When studying medicine in relation to social control, the sociological analysis often forgets to mention the values underlying medicalization. The development of American psychiatry, between 1950 and 1980, enlightens the driving force exerted by the individual's defense in promoting mental health. The principle of individuality has offered a new perspective on patients' rights and on the legitimation of psychic disorders. However, it also initiated a well-being requirement, acquired through the treatment of pain, and surpassing individual accomplishment. This moral pattern feeds the medicalization and also subjugates it to the contradictory imperative of the subject's compensation and protection. As this article attempts to demonstrate, psychiatry, as a psychological medicine, explains this tension in greater detail. The ambivalence of health requirements affects the organisation of professional morphology, influences the evaluation of psychiatric categorization, and modifies its appraising role.