Reason, emotion and embodiment: Is 'mental' health a contradiction in terms?

Abstract

Taking as its starting point a series of traditional divisions and debates, this paper approaches issues of 'mental' health through the specific lens of the emotions. Key themes and organising principles here include the following: (i) reason versus emotion (ii) biology versus society (iii) the micro and the macro divide, and finally (iv) the medicalisation-demedicalisation of society. Each of these divisions is critically assessed and some 'new' ways forward provided through a commitment to the emotions, their relationship to 'mental' health and to rationality and, more generally, to their 'fate' in late 20th century Western society. The paper concludes with some further reflections on these and related emotional health matters, including a critique of the very notion of 'mental' health as a contradiction in terms.