SOME ASPECTS OF THE MENTAL DIMENSION OF M AN IN AMMONS HUMANSTRUCTUROLOGY

At the beginning of her article the author quotes Ammon: ''To recogniz e the interdependance between psyche and soma - i.e. mind and body - a nd to come to a psychosomatic medicine has once been a great progress in our science, to which in our days has been added the mental dimensi on in the engagement for the suffering. The multidimensional reflexion of man and science, however, means always integration and never an ec lectic lining up. At the same time, integration means always identity and a standpoint emanating from a mental-ethical centre'' (Ammon 1986) . In his thinking and in his therapeutic work, Ammon has always oppose d a reductionist form of looking at and treating patients. The holisti c concept of the multidimensionality of man is, in his view, always th e potential of a constructive unfolding of life ensuing from the harmo ny of body, mind and soul (Ammon 1989). ''What is important is the hom eostasis, that means the harmonious balance between body and soul, but also in combination with the spiritual energies and needs of man (Amm on 1986). A psychological reductionism in psychotherapy and psychoanal ysis does not do justice to the patient any more than a one-sided biol ogically oriented medicine and psychiatry. When Ammon speaks of a ment al-ethical centre of man, he regards the roots of the mental dimension of man lying in his unconscious, central core of personality. He expr essly mentioned the central human functions of conceptional, metaphori c and abstract thinking, the ability of imagination and dreaming as we ll as creativity. It is the values and aims of a person which are sign ificant and important for him, that give sense and orientation to his life, that are liberating him from a life which he experiences as dete rmined by compulsion, routine and trivialities, without pleasure and s uspense. ''Man, become essential'', Ammon often quoted Angel Silesius. This becoming essential, to reach the centre of one's own identiy, is in Ammon's sense only possible if man frees himself from concretistic thinking and acting, i.e. from being fixed on the concrete given real ity. In the theory of science it is the position of positivism which A mmon always stigmatized as anti-spiritual and inhuman; such a position is also reflected in what Ammon called the terror of findings in a me dicine ignoring man as a spiritual-psychic being. Concretism negates t he process characteristic for human life. Man is not simply what he is , but also a continous coming into existence, always being on his way. As the medical historian Schipperges once said ''we die in our appren ticeship'', as apprentices of life. According to Ammon, man is a devel oping being who continously projects himself into the future and overs teps himself. It is the mental outline of ourselves that makes orienta tion possible on our way and prevents that life should be split up in many, more or less arbitrary activities. The process of reaching a met a-level of conceptual thinking is always accompanied by the overcoming of dualistic contradictions, by a liberation from the static thinking in categories of either/or. For example, a patient, as everybody else , is not either ill or healthy, but he has at the same time ill parts in respect to this or that dimension of his life, as well as healthy a spects in respect to others. To reach a mental meta-level and thus to abandon the concretistic thinking of either/or is, in the opinion of t he author, of a immense importance for psychotherapy. This process, ho wever, is connected with anxiety, as it is, according to Ammon, every creative process. To endure such anxiety and to go through it is only possible in a group which is sound and capable of a lively socialenerg etic exchange. Ammon's conception of the mental dimension outlined abo ve explains also the great importance which he attaches to the idea of androgynity, since ''the mental principle of androgynity is an abando ning of fixations and concrete modes of thinking and acting up to a co nceptual and holistic view of man''.