Paul Chance's I'm OK, You're a Bit Odd: Summary

Summary of "I'm OK; You're a Bit Odd" Paul Chance's essay "I'm OK; You're a Bit Odd" presents four different models for defining mental health: the Platonic ideal model, the psychodynamic model, the societal model, and the statistical model. He explores the issue of what behavior is considering healthy and which is not with each of these models.

The Platonic Ideal model refers to the perfect specimen of psychological health. Everyone needs to describe what the ideal is, but ¿Do somebody knows how to do that? The psychodynamic model suggests that psychological fitness is a kind of balancing act. According to this model the healthy person is the one who does not keep under control his impulses even if the society cannot tolerate some impulses. The psychodynamic model does not define the standard by which balance is to be measured.

The societal model offers another alternative letting the society to decide what is healthy and what is not. The behaviorists think that there must be some sort of universal standard toward which we might all strive.

Finally, it is the statistical model, which falls into what is average. In here if anybody do something less or more than average is abnormal.

According to Chance, we all agree with there are a lot of weird people, but that we not all agree on what is weird. Therefore, there is no way for us to agree on what mental health