ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main features of autonomy today and their relations to mental health. It clarifies the idea which consists of approaching mental health as an attitude toward adversity through the two meanings of 'social pathology'. There are two intersecting uses of the idea of a social pathology that need to be differentiated in sociological terms: a use which consists of serving to analyse the causes and reasons of a problem and the means to act on it; this use is practical and singularising (this person's depression results from poor interpersonal relations within this department); a use expressing a social illness in a broader sense. In this latter sense, depression, addictions or post-traumatic stress are reactions to or 'forms of resistance' toward such things as competition, flexibility and subjective commitment required by the management of firms; they are ways to evaluate their value for human beings.
