“Our “increasing mental sickness” may find expression in neurotic symptoms. These symptoms are conspicuous and extremely distressing. But “let us beware,” says Dr. Fromm, “of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting.” The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish “the illusion of individuality,” but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But “uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too. . . . Man is not made to be an automaton, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed.”

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About Aldous Huxley

English writer and philosopher

Aldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. He is known for a body of work that stretches across nearly 50 books, and includes nonfiction, essays, narratives, and poems. His writing ranges widely in form, which is part of why he is remembered as both a literary figure and a thinker. The breadth of his bibliography points to a career shaped by reflection, argument, and invention.

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Books by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World

2004

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Crome yellow

2007

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Antic Hay

2004

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Brave New World Revisited

2004

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Those barren leaves, a novel

1949

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