This would then logically extend to an active political and social orientation in this direction; and to an active "environmental" orientation of this kind as well.
Mental health in this deep and broad sense cannot exist in a psycho-spiritual, socio-political, environmental vacuum. Is it mental health for a species - in this case humans - to actively and knowingly destroy its own habitat, its own means of pro-generation, and the possibility of its own continuation? I'd say it is not, and in fact that it is a form of insanity.
Now, in light of the way I am defining mental (psycho-spiritual/emotional) health, what then is the role of psychotherapy? What is its legitimate scope? What are its legitimate questions and concerns as regarding the individual, the couple, the family, the species?
If you suffer from anxiety, for example, and you do not see yourself as a small manifest extension of a much larger and much greater system of existence, a system which has direct and inevitable effects on you, the small individual, it will be more difficult, I suggest, to 1) understand your anxiety, and to 2) do anything genuinely healing/remedial about it. If you suffer from depression, and have not been able to achieve relief through bio-chemical treatments alone, and also do not understand your depression in a cultural/experiential context, it will be more difficult (impossible?), I suggest, to 1) understand your depression, and to 2) do anything genuinely healing/remedial about it.
If your marriage is strained and struggling because you and your spouse don't seem to be able to talk to each other without slipping into another self defeating argument, and you lead your lives dedicated to a system of values and beliefs that by its nature opposes collaborative relationship, how will you be able to remedy this dysfunction?
The idea of systems in psychotherapy is nothing new. I think we have not taken this idea far enough, nor understood its implications thoroughly enough.
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