ABSTRACT
Adolf Meyer, the son of a Protestant minister, was born in 1866 in Niederweningen, Switzerland, near Zurich, and died in Baltimore in 1950. Meyer believed that the human mind was a biological mind, and that the psychobiological adaptation of consciousness to all a person experiences—good, bad or indifferent—is the chief determining factor in a life. Meyer concentrated on the unique experience of each patient and the meaning of the "facts"—his term—that he extracted from patients' stories. Under the somewhat limp heading of "mental hygiene," Meyer listed what he called the "habits" of a healthy, productive life as a starting point for understanding the nature of mental illness. Meyer's pathological reaction implies a defensive misuse of freedom under pressure, which usually requires less courage and effort than an authentic adaptive response would have entailed. Meyer's maladaptive reactions encompass and surpass what the familiar reductive terms from psychology and biology used to parse the pathological alterations in mental life attempt to designate.
