The concept of mental health follows from the very conditions of human existence, and it is the same for man in all ages and all cultures. Mental health is characterized by the ability to love and to create, by the emergence from incestuous ties to clan and soil, by a sense of identity based on one’s experience of self as the subject and agent of one’s powers, by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves, that is, by the development of objectivity and reason. ― (1955a: The Sane Society, New York (Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) 1955, p. 69.)
I should like to talk about mental health here in terms of the overcoming of narcissism, or to speak positively, the resulting achievement of love and objectivity; the overcoming of alienation (…) and the resulting sense of identity and independence; the overcoming of hostility and the resulting capacity for peaceful life; and eventually, [04] he achievement of productiveness, which means the overcoming of the archaic phases of cannibalism and of dependency. ― (1991f [1961]: The Concept of Mental Health, in: E. Fromm, The Pathology of Normalcy. Contributions to a Science of Man, New York (American Mental Health Foundation) 2010, pp. 3f.)