A critical analysis of published reports on the public's attitudes toward mental illness and toward deviant conduct is presented. The mental health movement fits the defining criteria for a moral crusade, motivated and supported by moral entrepreneurs. The reported data indicate that the mental illness paradigm, as a formula for understanding and controlling deviant conduct, has not been widely accepted by the public. The central objective of the mental health movement has been to influence the general public to regard mental illness with the same nonrejecting valuations as somatic illness. The present analysis of social survey reports and other data points to the conclusion that the public tends to declare negative (rejecting) valuations on persons diagnosed as mentally ill, On the other hand, the public tends to be more tolerant of deviant conduct when it is not described with mental illness labels. Implications for social policy are discussed.

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Constructionist explanations of behavior, in general, have become more acceptable as scientists have adopted constructionist positions regarding their own systems of knowledge. Personal construct psychology approaches and narrative psychology approaches, which share philosophical foundations with social constructionism, can be coalesced to provide a substantial theoretical base for the behavioral sciences. The attempt to adapt the principles of each position to an overarching theory provides the impetus for an analysis of the ways in which these perspectives reciprocally supplement each other. The construct random collection of sentences-story is identified as the key construct in the shaping of selfdefining narrative. Propositions which order motivational processes and memory processes readily follow from aligning personal construct psychology and narrative psychology. With these propositions the functioning of a person as a story-teller may be cast in terms which allow a broad range of explanation, as well as investigations which are acceptable within a framework of currently acceptable epistemic values.

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