Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

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The Upside of Neurosis
Neurosis is really an attempt at self-cure. . . . It is an attempt
of the self-regulating psychic system to restore
the balance, in no way different from the function of dreams—
only rather more forceful and drastic. 66
What is meant by the term “neurosis”? What marks a person as
“neurotic”? The American Heritage Dictionary gives this definition
of neurosis:
Any of various functional disorders of the mind or emotions, without
obvious lesion or change, and involving anxiety, phobia, or other
abnormal behavior symptoms.
More simply put, neurosis is a pronounced state of disunity with
oneself. We have all, at one time or another, experienced this.
Jung’s view was that an acute outbreak of neurosis is purposeful,
an opportunity to become conscious of who we are as opposed to
who we think we are. By working through the symptoms that regularly
accompany neurosis—anxiety, fear, depression, guilt and particularly
conflict—we become aware of our limitations and discover
our true strengths.
In any breakdown in conscious functioning, energy regresses and
unconscious contents are activated in an attempt to compensate the
one-sidedness of consciousness.
Neuroses, like all illnesses, are symptoms of maladjustment. Because
of some obstacle—a constitutional weakness or defect, wrong
education, bad experiences, an unsuitable attitude, etc.—one shrinks
from the difficulties which life brings and thus finds oneself back in
66 “The Tavistock Lectures,” The Symbolic Life, CW 18, par. 389.
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