Shifting the Focus to Natural Processes

A major shift in thinking about theory would occur with a move from pathology-centered pathognomonic approaches to a functional health-centered approach. Prevention approaches, having definitions of health and how to maintain it, would give us great advantage in helping people to productive and creative lives, would improve interpersonal and intrapersonal relations, and would change our understanding of diagnosis and psychotherapy. Not only is it just as possible to consider usable diagnoses in terms of deviations from healthy processes as it is from diagnosing pathologies from presence of signs or symptoms, it would offer significant advantages over the common current system.

At first blush this may seem to be a distinction where there is no difference, as if this is only a matter of starting at different ends of the same continuum, but when you begin exploring the possibilities, the differences become recognizable. Once understood, we see it as two different journeys, starting from different locations and heading for different destinations. In the current system, health is considered as a residual condition in the absence of illness or what exists after signs and symptoms of illnesses are cured or removed. In the other, health is a definitive state with built-in natural processes performing adaptive tasks within an optimal range. This allows for variation of function within and between individuals. In the health definition, the manifestations are considered first as natural variations in useful functioning. Using the illness definition, we seek any aspect of mental function that shows tainted attributes (signs and symptoms) of illness. If no pathognomonic taint is found, the person is considered healthy. The more signs and symptoms that are found and cured or removed, the healthier the person is considered to have become. In contrast, using the health centered orientation, we work to strengthen the natural, built-in mental functions to enhance healthy processes and so prevent illness or free people from illness. The same processes guide our lives and either cure or decrease the vulnerability of each person to psychological illnesses. Because most people occasionally manifest some declared signs or symptoms, some pessimistic professionals are led by strained logic to the view that everyone adapts by using considerable effort to hold psychotic chaos at bay. To them, health is a successful fight against illness.
Those without knowledge of the dynamics of mental processes resort to manifestations of signs and symptoms to identify a disorder process. That is the current approach in both behaviorism and biopsychiatry. Pathognomonic reading can lead to a quick diagnosis, but too often it is a quick erroneous diagnosis. The pathognomonic diagnosis is speedy. If we can check the list and there is the sign "fatigue" and the sign "insomnia" plus symptoms of apprehension and sadness, that unquestionably is the illness "depression." But following that diagnostic approach glosses over an underlying process that may have any of several surface manifestations, and the same surface manifestations may stem from any of several underlying processes. Is the problem a drug reaction or depression?