Vitality

Vitality is a capacity rather than a state, and both halves of the definition are stated as abilities. Good vitality is the ability to establish and maintain a large and diverse quantity of connections to primary anima, so it is measured by what a person can do rather than by how they feel or how their body is functioning. Poor vitality is the blockage of conduits and the inability to continue exosocial expansion, which is the same measure inverted. Two words in the good case carry weight. Large and diverse together rule out depth in one connection as sufficient, which is the same reasoning behind integrity being defined as breadth of network, since a self supported by many conduits does not depend on any one of them. Marsh makes the divergence from bodily health explicit. An extreme endoself who cannot establish primary anima connections outside themselves does not have good vitality even when they are perfectly content and suffer no bodily illness, so contentment and physical health are both compatible with poor vitality. That is the strongest statement in the framework of what its account of health measures. Vitality depends on the development of connections to primary anima and the cure of addictions to secondary anima, which gives the two directions of remedy. The related discipline is vitology, the study of life energy, which she proposes should replace psychology as the foundation for understanding emotions and motivation.

Wellbeing measurement divides between hedonic approaches asking about satisfaction and eudaimonic approaches asking about functioning, with Carol Ryff's psychological wellbeing scales and Sen's capabilities approach both measuring capacity rather than feeling, which is close to Marsh's structure. Social connection research links network breadth to health outcomes with a substantial evidence base. Vitality itself is a measured construct in some wellbeing instruments. What Marsh adds is the explicit divergence, since stating that contentment and physical health can coexist with poor vitality rules out the two measures most commonly used as proxies for it.