ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a frame of reference for the analysis of mental health both within and between cultures, that may pose significant problems for research and help to separate empirical questions from value judgments in this difficult area. Much effort has been expended in the attempt to arrive at a positive conception of mental health. The tentative outcome of studies of personality formation in different cultures does suggest that cultures can be analyzed according to their promotive or disruptive influence on the mental health of the individual. But existing studies go only part of the way toward articulating with the analysis of differences in mental health within a culture. Until "normal," happy people, people engrossed in their human relationships and work, in our own culture as well as in others, have been studied with some of the perspicacity and thoroughness that have been expended on the troubled and deviant, such speculation must remain tentative and is likely to be wasted.
