Summary

The book -opens with a critical re-examination of the concept of mental health. The author challenges the majority of the prevalent criteria defining mental health in terms of pathology (mental health as the absence of mental disease), statistics (mental health as minimal deviation from the average), adaptation (mental health as adjustment to environment), etc. On the threshold of the XXI century mankind enters not only the era of super-advanced technology but also the epoch of ultimate actualization of man's humanity, human rationality and spirituality, individual uniqueness and multitude of individual manifestations. Hence some other principles underlying the difference between mental health and pathology should be sought. The author contends that it is individual's ability to reveal his humaneness, to actualize his human essence in his existence that constitutes normalrty rather than his ability to adjust to environment, to be typical or atypical, similar or dissimilar to others. This evokes another question: what are the specific characteristics of being human or what are the essential attributes of human existence?

The answer to this question, in the author's opinion, should be a starting point for a comprehensive study of abnormal personality development. Having considered philosophic foundations of the concept of mental health and its meaning, the author comes to the examination of general psychological premises and tentative assumptions of personality study. A tentative multilevel model of mental health is put forward. Special emphasis is laid upon the structure and functioning of meaning-motivational domain of personality and some patterns of their distortions in cases of deviant behaviour are outlined. Exposing the limitations of prevalent methods of personality study the author proves the necessity to elaborate new approaches, more oriented to real persons in real life situations. In this book he presents an example of such an approach which he calls analytic-transformational method.