Q.2. Make a précis of the given passage and suggest a suitable heading:

The Psychological causes of unhappiness, it is clear, are many and various. But all have something in common. The typical unhappy man is one who having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has, therefore, given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it. There is, however, a further development which is very common in the present day. A man may feel so completely thwarted that he seeks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. He then becomes a devotee of “Pleasure”. That is to say, he seeks to make life bearable by becoming less alive. Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide; the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness. The narcissist and the megalomaniac believe that happiness is possible, though they may adopt mistaken means of achieving it; but the man who seeks intoxication, in whatever form, has given up hope except in oblivion. In his case the first thing to be done is to persuade him that happiness is desirable. Men, who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. Perhaps their pride is like that of the fox that had lost his tail; if so, the way to cure it is to point out to them how they can grow a new tail. Very few men, I believe, will deliberately choose unhappiness if they see a way of being happy. I do not deny that such men exist, but they are not sufficiently numerous to be important. It is common in our day, as it has been in many other periods of the world’s history, to suppose that those among us who are wise have seen through all the enthusiasms of earlier times and have become aware that there is nothing left to live for. The men who hold this view are genuinely unhappy, but they are proud of their unhappiness, which they attribute to the nature of the universe and consider being the only rational attitude for an enlightened man. Their pride in their unhappiness makes less sophisticated people suspicious of its genuineness; they think that the man who enjoys being miserable is not miserable.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF UNHAPPINESS

Writer in this passage opined that inner causes of discontentment are common in all men. Further, he added that an unhappy man is usually unprivileged of pleasure in his youth, so he understands it unpleasant and decides not to strive for happiness. Resultantly, he becomes frustrated and distracted to follow negative temporary ways such as, toxication , to cease unhappiness. In this situation primary step is to motivate him that pleasure is a pleasant thing to be achieved. It is also a common thing that some people knowingly follow unhappiness because of their rational vision and they feel proud of having it, but people who are not of that sensible vision consider them false that man can’t be proud of his discontentment.

TOTAL WORDS = 391
ONE THIRD = 130
MY PRECIS = 122