14. On Mental Health (1960)

A well-integrated personality is the foundation for mental health. I shall begin by enumerating a few elements of an integrated personality: emotional maturity, strength of character, capacity to deal with conflicting emotions, a balance between internal life and adaptation to reality, and a successful welding into a whole of the different parts of the personality.

To some extent infantile phantasies and desires persist even in an emotionally mature person. If phantasies and desires have been freely experienced and successfully worked through—first of all in the play of the child—they are a source of interests and activities and thereby enrich the personality. But if grievance about unfulfilled desires has remained too potent and their working-through is therefore impeded, personal relations and enjoyment from various sources are disturbed, it becomes difficult to accept those substitutes which would be more appropriate to later stages of development, and the sense of reality is impaired.

Even if development is satisfactory and leads to enjoyment from various sources, some feeling of mourning for irretrievably lost pleasures and unfulfilled possibilities can still be found in the deeper layers of the mind. While regret that childhood and youth will never return is often consciously experienced by people near to middle age, in psycho-analysis we find that even infancy and its pleasures are still unconsciously longed for. Emotional maturity means that these feelings of loss can up to a point be counteracted by the ability to accept substitutes, and infantile phantasies do not disturb adult emotional life. Being able to enjoy pleasures which are available is bound up at any age with a relative freedom from envy and grievances. One way in which contentment at a later stage in life can therefore be found is to enjoy vicariously the pleasures of young people, particularly of our children and grandchildren. Another source of gratification, even before old age, is the richnes