Destructiveness

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Two cold shades that were mentioned earlier in the article on Schizophrenia are the two forms of ridicule. Ridicule is destructive since it can do a lot of psychological damage to a fragile person. I repeat these two forms for convenience, which have different emotional dynamics. In general, each particular state of mind has its own emotional dynamics, which are the emotional factors that maintain the psychological mood and symptoms of that state of mind.

There are two intensities of feeling in ridicule. The emotional dynamics are :

When there is a gleam of delight in the eyes during the expression of ridicule, then it is a jeering attitude. [¹]
Then ridicule = jealousy + hate.

When the gleam is absent there is a more destructive attitude, an icy ‘serve you right ’ attitude.
Then ridicule = envy + hate.

Hatred is rather a cool emotion. When it transforms into the hate mode of pride then destructiveness begins to intensify within consciousness. Pride is always the basis of the worst forms of destructiveness .

Desire for Revenge

I begin with the desire for revenge. This is a major component of destructiveness. A comparatively mild form of it is the conjunction of envy with bitterness. But for intense feelings of revenge, [²]

The emotional dynamics = envy + pride (mode of hatred of others).

Anger is often in the background as well.

In general, when pride is intense then feelings of destructiveness are intense too. But when bitterness is dominant then destructive feelings are cooler and more long-term.

Dreams of Conflict

Dreams of conflict often have as their central dynamic either paranoia or the desire for revenge. Paranoia usually focuses on the destruction of enslavement (by the forces or institutions of society, religion, political government, etc), whereas revenge features the destruction of one’s human opponents. My paranoid dreams had the function of destroying reliance on all forms of external authority ; I am prepared to consider advice from any acceptable source of  wisdom but I am not prepared to rely on any such source. My dreams of revenge occur when people prevent me from living the way that I want to.

Paranoia and revenge can interact together – capitalism and competitiveness are destructive to the nobler conceptions of life, and often bring out the worse side of people. So in turn I become destructive in my phantasies and dreams.

However, there is a bleaker side to these dreams. When I dream of revenge then I am using envy against my chains of enslavement by people. But the opposite process, the internalisation of envy, turns that envy against myself.  Now in my dreams I am being attacked, and my attackers want to destroy me.  Now I have to defend myself against my own envy. In other variations, when I am being chased, what I am doing is fleeing or escaping from envy. [³]

When I use revenge in my dreams then my mood is pride (mode of hatred) but when I am the victim of revenge then my mood is guilt (mode of self-pity). The dream of running away, when taken to its extreme limit, becomes the desire for oblivion.  When I am fleeing, it is envy that threatens to swallow me up. It is envy that threatens to engulf me. The forces doing the attacking represent the subconscious forces that are trying to come into consciousness. It is that which is repressed that is trying to manifest itself. [4]

Such dreams can produce physiological conditions. I mention one condition below.

Influence of  Dreams on Politics

These conflicts have repercussions on my political views. Politics often produces theories of revolutionary destruction. The psychological analogue to these theories is the dream of conflict, the dream of oppression, within the subconscious mind. In other words, the conflict in my dreams comes to reproduce itself in the revolutionary politics of my consciousness.

The sequence as it evolved in me (in my early 20s) was in three stages. First, the reality of my situations in life, the existential way that I felt life, orientated around confused awareness of being an outsider (first stage). This confusion eventually generated dreams of conflict (second stage). A few years later I graduated to anarchism in my political views (third stage). This is a sequence that flows from existential confusion to psychological conflict and then to political resolution.

Revolutions usually bring out some of the worse forms of violence.

The origin of these forms of destructiveness in a person’s mind is the attempt by repressed envy to represent itself in consciousness.

Envy is a personality trait that is highly stimulated in free-market capitalism. Therefore, sooner or later, such unregulated capitalism will lead to the destruction of society, or to the violent transformation of society.

For example, in 19th century Britain the industrial revolution destroyed the traditional structure of society. The lives of much of the working population became very bleak and wretched. Now the industrial base of much of the western world is moving to the east. Here the pattern is repeating itself.

The individual has to use his code of ethics and his idealism in order to control his destructiveness. So too, capitalism needs to be controlled by ethics and, if necessary, by state regulation.

Five Forms of Destructiveness

In this article and three others [5], I have examined five main forms of destructiveness, and they all require the dominance of pride. Self- destructiveness is described in the article on Envy.

1.  Ideas of being persecuted.

2.  Paranoia.

3.  Sadism

4.  Ideas of revenge.

5.  The projection of blame.

Dreams and phantasies of destructiveness not only polarise mental attitudes but they also generate physiological conditions. I give an effect of my dreams of conflict. One of the sites in the body where I store fear is my thighs, especially the left one. The feelings of destruction activate my fear, which then increases the rate of metabolism in the thighs. During one period of my self-analysis these dreams generated a great deal of heat in my thighs – I usually had to unzip the sleeping bag in which I slept so as to cool down. In fact my thighs became noticeably thinner, whereas before this period they had always been well built because of the amount of walking that I do. I was literally burning myself up.  (See also the notes on dreams in the article on Violence ).

Universal Source

Violence and destructiveness reflect a person’s conceptions of good and evil. Are violence and destructiveness, and evil, necessary attributes of humanity ?   If not, where do they originate from?  The universality of violence and destructiveness, both around the world and in history, can originate from only three sources. 

They are

• either a universal aspect of a human being (a part of one’s essence), 

• or they are derived from a universal event, 

• or they are derived from one or more universal processes.

I do not accept theories of essence, so I discount the possibility of this source. I accept that the person's soul can be considered essence, but I am analysing aspects of the ego (or personality). The ego is a relative construction, and so cannot have an essence. The ego is form rather than essence. By this statement I mean that the ego is defined by its relationships to other egos rather than by any internal pre-determined essence. [6]

The universal processes are two in number: these are reincarnation, which instills nihilism in a person, and abreaction.  Violence and destructiveness can be responses to the nihilism that can be induced by reincarnation, but I consider this possibility to be a secondary source (and I analyse it in other articles).  The process of abreaction is a major source of violence and destructiveness, but I consider that it owes its potency to a universal event. [7]

This leaves a universal event as the prime source. 
What is this event ?

In my view, violence and destructiveness usually originate in a universal event, which occurs in early childhood. This event is infancy trauma. Infancy trauma is my name for psychological trauma that occurs in the first years of childhood. This distress occurs when the stresses and negative states of mind of the parents’ own lives are transmitted to the fledgling ego of the infant. The powerful nature of this event is made possible by the predicament that faces the infant in the first few months of its life – it has no conscious ego. The ego has to be built anew in each new incarnation, using as a ‘template’ the previous ego (the ego of the previous incarnation) which is now part of the subconscious mind. [8]

The infant may be fortunate in having good parents, and so it will escape from the likelihood of experiencing trauma. Nevertheless, it will have suffered trauma many times in previous lives, and the effects of this will continue to influence it even in this life.

Trauma allows the violence and destructiveness of society to be incorporated into the basic structure of the ego that the infant has to construct for itself. Then when the child has become an adult, its ego will be unstable to some degree, depending on the manner that the violence and destructiveness have become built-in to that ego.

What do violence and destructiveness indicate?  The need for power!   Each person has two foci of power : his individual identity and his social identity. The emotional sequences that create the two identities, from infancy trauma to jealousy and narcissism, are my interpretations according to power. The violence and destructiveness of the person are attempts, in an unskilful manner, to gain power over others or to refute the power of others. [9]

A person’s conception of power is derived from his conceptions of good and evil, which in turn are derived from his experience of infancy trauma. This experience determines how the person conceives happiness and sorrow. In turn, these conceptions of happiness and sorrow lead to the formulation of particular goals. These goals will have the purpose of attaining the desired power necessary to realise that happiness and avoid future sorrow. [10]

Intensity of Life

If trauma has been intense, then the effects of confusion and determinism on the child will also be intense. The more powerful that these effects are, so the more difficult will it be for the child to achieve power and happiness in skilful, socially-harmonious, ways. Once it becomes an adult, it will either succumb to these effects or else be propelled into a search for meaning in life. One's life will become either apathetic or intense.

Therefore, the intensity with which infancy trauma is experienced helps to determine the future intensity of the person’s life.

Where infancy trauma is of minor intensity, or has not occurred, then the person can follow a socially-acceptable path to power. The person may achieve a comparatively pleasant and happy life. There is not likely to be much intensity in his life, and not much drama in his use of power.

But when the trauma is intense enough, it will produce a lasting effect of clouding the mind (or just clouding ethical attitudes). Then the use of power will become influenced by unstable aspects of the personality, and thereby become potentially violent and destructive. [ Even if trauma has not occurred in this lifetime, in this incarnation, it will certainly have occurred in previous ones, and so provides a legacy for the current incarnation].

Good and evil (as aspects of social conditioning and social learning), and power, are automatically programmed into the infant through the experience of trauma. The desire for wisdom is not, unfortunately – it is purely an optional extra.

The pursuit of wisdom will always, sooner or later, bring the explorer into contact with the destructiveness and violence within his own being.

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

[¹]. 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. [1]

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

[³]. The internalisation of emotion is described briefly in the article Depression and Autism, sub-section Internalisation of Emotions.
An article on Internalisation is on my website Discover Your Mind. [3]

[4]. Conflict dreams are briefly mentioned in the article Depression and Autism, sub-section Internalisation of Emotions.
More conflict dreams are described in the article Violence and Loss of Freedom, sub-section Violence in Dreams.
There is an article on Reverie and Dreams on my website  The Subconscious Mind. [4]

[5]. The other three articles are : Pride and Paranoia, for ideas of persecution and paranoia ; and Mind Loops for the projection (or transfer) of blame. Sadism is described in the article Sadism & Masochism, on my website  The Strange World of Emotion. [5]

[6]. The idea that the ego is a relative construction is explained in the article Relativity of the Ego, on my website A Modern Thinker. [6]

[7]. My in-depth analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See Basic Ideas page.
Two articles which deal with the nihilism created by reincarnation are Nihilism, on my website A Modern Thinker, and Psychological Mechanics, on my website Patterns of Spirituality. [7]

[8]. To understand the process of creating the ego, see the article Vulnerability of the Ego.

An article on Bonding focuses on some problems of a sensitive child and explains an unintentional source of infancy trauma. This is on my websites  The Strange World of Emotion, or  The Subconscious Mind, or  Discover Your Mind.

In more detail, infancy trauma is explained in two articles. The first article, Vulnerability of the Ego, focuses on the origins of violence. And the second one, Guilt & Meaning - part 2, centres on why trauma can occur unintentionally. [8]

[9]. For my ideas on the two identities of a person, see the article Confusion and Identity. To understand how they are created from infancy trauma, visit my website  The Subconscious Mind. [9]

[10]. There is an article on Power, on my websites  The Strange World of Emotion and  Discover Your Mind. [10]

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Copyright @2003  Ian Heath
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