As a result, it is logical to introduce the notion of "positive aberration". Certain hyper- or hypo- functioning can yield positive results and prove to be adaptive. The difference between positive and negative aberrations can never be "objective". Nature is morally-neutral and embodies no "values" or "preferences". It simply exists. WE, humans, introduce our value systems, prejudices and priorities into our activities, science included. It is better to be healthy, we say, because we feel better when we are healthy. Circularity aside - this is the only criterion that we can reasonably employ. If the patient feels good - it is not a disease, even if we all think it is. If the patient feels bad, ego-dystonic, unable to function - it is a disease, even when we all think it isn't. Needless to say that I am referring to that mythical creature, the fully informed patient. If someone is sick and knows no better (has never been healthy) - then his decision should be respected only after he is given the chance to experience health.

All the attempts to introduce "objective" yardsticks of health are plagued and philosophically contaminated by the insertion of values, preferences and priorities into the formula - or by subjecting the formula to them altogether. One such attempt is to define health as "an increase in order or efficiency of processes" as contrasted with illness which is "a decrease in order (=increase of entropy) and in the efficiency of processes". While being factually disputable, this dyad also suffers from a series of implicit value-judgements. For instance, why should we prefer life over death? Order to entropy? Efficiency to inefficiency?

Health and sickness are different states of affairs. Whether one is preferable to the other is a matter of the specific culture and society in which the question is posed. Health (and its lack) is determined by employing three "filters" as it were:

1. Is the body affected?
2. Is the person affected? (dis-ease, the bridge between "physical" and "mental illnesses)
3. Is society affected?

In the case of mental health the third question is often formulated as "is it normal" (=is it statistically the norm of this particular society in this particular time)?

We must re-humanize disease. By imposing upon issues of health the pretensions of the accurate sciences, we objectified the patient and the healer alike and utterly neglected that which cannot be quantified or measured - the human mind, the human spirit.

Note: Classification of Social Attitudes to Health

Somatic societies place emphasis on bodily health and performance. They regard mental functions as secondary or derivative (the outcomes of corporeal processes, "healthy mind in a healthy body").

Cerebral societies emphasize mental functions over physiological and biochemical processes. They regard corporeal events as secondary or derivative (the outcome of mental processes, "mind over matter").

Elective societies believe that bodily illnesses are beyond the patient's control. Not so mental health problems: these are actually choices made by the sick. It is up to them to "decide" to "snap out" of their conditions ("heal thyself"). The locus of control is internal.

Providential societies believe that health problems of both kinds - bodily as well as mental - are the outcomes of the intervention or influence of a higher power (God, fate). Thus, diseases carry messages from God and are the expressions of a universal design and a supreme volition. The locus of control is external and healing depends on supplication, ritual, and magic.

Medicalized societies believe that the distinction between physiological disorders and mental ones (dualism) is spurious and is a result of our ignorance. All health-related processes and functions are bodily and are grounded in human biochemistry and genetics. As our knowledge regarding the human body grows, many dysfunctions, hitherto considered "mental", will be reduced to their corporeal components.

next: On Empathy