For K. Marx, value is the productive interaction of man with man & with nature, creating man's individual self, his relations to others, objects satisfying needs (use-values), & use-values for exchange. `Value' applies to this total creative process. This is natural & objective. 'The ultimate good of man is the fulfillment of man's powers through soc production.' Action that contributes to this is right, action that does not is wrong. Man thus creates his own reality & value. Mental health is 'the progressive fulfillment of man's practical-critical capacities' through productive activity. It is the growing integration of man with himself, others, & nature. Mechanistic determinism, idealism, super-naturalism, exploitation, fixation, & `dehumanization' are signs of mental illness. Under capitalism, man becomes ill as his productive, cooperative labor clashes with the private appropriation of himself & his products. Man's illness takes many forms; he has an impulse to remove these obstacles & achieve his fulfillment. While Marx did not foresee many present-day problems, he shares the naturalistic, melioristic premises of much thought in modern psychol & psychiatry. AA.