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The term ‘abreaction’ was first thought up by ancient Greek dramatists to describe the purging or cathartic effect that the release of emotion gives. Abreaction is actually a flow of different emotions, and it takes several forms. The overall effect is to release anxiety from the subconscious mind. |
| Changes in terminology | |
| Definitions | |
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What I have found is that some particular emotions are linked together to form four kinds of invariable sequence, which are ways in which the unconscious mind operates. These sequences link together positive emotions with negative ones, or happiness with unhappiness. I give the name ‘abreaction’ to these sequences. The two main ones are the abreaction of guilt and the abreaction of pride. The first sequence links excitement to guilt and resentment, and the second one links sorrow and sadness to bitterness.
The abreaction of guilt is the
sequence :
Narcissism leads to jealousy ; then jealousy leads to guilt ;
then guilt leads to resentment.
The abreaction of pride is the
sequence :
Jealousy leads to narcissism ; then narcissism leads to pride ;
then pride leads to bitterness.
These abreactions flow in a
dialectical way – thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis.
For example, in the abreaction of guilt :
Initially narcissism and jealousy produce excitement, and then we
end up with the guilt and resentment that oppose it. Finally we
have the steady state of detachment when the contents of the
excitement and the resentment phases no longer interest us.
These ideas mean that abreaction generates dialectical change. Abreaction releases anxiety from the subconscious mind during the process of character transformation, and this release occurs by an oscillation between states of mind. Therefore the process of character transformation is a dialectical one.
Social Abreaction is just the extension of the sequences of abreaction to society as a whole, and they produce what I call laws of social change. The morality of an age determines what is good and evil, and these ideas form the content of social abreaction. The intensity of these abreactions depend on the rate of social change : the faster the change the greater are the effects of abreaction.
The first law of social change is the abreaction of guilt : it starts from a catharsis , which often contains left-wing or progressive views, but always ends in a right-wing backlash of resentment. Politically the resentment generates Conservative, even Fascist, attitudes.
The second law of social change is the abreaction of pride : it starts from sorrow and ends in bitterness. This abreaction usually ends in forms of Nazism, such as police death squads, the Stalinist political show-trials of the 1930s, and political or sectarian genocide. Bitterness is always worse than resentment. So Nazism is always worse than Fascism.
For an in-depth analysis, read the articles on Abreaction on any of my psychology sites.
The physical body that is seen with the physical eye is only one part of human structure. The person capable of extra-sensory perception can see other ‘bodies’ that are associated with the physical one : these are the emotional body and the mental body and the causal body. As a complex they are called the astral bodies of the person ; they are the vehicles for consciousness in higher planes of reality where there is no need to have a physical body.
All matter exists in states of vibratory motion or energy. Each body has its own frequency of vibration. The matter of the physical body vibrates at the lowest rate, and the matter of the causal body (the home of the soul) at the highest rate. The other two bodies fit in-between. The vibrations from all the bodies fill the same space, like a radio spectrum.
Extra-sensory perception means nothing more than that the person has developed the ability to respond to these higher frequencies. Like any other ability, it is just a question of training.
For more details, see astral bodies-1, and astral bodies-2, and sources of confusion.
The astral bodies of a person radiate energy which can be observed by extra-sensory perception. This energy field of a person can freely interact with the energy field of another person when they are close enough together, allowing the direct transmission of emotion from each to the other. The most important situation where this occurs, from the psychological perspective, is that between parent and infant – whilst being nursed the infant is constantly absorbing the parent’s emotions (both conscious and subconscious ones).
Energy centres in the astral / etheric body of a person. The kind of energy concerned is psychic energy, or energy that is utilised through will power or emotional moods. The chakras are associated with particular nerve plexuses in the physical body.
The psychological model that I use most of the time is a static one. This has three levels of activity: conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. However, when I need to describe agency I use a dynamic model.
Static model : consciousness is a state of being that has three modes, those of will, mind and feeling (this is similar to a traditional model that has action/behaviour, mind, and sensibility instead). Therefore, for me, consciousness is not the same as mind (and neither is mind identical to the brain). This model is for understanding how the various factors of consciousness relate together, in ways that are independent of agency.
Dynamic model : consciousness is a state of being that can act as a channel for agency. This model is for understanding the purpose of consciousness. Consciousness contains an agent, the ego, that can make choices. (See also a note in Definitions).
Self-consciousness implies that agency is internal to the state of being, as in people and some of the higher animals. When consciousness has no aspect of self, as in insects and plants, then agency is external and utilises instinct (for example, such agency may be a group mind, and so consciousness would be a group consciousness).
Functional model : consciousness is a state of being that constructs a paradigm of reality from the results of awareness. This model describes what consciousness does. Awareness is that aspect of mind by which the agent develops consciousness.
The mechanism of this construction is thought. Thought is a sequence of awareness states, or thought is the activity of awareness. The content of thought can be images or words. Images are either images of something or an image of nothing (mental silence). Attention or concentration is the means of emphasising some states of awareness rather than other ones.
Diachronic & Synchronic
When any aspect of the linguistic sign is examined using a perspective of time, such as how the sign actually evolved in history, this examination is termed ‘diachronic’. When any aspect of the sign is examined in its present state, without regard to how it became the way it is, this examination is termed ‘synchronic’.
I use the term ‘dialectical ’ in the Hegelian sense. It represents a movement of thought through three stages. First there is the opening idea, the thesis ; then thought switches to the opposite conception, the antithesis. Finally both stages are blended together in the third stage, the synthesis. In moral ideas, if the thesis is a concept of goodness then the antithesis is a concept of badness. If the thesis represents some badness, the antithesis is that of some goodness. The synthesis is the resolution of the conflict.
This is the personality ; it is the conscious aspect of the person, and excludes the subconscious and unconscious minds. It is agency, or the agent of consciousness. The ego has to make choices, and these produce effects. So the realm of the ego is the realm of cause and effect. See also Consciousness.
A person can either act on his desires, using his will, or else follow his emotional responses. When he is focusing on his emotions, then his current state of consciousness has two main factors to it : a particular belief about some aspect of life, together with an emotional mood that is generated as the response to that belief. When the belief is not a conscious one, I call it an unconscous idea, whilst the mood is the emotional dynamic that maintains the influence of that particular belief or unconscious idea. The intensity of the state of consciousness depends upon the intensity of the mood.
When the mood is active, then the particular belief (whether conscious or unconscious) is active as well. When a different mood becomes active, so the belief changes to a different one, corresponding to the new mood. If the person no longer attaches any importance to a particular belief, then the corresponding emotional mood ceases to have any power over him. The mood loses its intensity.
Some emotions are compound ones and consist of two simpler emotions (these two emotions are factors of the compound emotion). The factors do not exert their influence simultaneously ; only one is dominant at any particular time. I use the term mode to indicate which factor is being dominant at that time, that is, to indicate the manner in which the compound emotion is being experienced.
A summary of the factors of some important emotions is :
Guilt = self-pity + self-hate.
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.
Narcissism = love + vanity.
Jealousy = love + self-pity.
Anxiety = fear + vanity.
Paranoia = fear + pride (mode of vanity).
Resentment = guilt + idealism.
Bitterness = pride + idealism
This is the way of exploring the meaning of relationships as the person experiences them now, without regard to past or future. The person explores relationships from within his own individuality. For comparison, a psychological relationship is anchored in the past because of limitations produced by subconscious determinism.
An existential perspective means how relationships are understood now. A psychological perspective means why such relationships are as they are.
Idealism & Realism
When I open my eyes in the morning a world of objects greets me. But do these objects really exist ? Realism (or philosophical materialism) is the view that these external objects do in fact exist and are composed of a substance called matter ; these objects are independent of me, and will continue to exist even if tomorrow I cease to exist.
The opposing philosophical theory to realism is called philosophical Idealism, or even just Idealism. Philosophical Idealism comes in two forms : subjective Idealism and objective Idealism.
Subjective Idealism assumes that the person's mind is paramount and creates his reality, including the objects of his world. Whereas, within objective Idealism, objects occur because they exist as ideas in the mind of god. This mind is universal, or objective, as compared to the subjective mind of the individual person. Hence reality is the product of objective mind.
Intellect and Intelligence
Intelligence expresses the activity of the mind, whilst intellect is an indication of the degree of maturity of the mind.
One way of defining intelligence is that it is the ability to learn from experience, the ability to apply logical thought to experience. Whereas intellectuality is a mental trait that is cultivated by applying that intelligence to problems in order to generalise the answers. Intellectual capability is the intelligent application of theory, the ability to see beyond the immediate problem, the ability to think at the level of abstraction.
Intellect by itself has two parts : rationality and intuition / insight.
These two parts work together in conceptual analysis, that is, when we try to analyse something, when we think about concepts and their meanings. Conceptual analysis can be split into three modes :
Sometimes, where accuracy is not very important, I treat these two terms as being equivalent. However, the difference is :
Insight is an inference that is validated by reason.
Intuition is an inference that is validated by the thinker’s belief systems.
There are several forms of determinism : some are rigid (such as the social class that a person is born into), whilst others can be more variable (such as the effects of childhood conditioning). The Indian term ‘karma’ is ideal as a general-purpose term.
Overall, karma is the effects of a person's behaviours, actions, and thinking. The most important way to understand the concept of karma is that it is the effects of the fixed ideas, beliefs and attitudes that the person carries with him through life (and lifetimes!) : these aspects of character help to generate a person’s actions and behaviours.
Karma has two forms, relative
and dialectical.
One form relates to the person's behaviour and fixed beliefs (that
is, beliefs which have formed his character) ; whatever the
person does produces an effect. This form is a relative one, and
includes everything that is not caused by abreaction.
The other form relates to the mental processes, particularly to the subconscious mind ; when this is active, the person's mental states oscillate in a dialectical way. Abreaction is the source of this dialectical form of karma.
Mind
I use this term partly to denote intellect, and partly to denote the way that it helps to give rise to desires and emotions. (See also Consciousness for a definition of thought).
This is a technique that can be used to neutralise the power of desires and emotions. It is an essential component of the practice of self-awareness. It consists in watching states of mind instead of evaluating them or acting on them. The cessation of judgement means that any state of mind, including madness, can be entered and experienced, without becoming engulfed by that state of mind.
Morals and Ethics
A distinction needs to be made between moral rules that are adhered to because of the person’s social conditioning and moral rules that are accepted through free personal choice. I call ‘morality’ those rules that are a part of a person’s social conditioning ; these rules are subject to erosion from stress during periods of social change or in times of sorrow. ‘Ethics’ is the term that I use for the acceptance of rules through free choice and understanding. Another way to put this difference is :
Morality implies ideas of right and wrong based on social conditioning.
Ethics implies ideas of right and wrong based on critical reflection.
Motivation and Drives
Motivation is the reason for following aims and desires. It is either the desire to experience something or the desire to achieve something, and takes the form of two drives (a drive is the energy component of motivation).
Primary motivation is egoistical and occurs through the desire to satisfy needs. This is the egoistical or ‘outer’ drive, since it relates to the influences on the ego of external factors ; these are usually materialism and social relationships that involve dependency, status or power.
Secondary motivation comes from the person’s ideals of ‘the good life’; this is an ‘inner’ (or soul) drive since it focuses on spiritual influences that usually originate from the soul. Although the soul generates the inner drive, it is the ego that controls the expression of it. This control is exercised through the ego’s ideals. Only when the primary motivation is fulfilled will the soul drive become pre-eminent.
Projection & Introjection
Projection means that we imagine that our own virtues and vices and attitudes are embodied in other people. We see in other people what is in ourself. This psychological stratagem is particularly noticeable with regard to our vices. We try to escape from our faults by denying them ; we see them only as aspects of other people – it is always other people that are the source of conflict.
Introjection is the complementary process. We emulate the virtues (and vices) in the people that we admire. We incorporate into ourself the attitudes of people that are significant to us. Our own idealised image of ourself can also act as a source for introjection : we can use such an image as an object from which we can introject virtues that we need. It is through introjection that a child absorbs the values of the parents.
The loop of projection and introjection is illustrated in diagramme 5.
The general meaning of relativity is that a subjective effect always goes hand in hand with an objective effect. Relativity ties subjectivity to objectivity.
The ego is a relative construction created by the infant in order to tie its subjective world to an objective reality. Since it is relative, the ego has existence but no essence. The relativity of the ego is the ground of the relativity of all values, moral codes, and beliefs. For an ego, everything is relative.
See the article Relativity of the Ego.
My use of ‘soul’ is equivalent to the term ‘higher self ’. Soul is the source of spiritual idealisms, and it is ‘the silent watcher ’. Another common name is ‘the witness’. The soul is a ‘higher self ’ to the ego (this should not be confused with the creation by an ego of an idealised ‘self ’). The soul acts as a guide to the ego, trying to steer it through the confusion of a human life. The ego reincarnates (though in a complicated manner), but the soul does not.
Spirituality
For me, spirituality does not necessarily equate to religiosity. A religious person can also be spiritual, but a spiritual person does not have to be religious. A religious perspective is a self-sufficient belief system containing all acceptable values and meanings within it. It is a belief system that has boundaries around it, since the world of the subconscious mind is excluded from it. A spiritual perspective can be more open and flexible. I view spirituality as the attempt to live in harmony with life. This view entails the necessity to aim for harmony in all of one’s personal relationships and situations.
Emotions are partly derived from ideas or mental concepts that influence us below the level of normal consciousness. The mental concept that is associated with an emotion actually creates the boundaries of that emotion. If the mental concept changes, the emotion does not change ; instead, it fades away and a different emotion arises, one that fits the current mental concept. To work out the underlying concept, the overall theme or motif of the emotion needs to be considered, that is, what the emotion is trying to express.
Emotions are not unique to any particular individual, so the ideas or concepts that underlie them come from the unconscious mind. Since the concepts are unconscious they are extremely difficult to identify. The concept is normally unconscious, so I call it an unconscious concept or an unconscious idea.
My psychology websites contain a table of unconscious ideas that determine several important emotions. The table is in the first article on Emotion. See Links page for the addresses of the sites.
Changes of .Terminology |
Up till now the terms ‘catharsis’ and ‘abreaction’ have been more or less synonymous. Since I
need a new word to label some invariable emotional sequences, I
have separated these two terms.
I name
the invariable sequences abreaction, and restrict the term ‘catharsis’ to the stage of excitement that
begins just one particular sequence. Catharsis is now simply the
first stage in the abreaction of guilt.
Definitions . etc |
Some of these definitions come from my psychology websites (see Links page for their addresses).
I use the term subconscious mind for what is personal to the individual,
and the term unconscious
mind for what is
general to humanity.
Desire is the activity of will
directed into a mental concept.
Emotion is the activity of
feeling directed into a mental concept.
An emotion is an unconscious idea powered by either a pleasant or an unpleasant feeling.
Some emotions have an additional complexity : they are compound and consist of two simpler emotions (these two emotions are factors of the compound emotion). The factors do not exert their influence simultaneously ; only one is dominant at any particular time. I use the term mode to indicate which factor is being dominant at that time, that is, to indicate the manner in which the compound emotion is being experienced.
A summary of the factors of some important emotions is :
Guilt = self-pity + self-hate.
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.
Narcissism = love + vanity.
Jealousy = love + self-pity.
Anxiety = fear + vanity.
Paranoia = fear + pride (mode of vanity).
Resentment = guilt + idealism.
Bitterness = pride + idealism
G.E. Moore summarised a certain perspective in philosophy derived from Immanuel Kant
... just as, by reflection on our perceptual and sensory experience, we become aware of the distinction between truth and falsehood,so it is by reflection on our experience of feeling and willing that we become aware of ethical distinctions.
I split sexuality into two
factors, calling them sexual desire and sexual attraction.
Sexual attraction arises when the person is sexually stimulated
through the vanity mode of narcissism.
Sexual desire arises when the person is sexually stimulated
through the self-pity mode of jealousy.
The three parts of bonding, of the ‘transference’ situation, are imprinting, identification, and true transference. The emotion is always jealousy.
Identification reveals aspects of character (‘what I am
’ ).
Transference reveals aspects of identity (‘who I am
’ ).
Transference itself can be split up into two broad factors, one focusing on sexuality and the other focusing on authority. Each parent is a source of both factors.
from article "Sexuality and Ethics"
In my usage of terms, a person = ego +
karma.
This is a dynamic model of consciousness that I sometimes use
based on a binary view of reality. Ego is the existential
state of consciousness ; karma is the psychological state
(the person's past history).
I use the term ‘conscience’ to indicate moral values and virtues that have been acquired involuntarily, either by social abreaction, or by a reaction against it.
In my understanding, the origins of morality and of ethics are different. Morality and virtue arise from social abreaction, and an holistic ethics from the sublimation of sexual anxiety.
from article "Paradigm and Ideology"
The scientific mentality functions between ethical neutrality and value-based thinking. These two axes of orientation can be formulated under two terms, those of paradigm and ideology.
A paradigm is a self-contained or closed system of meanings within which every problem is explained (or ignored). The paradigm of science is a mechanistic and materialistic world of physical causality (a world of facts and the relationships between facts).
An ideology is a self-contained system of values. In essentials, an ideology is a perspective for encapsulating power, and how that power is used.
from article "Reason and Intuition"
Insight is an inference that is validated by reason.
Intuition is an inference that is validated by the thinker’s belief systems.
The way that the intellect functions during a conceptual analysis can be split into three modes:
Logical thinking – uses reason alone.
Dialectical thinking – uses both reason and intuition.
Relativistic thinking – uses both reason and intuition.
Truth has two modes to it, those
of feeling and of cognition.
I use the term ‘ feeling of truth ’ to denote pure intuition.
The mode of cognition is that of intellectual understanding.
from article "Causality and Metaphysics"
There are two forms of causality.
The form of causality operating
within materialism I call ‘linear’, since any cause can
only produce one kind of effect and there is continuity between
the cause and the effect.
Likewise, for any person, effects or consequences flow from what
he does. Traditionally this causality is called karma, but I need
to qualify it. So I call it ‘moral karma’ (or moral causality or even ‘relative karma’ ) and
it is the mental equivalent of linear causality. Moral causality
produces one kind of effect.
Psychological causality operates differently from moral causality. It operates within the mind of a person, and is based on the process of abreaction. I also call it ‘dialectical causality ’ (or ‘dialectical karma’, or ‘psychological karma’). Dialectical causality produces two kinds of effect.
When we express our responses by acting them out, we generate moral causality. When we repress our frustration and then re-experience it later via abreaction, we are experiencing dialectical causality.
Confusion and ignorance are kept under control by moral and ethical boundaries.
from article "Relativity of the Ego"
The general meaning of relativity is :
In any relative relationship, a subjective effect is always tied to an objective effect.
All values are based on perception, and all values are thereby relative. This means that all values have both a subjective component and an objective one too.
from article "Existentialism and Psychology"
Psychological
reality is that of determinism and karma.
Existential reality is that of free will and the ego.
Psychology takes the person as
he has become – this is the diachronic view.
Existentialism takes the person as he is now, ignoring how he
came to be – this is the synchronic view.
from article "Moral States "
Diagramme
1 :
Travelling Wave
from article "Moral States "
Diagramme
2 :
Output Waveform
from article "Personal Evolution"
Diagramme
3 :
Negotiation Chart
from article "Language and Society "
Diagramme
4 :
Sequence of Social Change
from article "The Origin of Language "
Diagramme
5 :
Primary Loop of Projection and Introjection
from article "The Origin of Language "
Diagramme
6 :
The Loop of Language
Berkeley, George.
Principles of Human Knowledge. Included in Philosophical
Works, Dent (Everyman's Library), 1985. pages 78-79
Blackham, H.
Six Existential
Thinkers. Routledge, 1952 and 1986.
Brunton, Paul.
-- The Hidden
Teaching Beyond Yoga. Rider 1941. On philosophical idealism,
and the differences between philosophical thought and religious/mystical
thought.
-- The Wisdom of the Overself. Rider 1943, 1972
-- The Notebooks of Paul Brunton. Larson Publications,
USA. A series of books.
Culler, Jonathan.
Saussure. Fontana
Modern Masters, 1976.
Farthing, Geoffrey.
Deity, Cosmos & Man.
Point Loma Publications, 1993 USA. An outline of theosophy and
the ideas of Madame Blavatsky.
Freud, Sigmund.
Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis. Pelican
Fromm, Erich.
The Fear of Freedom.
Routledge, 1997.
Gross, Richard.
Psychology. 3rd
edition. Hodder & Stoughton 1996.
Hesse, Hermann.
Autobiographical Writings.
Triad Panther, 1985.
Hollingdale, R.J.
Nietzsche.
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
Laing, R.D.
-- The Divided Self. Penguin,
1987.
-- The Politics of Experience. Penguin, 1990.
-- Self and Others. Penguin, 1988.
Mann, Thomas.
-- Tonio Kroger. This
is a short story contained in:
-- Death in Venice and Other Short Stories. Heinemann,
Secker & Warburg, 1983.
Moore, G.E.
Principia Ethica. Cambridge,
1903. (sections 78-79).
Murti, T.R.V.
The Central
Philosophy of Buddhism. Unwin Paperbacks 1987.
The reader needs to be familiar with Indian / Buddhist
terminology.
Nietzsche, Friedrich.
-- Beyond Good and
Evil. Translated by W. Kaufmann. USA, Vintage, 1966.
-- On the Genealogy of Morals/ Ecce Homo. Translated by W.
Kaufmann. USA, Vintage, 1969.
-- Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale.
Penguin, 1988.
Nyanaponika, Thera.
The Heart of Buddhist
Meditation. Rider, 1983.
A standard exposition of mindfulness.
Ogden, C, and Richards, I.
The Meaning of Meaning.
Schopenhauer, A.
The World as Will
and Representation. Dover Publications, USA, 1969.
Translated by E.F.J. Payne. In two volumes.
Steiner, Rudolf.
Knowledge of the Higher
Worlds, How is it achieved ? Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993.
Stirner, Max.
The Ego and His Own.
Translated by Steven Byington. London, 1907.
[Also, The Modern Library, USA].
Sturrock, John.
Structuralism.
Paladin Grafton Books, 1986.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee.
In John Carroll (ed.) Language,
Thought and Reality. MIT Press, 1956 and 1995.
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Ian Heath
London, UKMy email address is likely to change.
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