Book Title: Tulsi Prajna 1996 01
Author(s): Parmeshwar Solanki
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

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Page 163
________________ 152 TULSI-PRAJNA rather a naturalistic concept of man which accepts man as healthy or normal, who could stand the Darwinian test of being fit and victorious in the struggle for existence and be functional to the aggregate or the collectivity from which he derives his existence as a social being. Both biologically and socially, thus, capacity to adapt with the environment is the main criterion constituting the definition of health and its failure that of a disease. This is a mechanomorphic view of man which segmentalizes the totality of his existence into many fragments or roles and role sets where efficiency to discharge economic functions becomes key to define health and normality. While working out the concept of the 'pathology of normalcy', according to which not merely an individual but the entire society could be sick and unhealthy. Fromm (1963) observes that mental bealth cannot be defined in terms of the 'adjustment' of man to society, but on the contrary it must be defined in terms of the adjustment of society to the needs of man. Fromm, thus, seeks to define health and normalcy not merely in terms of the adaptive capacity of man but in terms of his basic nature as a human being and his intriasic needs. As a reaction to the excessive rationalistic-utilitarianism and its mechanomorphic view of man, Freud, in his work, Civilization and Its Discontents, tried to liberate man from the strangleholds of this mechanical ethics. His man was a man with natural instincts whose existential unity he tried to locate in his most primitive impulsive being or rather in the libidinal being. According to him, the main cause of psychic pathology of man is civilization and its normative control which mars the free and uninhibited libidinal gratification, which, in turn, results into personality disorders and social maladjustments. As a remedy to these disorders Freud devised the therapy of psycho-apalysis. Psycho-analysis provided an outlet to ventilate the repressed desires and restored back the homeostatic of a disordered personality. Through his theoretical formulations and the therapeutic technique of psychoanalysis, Freud in fact had tried to subordinate the normative order of the society or the super ego and surrendered the conscious in man to his subconscious. In terms of the deeper understanding of human nature and the authentic health of his being, this therapeutic technique and the view of man seems to be based on very perverted theoretical understanding. Not only Freud had given a major blow to the crumbling traditional value ethics in the wake of marching industrial civilization, he also paved the way for the complete reversal of what Arendt (1958) argues as the 'Teversal of the hierarchy of vita-contemplativa and vitaactiva', so as Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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