Q1. Make a précis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading
Basically, psychoses and neuroses represent man’s inability to maintain a balanced or equated polarity in conducting his life. The ego becomes exclusively or decidedly one sided. In psychoses there is a complete collapse of the ego back into the inner recesses of the personal and collective unconsciouses. When he is repressed toward fulfilling some life goal and where he is further unable to sublimate himself toward another goal, man regresses into goal structures not actually acceptable to himself or to the society. Strong emotional sickness of the psychotic type is like having the shadow run wild. The entire psyche regresses to archaic, animal forms of behaviors. In less severe forms of emotional sickness there may be an accentuated and overpowering use of one of the four mental functions at the expense of the other three. Either thinking, feeling, intuiting or seeing may assume such a superior role as to render the other three inoperative. The persona may become so dominant as to create a totally one-sided ego, as in some forms of neurotic behavior. All in all, whatever the type of severity of the emotional disorder, it can be taken as a failure of the psyche to maintain a proper balance between the polarities of life. Essentially, psychoses and neuroses are an alienation of the self from its true goal of self actualization. In this sense the culture is of no consequence. Emotional disorder is not a question of being out of tune with one’s culture so much as it is of being out of tune with one’s self. Consequently, neurosis is more than bizarre behavior, especially as it may be interpreted by contemporaries in the culture. This interpretation avoids the sociological question of what is a mental disorder, since form of behavior which is acceptable in one culture may be considered neurotic in other culture. To Jung, the deviation from cultural norms is not the point. The inability to balance out personal polarities is.
Solved Precis of CSS 2005
Topic: Mechanics of human behaviour
In humans, there are two types of mental behavior: psychosis and neurosis. In psychosis, one feels bad about failure and this leads to emotional sickness, while in neurosis, failure to the achievement of any goal leads man to a one-sided ego. This occurs due to overusing mental functions which are quite challenging for a man to balance out. This is so because emotional sickness due to psychosis can be balanced by other polarities of life whereas it is difficult to balance egoistic behavior because different cultures have different norms. One form of social norm is not acceptable in another culture. This makes it difficult for a man to balance out his personal polarities.