Mentality

Updated July 23, 2022 788 Author: Dmitry Petrov
Hello, dear readers of the KtoNaNovenkogo.ru blog. There are words and terms that most of us understand only in general terms. But often this is not enough.

Today I want to draw attention to such words - mental and mentality, and explain their essence in simple words.

To some they may seem connected with something mystical (such as the astral body), but here everything is mundane and connected with ordinary people, like you and me.

Moreover, in this publication we will talk not only about mentality in general, but also about the problems of mental health, which not everyone is fine with. And, of course, we will touch upon the issue of identifying mental disorders and their treatment.

Mentality (mental) is...

The word “mentality” translated from Latin (“mens”) means mind, disposition of the soul, consciousness , way of thinking. In the modern explanatory dictionary, this concept is synonymous with the term “mentality” (from the Latin mentalite - mental).

Both are deciphered as a plexus of mind and feelings, reflected in the complex of mental and spiritual attitudes of an individual person or an entire group of people.

In simple words , mentality is the prism through which a person looks at the world. It contains moral values, a set of psychological and behavioral reactions, adaptation features, upbringing, attitude towards religion, and culture.

It is important to note that the mentality of an individual is the experience of many generations of his family, nation, country, and therefore is a mixture of the deep, collective unconscious and individual consciousness.

Mental means mental or psychic.

From the point of view of psychology , mentality is a reflection of the contents of a person’s psyche: in what categories he thinks, how he interacts with the environment and what kind of life he leads. Habits, actions and actions speak about mentality.

The determining factor is the individual’s environment – family and society.

What does “mental” mean in philosophy: there is no specific definition of this concept, since such a category does not exist in the context of this paradigm. However, some theories, implying mentality, speak about the spiritual mood of individual social groups.

Mentality

(from lat. mens or (genus case)

mentis - soul, spirit (in a narrower sense - mind) and the adjective suffix 'al') - a set of mental, emotional, cultural characteristics, value orientations and attitudes inherent in a social [1] or ethnic group, nation, people, nationality. The term originated in historical science, but is now often used in psychology and sociology. The concept of mentality includes views, assessments, values, norms of behavior and morality, state of mind, religious affiliation and many other nuances that characterize a particular group of people.

Etymology

It is believed that the ethnologist Lévy-Bruhl was the first to use this term. He applied it to the primitive tribes whose life he observed. Lévy-Bruhl contrasted the thinking of primitive man and modern man, so he designated the special thinking of tribes with the term mentality. However, this term entered the masses thanks to the activities of the French historical School of the Annales. Its representatives understood by mentality that which united the king of France and the ordinary soldier, that is, mentality appears precisely as a collective trait, and not as an individual one. Gradually, the term migrated from the scientific community to journalism.

Illustrative examples

What is mentality using simple examples.

In Russia, at the beginning of every spring, Maslenitsa is celebrated: pancakes are baked for a week, then festivities are held, during which an effigy is burned, which symbolizes farewell to winter. In India, they don’t know about this and, perhaps, its inhabitants would twist their heads if they heard about such a tradition.
Read also: Altruism and altruist - definition, types, social role
Russian platforms are filled with people hugging and kissing goodbye. In France, such behavior at railway stations is strictly prohibited - you can even get a fine. And all because their platforms were once very narrow, and those hugging interfered with the movement of others.
If they come to visit you, then most likely, as a sign of hospitality, you will offer them tea with something tasty, or maybe you will set a rich table with something stronger. In China, a mug of tea is served to a guest instead of the words “Isn’t it time for you to go home?” This is what different mentality means.

Parting

What happens when partners break up? People quarreled and moved away in space to different places, but they remain together on the mental level: they remember and think about each other constantly. As a result, an imperceptible channel is formed between them in four-dimensional space, controlling their lives, and distance has almost no effect on this process. Time, which, according to the famous saying, heals everything, works a little more radically. Of course, this is not entirely true.

To “recover” you simply need to leave the mental plane that created discomfort, and time helps with this, but it is doubtful. Disconnection in time and space does not always automatically break the mental channel. Sometimes you need to push yourself further and “go aside” with your mind.

The highest mental level, like four-dimensional space, is filled with various events: clashes, battles and struggles for spheres of influence. Only then are these actions projected onto the four-dimensional world. This could be luck or bad luck, or a force majeure situation that appeared out of nowhere. It can also manifest itself as envy, resentment, jealousy, antipathy, sympathy. All these nuances do not exist in the material world, but such processes influence us.

We hope that by reading this article you have gained the most complete understanding of the mental level.

Types of mentality

If you settle a group of people on a desert island: they will settle down, they will have their own rules and norms of interaction, values, views on certain events within their society and outside it.

Subsequent generations will adopt their worldview: this is how the mental connection between people of different times is historically formed.

There are different types of mentality :

by the type of structure of society - people of the Middle Ages had a different worldview from modern residents;
by race (Asians, Europeans);
gender mentality (female, male) – women are more inclined to demonstrate their emotions, males are more likely to keep their experiences to themselves;
age (children, teenagers, adults, old people) – childish infantility and old age wisdom;
by religious beliefs (Buddhists and Catholics think differently);
by level of intelligence: intelligentsia, peasants - if you look at them in a restaurant, you can see a significant difference in behavior at the table.

It cannot be argued that mentality is a phenomenon characterized by constancy. The historical change in mentality over time can be represented in the form of the game “Broken Telephone,” when people pass a word or gesture to each other in a chain.

At the same time, everyone brings something of their own, and the last participant demonstrates something completely different from what was originally asked. Therefore, the worldview of modern people is radically different from those who lived several centuries ago.

Story

There is a cause-and-effect relationship between somatic diseases and the psychology of a particular person, but it is ambiguous, indirect and does not fit into elementary diagrams. Any practicing doctor is faced with various stories. One of them told the following story: “A certain woman was raised by religious parents in such a way that she treated sex as a terrible phenomenon that must be excluded from her thoughts at all costs. She came to me with a complaint about the excessive growth of hair on her stomach, chest and back, with a parallel decrease in the amount of hair on her head. She also had irregular and painful periods. When she got married, she began to suffer from severe headaches.

Here, the sexual instinct was suppressed at the mental level, which caused an imbalance of estrogen and testosterone. As a result, the hair on the body was distributed according to the male type. This oppression over time caused another symptom on the mental level - aversion to sex. The marriage created additional stress, causing changes in the physical and emotional spheres - excruciating headaches (replacing baldness) along with feelings of irritation in the marriage.

At first the defense mechanism was able to establish a balance, limiting symptoms to the endocrine system, but the added stress of the marriage disrupted it. So the defense mechanism had to recreate the symptoms on a deeper and more destructive level.”

The mental level of the woman in this case played an important role. As you can see, defensive tools always try to create a protective wall, which is embodied in symptoms and signs in the peripheral tier.

What is mental health

Mental health is a concept that characterizes the internal state, reflecting the emotional and mental well-being of a person, the absence of mental problems.

We are talking about a spiritual or mental level of health, indicating psychological maturity. What is mental health ?

integrity of mind and body;
the presence of healthy self-criticism (I know what is good and what is bad, I comply with the law and moral principles);
constancy of one’s own identity (I know who I am, what I am, why I am);
lack of internal tension (fears, anxieties, prolonged mental suffering);
harmony with yourself and the world around you - satisfaction from relationships with people and within yourself;
the ability to plan, set goals and achieve them;
good mood, optimism;
control over your behavior, the ability to consciously change it;
calmness, confidence.

If the mental level of an individual is, as they say, “in order,” then he has the opportunity to maximize his potential - to actualize his inclinations and turn them into talents.

Such a person has a high degree of stress resistance, therefore he easily adapts to changes in the environment and successfully copes with difficulties. A person’s work activity brings him pleasure, and at the same time represents a quality contribution to society.

In conclusion

Let's summarize the topic:

mental level is the level of a person’s thoughts. It is also a special dimension along with the astral plane;
Esotericists believe that all diseases are created by our wrong thoughts. And changing thoughts can heal illnesses;
mental connections are established between loved ones, lovers and relatives. They can persist for a very long time, often requiring work to break them completely (there are special practices for breaking mental connections).

Finally, I offer a thematic video:

Signs of a mental disorder

Human life is filled with unexpected difficulties and negative phenomena that can be difficult to cope with.

It’s good when a person has flexible thinking, is able to adapt to circumstances, without focusing on his suffering due to failures. But often in such situations there are simply not enough internal resources: then homeostasis in the body (what is that?) is disrupted, which is a mental disorder.

Mental illnesses are disorders at the mental level, manifesting themselves in the form of neurotic symptoms (we are talking about initially mentally healthy people).

When a person is faced with force majeure circumstances that he cannot bypass, like water bypassing stones, the following happens: conscious or unconscious disagreement with the situation is resistance. And as we know from physics lessons, any resistance gives rise to tension, which grows every day.

Excessive stress is a large amount of mental energy that requires release.

And she finds it in the form of the following symptoms of mental disorder:

a person feels causeless anxiety - anxiety;
he either cries or laughs - his mood changes very often during the day;
either you constantly want to sleep, or it is not possible to fall asleep;
attacks of aggression are replaced by depression;
reactions become inadequate: irritability over trifles, excessive sensitivity, vulnerability;
a person may experience a feeling of shame, guilt - reproach himself for his condition, but not know how to change it;
mild anxiety, which was initially, takes the form of panic attacks and various phobias (fear of open space, knives, loneliness, etc.);
emotional outbursts lead to the body becoming depleted: a feeling of chronic fatigue appears;
mental functions suffer - attention, thinking, memory, logic, etc.;
gradually the circle of contacts with society narrows (the individual is embarrassed to appear “like this” in public - in case they take him for a crazy person), only family members remain nearby.

Inhabitants of the mental

The mental plane, as well as the astral one, occupies all the space around us. In connection with this, any type of irritation, even occurring on other planes, is reflected on it. People perceive mental activity as a process of spontaneous thinking - in the form of any mental images (individual objects located in the mental plane, on which people do not have any influence).

Periodically, certain thought forms combine to form a so-called egregor. What is an egregor? It acts as an energy-informative consciousness created by a group of people, divided according to a specific criterion. So, many types of egregors are known:

religious (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and others);
egregors of nations (are demons of empires);
generic egregors;
professional and so on.

The mental level mainly consists of thought forms and egregors.

How to treat a mental disorder

Mental is mental or mental. This means that it is necessary to treat diseases of this level with a specialist of the appropriate profile - a psychologist or psychotherapist .

How does this happen:

If the disorder greatly affects the body and significantly reduces the quality of life (for example, panic attacks, agoraphobia), then you should first contact a medical psychotherapist. He will prescribe tranquilizers, antidepressants and other drugs that will help put your physiology in order.
Then it is advisable to engage in non-medical psychotherapy - meet with a psychologist once a week for some time (the duration depends on your need). This is necessary in order to understand what specifically in your life you cannot “digest”, try to either change the negative situation, or change your attitude towards it.

Causes of diseases

Some psychologists believe that any illness appears at the mental level. They say that there is a connection between the physical and the spiritual, between the state of our body and our thoughts. It follows that, having decided to end any disease, you must first find out the mental (mental) reason for its occurrence. After all, the symptoms of the disease only reflect internal hypogenic processes. A person needs to delve deeper into himself to find and neutralize the spiritual cause of the disease.

Description and structure

In accordance with the teachings of Charles Leadbeater, the mental body is the fourth subtle body, located between the thin and dense shelts. The projection of the mental onto the physical body of the individual is the spinal cord and the brain.

In accordance with the ideas of occultists, for strategists and scientists the assemblage point is shifted to the upper region of the mental, for people who want to act and live according to the laws of logic - the middle one, and for people who succumb to feelings, but nevertheless live according to the rules - - bottom.

An alternative division is proposed by Leadbeater. He decided that the mental body contains:

mental-etheric body;
astral;
casual;
Boddhic;
atmanic.

The mental level itself is also divided.