Foreword to “Elements of Dynamics V: Resiliency and the Narrative” by Elizabeth Bromley

For this installment of the series, I am pleased to have invited my former resident supervisee at Columbia, Elizabeth Bromley, MD, to consider positive mental health as resilience. She is already an acknowledged expert in normative studies, and she is currently engaged in anthropological studies in addition to her clinical work in Los Angeles.

Vaillant's (2003) article, “Mental Health,” in which he enumerates six models developed in the past 30 years, appears after a generation of historically unprecedented assaults upon traditional concepts. We tend to forget that a time traveler from post-World War II America, like people in many traditional cultures worldwide whose improbable approval we desire, would be severely alienated by what is now believed to be normal and healthy. It is a still touchy subject in many quarters. At that time health was largely a male prerogative and linked to strength, with menstrual, climacteric, frail women the “weaker sex,” consigned to the 3 k's, Kindern, Küche, und Kirche (children, kitchen, and church). The Victorian ideals of mental hygiene, with sexual continence and sublimation of unhealthy, base, filthy instincts, gave way to a mental health as the Playboy ideal of sexual health, orgastic capability, and Dr. Ruth's Good Sex. Heterosexuality and family founding gave way to free object choice and the healthy homosexual, with promiscuity proposed as an alternative standard to the committed love relationship, especially for males, and intentional childlessness no longer even on the scorecard. Male ideals of self-sacrifice and military ideals gave way to Mr. Mom, the father involved in baby care. What is said to be a more feminine standard for schoolboys required Ritalin at a lowered threshold of squirming. Regarding standards of discipline, a child is not being beaten, to paraphrase Freud. Bodily deviation such as obesity, tattoos, and piercing are normal, and lookism (discrimination against those who do not meet standards of appearanc