Opening of the Way

So Deleuze and Guattari are clear that clinical mental illness is created in the mental health system, its the drugs and its the talk therapy.

But they do say that there is one genuine mental illness, Neuroticism, and it is incurable and it is fatal.

Well, Dabrowski decimates the conventional notions of mental health. He describes that as psychoneurosis.

His idea of Positive Disintegration is something which is happening on multiple levels simultaneously. So there is always intense flux.

And it is always the disintegration of biologically determined and social conformity drive structures. So there is this biologically determined mental development.

Then there is this autonomous mental development, which is what we want. Transends the demands of biology and social norms.

Then there is also this one-sided mental development which is anti-social. It is egocentric and manifests in crime and paranoia.

Dabrowski takes apart the views that Mental Health is the absence of mental disorders or is a state of psychological integration.

Dabrowski's ideas revolve around his concept of Overexcitability.

He writes in 1970:

"
[Overexcitability] first provokes conflicts, disappointments, suffering in familily life, in school, in professional life--in short, it leads to conflicts with the external environment. Overexcitability also provokes inner conflicts as well as the means by which these convlicts can be overcome. Second, overexcitability precipitates psychoneurotic processes, and, third, conflicts and psychoneurotic processes become the dominant factor in accelerated development.
"

Dabrowski called a lot of this "positive infantilism" or "positive immaturity", and this is all associated with creativity and accelerated development.

And so inner conflicts and frustrations are inherent in positive disintegration. And so one with high developmental potential will become more introspective, more aware of possible choices and consequently, more conscious of different levels--higher and lower--in his or her feelings, thoughts and behavior. In his or her feelings, thoughts, and behavior. In these internally and often externally tumultuous conditions, such an individual "introduces into his life a new controlling factor, where higher feelings [being to control] the lower forms of instinctual, emotional and congnitive functions".