Psychology . of . Nihilism

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.

The term ‘nihilism’ can be used in three common ways. Each way has its own particular emotional dynamics, which are the emotional factors that maintain the psychological symptoms. [²]

1). It is the fear of the loss of meaning. This is the fear of meaninglessness.

The emotional dynamics are fear + guilt (mode of self-pity). [³]

This mode of guilt generates the sense of meaninglessness.

2). It is the belief in world-denial, the belief that the material world has no meaning. This is the advocacy of meaninglessness.

The emotional dynamics are fear + envy.

Here envy is the more powerful of the two : envy controls and constrains the fear. Envy sustains the belief that it would not matter if the world did not exist.

3). It is the euphoria of egotism, arising from the belief that the individual can create his own meaning to life. It is the euphoria that powers the belief that one is free and non-restrained in the creation of one’s own meanings and values. It is the advocacy that there are no barriers to personal achievement.

The emotional dynamic is narcissism (in vanity mode).

Where the meanings link to social values then mania is likely to be present as well. This belief is a feature of some Continental literary theorists (some post-structuralists and post-modernists). It is also a feature of some new age thinking, as when a person believes that we can create our own reality.

I focus on ways (1) and (2). These two represent some forms of experience that I have encountered. I have never been attracted to form (3).

Guilt - based Nihilism

First I consider guilt-based nihilism. It is always guilt in self-pity mode that produces the loss of values, the loss of meanings. When meaning totally vanishes then catatonia is entered. There are two levels to the problem of the loss of meaning : these are the level of feeling and the level of intellect.

The level of feeling
At this level there have been numerous people who have attempted to come to terms with meaninglessness, especially in the twentieth century. The person cannot understand what is happening to him ; all he can do is articulate his predicament and confusion. At this level, meaninglessness is debilitating but not paralysing. When meaning evaporates then life reduces to futility. Nihilism becomes the final removal of all expectation, of all ambition. In a world of futility, values and standards no longer have any function.

Many writers have described this existential condition. For example : Colin Wilson in his ‘The Outsider ’ ; one author whom I especially like is Hermann Hesse.

When there is no understanding of the actual problem here, when the person does not struggle against the loss of meaning in his world, then the confusion of this form of nihilism is felt to be final and we witness the gradual slide into catatonic madness. However, under some circumstances of sheer fright and terror, a person may slide very rapidly into a transient state of catatonia within a time of a few seconds or minutes.

The desolation of meaninglessness can be kept at bay by the will. In fact the will can keep all forms of madness at bay. However, nihilism creates a paradox. The paradox is that the use of will requires meaning. If the world is meaningless then what is the point of using the will ? . What is the point of avoiding madness ?

In a meaningless world, sanity has no more value than insanity.

The level of intellect
Only at this level, when the problem is fully understood as a problem, can the transition to madness (in the form of catatonia) be instantaneous ; the rapid speed of transition to madness is achieved by the production of insight into the problem. What the person desires above all is to find some way of basing his identity, his being, on external values (that is, values that are outside of himself, such as values derived from family, job, politics, fame, social support). Insight shows him that this cannot be done, and so the world becomes meaningless. The complete and rapid collapse of external values precipitates instant catatonia.

If the person cannot conceptualise the problem then he cannot use insight to derive an answer. There can be no answer if the question has not been asked. Only the intellect can pose the problem and deliver the answer. When this happens and madness is experienced, then the belief arises that it is not just the world that is futile but also man himself !!

My experience of instant catatonia is described in the article Guilt and Meaning - part 1. In that article, I describe catatonia as being the result of a failed social identity and a rejected individual identity.

My method of keeping nihilism at arm’s length was to centre myself on my existential mentality, together with the hope that my self-analysis would eventually provide a desirable escape route. By tying existentialism to nihilism I survived the world. I was a nihilist in my subjective world and an existentialist within the objective world of materialism.

When these ideas failed to sustain me, when the dreariness of life
became overwhelming, I just wanted to embrace
my own dark star – nothingness !

Envy – based Nihilism

Now I turn to envy-based nihilism and the belief in world-denial. This belief underpins the view that there is no meaning in a material life. The advocacy of meaninglessness is the attempt to destroy inherent meaning, so this is where the factor of envy comes from. The basic premiss upon which the advocacy of world-denial arises is fear. The conjunction of envy and fear is the reason that world-denial is adopted as the basis of value and the basis of meaning.

The effect of the conjunction depends on which factor is the most powerful. The effect depends on how the person tries to rationalise his limited skills in handling the difficulties of personal relationships. [4]

When envy is highlighted then world-denial is advocated. In this situation there is no need for any relationships. Whereas when fear is dominant then indifference to the world is the norm. (See article Envy). Now the person feels the fear of relationships. Either way, the person has found a justification for his limited skills.

Asceticism

Asceticism and all religions are influenced by the concept of world-denial and so nihilism underpins some features of them.
Hinayana (or Pali) Buddhism is an example of an envy-influenced religion. Here only monasticism and solitary effort are worthwhile ; there is little meaning in social work. Hence meditation and mindfulness are usually the preferred practices.
In guilt-influenced religions, such as Christianity and the other two Semitic religions, good works and duty are emphasised as ways of trying to fend off meaninglessness ; there is little meaning in individual concerns.

Yet Christianity has a powerful strain of envy : as envy begins its ascension to being a dominant influence in consciousness, so monasticism becomes attractive, or else the person’s own conscience becomes the final arbiter of morals. [More accurately, the decision by Luther (or anyone else) to promote the private conscience over Papal authority represents the influence of envy (in that it destroys the lawfulness of an external authority). Whereas the actual practise of individual ethics represents the influence of narcissism].

The self-deception practised within all ethical religions and all ascetic worldviews is the inability to recognise the primacy of fear. The fear is overlaid by a thick screen of guilt. The guilt leads to a focus on the achievement of purity and perfection, but the fear goes undetected. Yet this fear shapes the sensitive person’s view of the world far more subtly and potently than does the guilt. [5]

Usefulness of Nihilism

What function did an envy-based nihilism serve for me ? . I indicate the views that I held in the 1990s.

My fate was to explore the dark side of the subconscious mind, the dark side of my personality, the well of confusion and violence under a gentle exterior. The sadness of my fate was always with me. The bitterness of the abreactions of pride made me hate life. [6]. The bitterness made me antagonistic to life, antagonistic to my soul, antagonistic to god, antagonistic to creation and evolution. So nihilism became my revenge on life for all the years of confusion that I experienced. The spiritual word was my home, but fate had made me an outcast from it.

Nothing could make me change my nihilism except insight and understanding. I am what I believe. My idea of the world is what I react to. I affirmed nihilism because I resented being a victim and an outcast. This led me to reject the validity of all external forms of authority, especially those of the spiritual world.

Eventually I achieved the insights that I needed, and so my views changed. But the price of my wisdom was decades of sorrow.

My sorrows made me turn my analytical mind onto the problem of good and evil. My nihilism gave me the freedom to assume new ideas about this traditional topic. All past views assume that good and evil are separate. My understanding of the dialectical nature of the subconscious mind allowed me to see that good and evil are linked together. This understanding meant that I had to re-value all my past ideas about ethics and morality. [7]

I generalise my use of nihilism to explain the intellectual ferment that occurs at the dawn of a new age.

For example : from artistic and psychological points of view, the period of Modernism (roughly the 1890s to post 1930s) in Europe reflected strong elements of nihilism. Excitement was in the air as artists and thinkers explored the subconscious mind and its ways of working.

At such times as these, all traditional views of authority (whether political, moral, religious, etc) become subject to criticism.

Advocacy of meaninglessness repudiates the authority of other people and of all traditions. If nothing has any meaning then neither has any source of moral authority. In my view, nihilism always arises when existing ideas of spiritual reality have become inadequate or degrading. The need then is for new values, new meanings. However, the attempt to produce new values requires a struggle against the whole weight of tradition. So nihilism is an essential first step that clears the way for new perspectives, new world views.

Ironically, Buddha’s rejection of the Hindu tradition led ultimately to his followers creating a new tradition. And now this tradition needs to be overcome. This irony always occurs when any teacher, any tradition, lacks the intellectual expertise to understand conceptually the problem of meaning. [Christianity was different ; Jesus did not reject Judaism, but only added to it. A guilt-influenced tradition does not reject previous authority].

If the advocacy of world-denial is a narrow view, what does the opposite view, that of world-affirmation, lead to ? . World-denial inhibits ambition, and so world-affirmation endorses ambition. The binary emotion to fear is anger (which helps to stimulate aggression and so underpins a lot of competition). The binary emotion to envy is greed. [8]. And guilt easily switches into the vanity mode of pride. So world-affirmation becomes a materialist adherence to aggressive competition, ambition and greed, within a dominant mood of pride. This was the Western world of the twentieth century. This world-view arose as a compensating antithesis to the religious view of world-denial. Such world-affirmation is a narrow view too.

In my philosophy the material world is just a staging-post for the expansion of consciousness and the exploration of relationships. But perhaps this also is a limited view.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. For the addresses of my websites, see Links page.

[¹]. The philosophical aspect of nihilism requires an understanding of the nature of the ego and the process of reincarnation. Two articles which deal with this are Nihilism, on my website A Modern Thinker, and Psychological Mechanics, on my website Patterns of Spirituality. [1]

[²]. Any emotion is always a feeling (either positive or negative) that energises a mental concept associated with it. This is explained in the first article on Emotion. The mental concept is normally unconscious, so I call it an unconscious idea.
Emotional dynamics are the principal unconscious ideas and their associated emotions that drive any particular state of consciousness. [2]

[³]. 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.

My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See Basic Ideas page. [3]

[4]. The destructiveness of envy can produce severe psychological conditions. See the article Depression and Autism, section Internalisation of Emotions onwards. [4]

[5]. There is an article on Sensitivity and Effects of Fear, on my website Discover Your Mind. See Links page. [5]

[6]. My in-depth analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See Basic Ideas page. [6]

[7]. Good and evil are linked together in the subconscious mind. I explain why in the article Causality and Metaphysics, on my website A Modern Thinker. [7]

[8]. The binary nature of emotions is described in the first article on Emotion. [8]

Books

Wilson, Colin. The Outsider.

Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf.

The articles in this section are :

Envy and the Death Desire

Psychology of Nihilism

Violence & the Loss of Freedom

Destructiveness

Copyright © 2003 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.

 

Ian Heath
London, UK

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