The author discusses the concepts of normality and mental health, emphasizing the differences that exist in the literature of psychoanalysts and nonpsychoanalytically oriented writers. He subscribes to a functional and structural approach, reminding us of a formulation he offered in 1955 that in the mentally healthy person the behavior is always characterized by qualities of reasonableness and balance. He suggests that the psychoanalyst consider as healthy an individual who shows himself capable of flexible adaptation.