This is the alternative at the root of the issue of mental health. If no such alternative in the operation of man's mind
were possible, no such question as a mind's health or disease could arise.
Mental health is the unobstructed capacity for reality-bound cognitive functioning—and the exercise of this
capacity. Mental illness is the sustained impairment of this capacity.
The justification of this definition lies, as we have seen, in the biological function of consciousness.
Thus, a man is mentally healthy to the extent that his psycho-epistemological processes are controlled by and fulfill
the requirements of cognition, i.e., of awareness of and contact with reality. A man is mentally unhealthy to the
extent that his psycho-epistemological processes are incompatible with the requirements of cognition, and subvert
his cognitive efficacy.
Cognition is the primary function of consciousness—the function that, properly, controls the other mental
functions—and, therefore, any operations or practices that are inimical to this basic task, are agents or causes of
psychological illness.
Biologically, life is a state and process of integration: the physical integrity of an organism, and the integration of
its actions in the direction of life-serving goals, are the precondition and essence of biological well-being—of an
organism's success at the task of survival. Any forces that work against integration, work against life; disintegration
is motion toward death.
Integration is basic to the cognitive process and to mental health. Disintegration and conflict are the hallmark of
mental illness.
Reality-avoidance practices—evasion, repression, rationalization, and their various derivatives—are disintegrative
by their very nature and intention. Their effect is to sabotage cognition. They are prime instigators of psychological
disorders.
An unobstructed, integrated consciousness, a consciousness in unbreached cognitive contact with reality, is healthy.
A blocked, disintegrated consciousness, a consciousness incapacitated by fear or immobilized by depression, a
consciousness corrupted in its function by reality-avoidance mechanisms, a consciousness dissociated from
reality—is unhealthy.
Mental illness is, fundamentally, psycho-epistemological; a mental disorder is a thinking disorder.