems of World Citizenship and good Group Relationships and also The Individual and Society. These are the two whose implications are widest and least sectarian. It is to be hoped that the organizers will not allow their vision to be limited by those who shrink from such vast issues. Unless it is to be a misnomer, Mental Health must attempt to grasp these vital sociological issues and point a way.
The controversial nature of such a project can already be seen in the Bulletins issued by the Preparatory Commissions. It begins with a plea by Dr Henry A. Murray from America for ” an orienting principle on the top level, that is, a positive conception of health?in terms of energy, development and happiness “. Some perhaps will feel that such an ” orienting principle ” cannot be achieved deliberately any more than society can be forced into a religion because it is seen to lack spiritual values. Dr Murray continues “This positive conception should be discussed in terms of its determinants?for a society and for the individual. One of the most important determinants is an overall ideology …”
Now this might threaten to turn at least one or two sessions into something savouring of a revivalist or political meeting. A word of sympathetic interest and caution is added by Professor J. C. Flugel. He comments that ” while the Mental Health of any individual or group implies the existence of values “, … ” the sphere of Mental Health, widely as we have ventured to define it, is yet not co-terminous with that of religion, moral philosophy, politics or economics “. Moreover, he says, in healing a patient’s body the doctor does not question the purpose for which it will be used nor is the psychotherapist usually concerned with the ends for which the patient’s mental powers will be used. He suggests that there is enough to do in removing obstacles to health and that human beings can be left to discover and pursue their own ends.
Our interested layman, one feels, will expect something between the ideology of Dr Murray and the cautious detachment of Professor Flugel. The conception of Mental Health, by embracing relationships in its study, cannot evade sociological values. In fitting a person for life in the community, the psychotherapist as much as the parent or educator must do something more than remove obstacles to health and leave the individual to find his own values. There are surely real values which can be believed in and proclaimed without evolving an external ideology. The attitude to the individual or the group can be one of an invitation to cooperate, neither detached nor authoritarian. One recalls a remark from J. S. Mill: ” What more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be ? Or what worse can be said of any obstruction to good than that it prevents this ? ” Surely our layman can reasonably expect that Mental Health will have something to say on how human beings may be brought ” nearer to the best thing they can be “. If not, who can ?
Whether we like it or not, our layman next August will be asking with Dr Murray: ” If social scientists cannot rise above their little group concerns and rivalries?and give an example of real Collaboration on an over-all level?what hope is there for the world ? “
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