Friendship and Mental Health

It is easy to slip into sentimental platitudes when talking about friendship. Great writers such as Cicero and Montaigne avoided this pitfall, but mainly by describing not what friendship is, but what it ought to be. The close connection of intimate comradeship Wlth mental health is being increasingly recognised. A few aspects of this connection will here be outlined. In the first place, the type and degree of friendship vary with the special needs of an age and the stress that age put upon the value of the relationship. Secondly, friendship will mean different things to different people; it will vary with personality and temperament. Again, family situations in early childhood will greatly affect Potentialities for forming full and mature friendships in later years, f-astly, an attempt will be made to sketch the functions of friendship ln maintaining mental serenity. Friendship has had a much higher prestige as a social relation *n other periods of history. By the Greeks and Romans it was ^allowed as a relationship of great spiritual and social value, as the