Abreaction  and  Creative Illness

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What Freud and Jung did was to reformulate (and re-discover where necessary) this knowledge, add their own insights, and then create acceptable models of consciousness for the twentieth century.

Ellenberger refers to the ‘creative’ illness of Freud and of Jung, the way that each one’s interior journey gave rise to his particular theory. Their explorations of the subconscious mind and unconscious mind meant the exploration of the dark side of the mind, the realm of negative beliefs and attitudes. [ I use both "subconscious" and "unconscious" terms in my theory of consciousness, so my use is different from the ways that Freud used "unconscious" and Jung used "subconscious". ] 

Negative beliefs and attitudes cannot be analysed until they are brought into normal consciousness. This process does indeed create psychological illness. Whether it is creative or crippling depends upon the capacity of the explorer to withstand psychological shock, the shock of facing the unpleasant aspects of oneself. He has to use his will to prevent hasty retreat from this encounter. Ultimately everything depends on the strength of will of the explorer and on the way that the explorer uses that will.

The use of will requires meaning. There has to be a reason why the will should be used, why the person should face unpleasantness. He has to have an ideal. Where the desire for meaning accepts traditional values, then the person will only skim the surface of his internal darkness. Where the desire for meaning goes against traditional values, where the person is prepared to investigate revered values of tradition, then the person’s interior journey may generate severe psychological shock. This will occur if age-old values are discovered to originate from 'immoral ' sources.

In my view, Nietzsche went deeper into the mind's darkness than either Freud or Jung. I went deeper than Nietzsche. I survived my journey but Nietzsche did not survive his. I had greater will power and greater idealism than he had. [¹]

Where the desire for meaning is weak then the explorer’s will is also likely to be weak – in this situation, ability to explore oneself in depth should not be expected.

Loneliness

During most of my self-analysis I worked at a local hospital as a porter. My only companion was my mother, with whom I lived. I no longer had any local friends. My problems were my own and I never discussed them with anyone, not even with my mother. Effectively I was in intellectual isolation for many years. Freud and Jung also worked much of their self-analyses in isolation too.

Isolation is necessary in order to prevent premature criticism by other people from interrupting, or even destroying, the internal evolution of self-consciousness. The first fruits of developing self-consciousness bring immature aspects of the mind into awareness. The explorer has to work his way through this immaturity ; he has to be allowed to indulge in naïve phantasies that have sexual and violent themes, so that he can analyse them. He must not be stopped by the criticisms of other well-meaning but misguided people. So isolation cannot be avoided.

Unfortunately, this isolation brings loneliness as an automatic corollary to it. The isolation can be adapted to, but the loneliness is killing. This loneliness is inevitable because the explorer on his interior journey is going into regions of consciousness never previously explored at a cognitive level of awareness. By this statement I mean that there have been countless numbers of neurotic and psychotic persons in the past, but none of them understood what was happening to them. Hence there is no one who can help the explorer or even understand what he is attempting to do.

All he can do is believe in himself.

[ Strange as it may seem, there were times during my interior journey when even my soul and my spirit guides did not appear to understand what I was trying to do. The influences from my soul were primarily in the form of inducing negative moods in me or inducing negative dreams at night - this was its way of criticising me. ]

When the need for social approval is abreacted then loneliness dies down to a minimal level. Then the person can develop a mature attitude to society, which he neither rejects nor is dependent upon. Aloneness becomes the state of the unique individuality of the person. [²]

Loneliness and aloneness are complementary states of mind. Loneliness arises from social identity and jealousy (mode of self-pity) ; the person focuses on social approval and yearns for the company of other people. Aloneness is the burden of individual identity and is based on pride (mode of hate) controlled by idealism ; the person is a loner and may not desire company. [³]

My attitude to society has gone through several phases. For the past few years I defined myself as being friendly but not social. Now I am beginning to orientate more towards being social.

Pain of Insight

An intense psycho-analysis produces long periods of resentment and bitterness. [4]. An intense psycho-analysis is a painful process. In my interior journey I travelled through states of madness. My pain was intense because the processes of madness needed to be understood, so I had to repeatedly experience these states of mind till I did understand them. That was my destiny. Before insight can occur, the relevant experience has to become familiar to the person. Strange experiences cannot be understood whilst they are still strange. Insight and understanding require familiarity. Hence insight required me to keep in the wilderness of pain. Psychological insight is painful.

The pain of insight arises because abreaction is dialectical. Even when I try to do good my efforts produce bad effects on me (as well as good ones). The spiritual journey is a meander through life, now two steps forward and one step back, then one step forward and two steps back. In the world of the idealist, the shortest distance between two points is a zig-zag. [5]

The pain of insight arises because my phantasies of abreaction reveal my own degradation. This degradation smashes my self-image and I have to rebuild my integrity anew each time. Only my idealism enables me to do this. Hence idealism is needed to enable a person to withstand abreaction. Will power needs to be complemented by idealism.

The distinction between will and idealism is that will enables me to persevere, despite my distress, whilst idealism enables me to assimilate my distressful experiences.

The pain of insight arises because the violence in a person is a product of all the sorrow that he has experienced. Abreaction brings this sorrow into consciousness. Only by living through this sorrow can the person finally achieve the state of non-violence. The necessity of ascetic self-control is that it enables this violence to be lived in phantasy instead of expressing itself in social relations. [6]

Handling the Ego

There are two components to a person : his present state of mind and his past states of mind. His present state is the ego, and all the past states are his psychological and moral conditioning (his karma). [7]. In my ‘creative illness’  I formulated a view of my ego that was based on my empirical results. This view reflects the manner in which emotions are associated with complex patterns of beliefs and attitudes. [8]

Each emotion carries with it a set attitude of mind. Any particular attitude or belief arises automatically when the relevant emotion is currently present in the conscious mind or is active in the subconscious mind. Where the pattern of belief and attitude is currently more dominant than the associated emotion, then the emotional response will last longer than usual – so this condition is a ‘mood’.

A psycho-analysis reveals that the ego persistently identifies itself with its moods and desires. The ego orientates itself around its two identities. Some moods and desires are allocated to the individual identity and others to the social identity. Yet even this split is only a framework for further splitting. Each of the moods within either identity acts like a sub-ego. Hence each ‘person’ is functionally a multitude of sub-egos, of sub- personalities.

Because a person identifies his ego with the current sub-ego, there is no recognition of ‘ego-switching’ as the current mood changes – there is only a recognition that the mood has changed. There are no barriers between the sub-egos, so this is not ‘multiple personality’ disorder (where some sub-egos do not know of the existence of other ones).

I do not believe in the religious concept of ego-denial. My preferred method of handling a troublesome sub-ego is to acknowledge it when it is present and then try to put it to one side. This procedure avoids identifying with it and its associated value judgements. This way I can learn detachment, but it is not an easy process. I try and think of myself as being on a stage where the drama is performed by my sub-egos. I recognise their right to exist and so avoid repressing them. This procedure is a ceremonial interpretation of monad theory. The monad, as a self-sufficient being, has to project and introject amongst his own sub-personalities.

[ This procedure breaks down when a psychological "trigger point " is activated. A trigger point occurs when the person's regular response to a particular situation has become one of fear, rather than one of anxiety. Then the upsurge of fear may be so powerful that it might not always be possible to avoid identifying with it.]

Take away the moods and desires – what becomes of the ego?  A psycho-analysis reveals to the person how his mind works, but it cannot reveal who or what he is. Awareness takes the enquiry one stage higher : the person watches how his moods and desires interact. But even awareness does not reveal who or what he is, only what he is not.

My idealism is not the same as the influence on me of my soul.
When I use my idealism to control my ego, who is acting on whom, or what is happening to what ?   I do not know.

And I have not found any meaningful answer in any philosophical, religious or theosophical literature that I have read. For the explorer of consciousness, answers can only lie in the future.

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]. Nietzsche ended by going mad for the last few years of his life. His madness has baffled every writer on him that I have read. It is usually thought to be the result of syphilis, but this cannot be correct. His madness took only a few moments to happen. Whereas syphilis produces a gradual decline in mental functioning. Instant madness is always the result of rapid-onset catatonia : this is explained in the article Guilt & Meaning - part 1. [1]

[²]. The need for social approval is analysed in the article Social Approval and Inferiority on my website  The Subconscious Mind ; and in the article Approval & Inferiority & Power, on my website Discover Your Mind. [2]

[³]. Social identity and individual identity are the two identities of a person. The idea of having two identities is introduced in the article, Confusion and Identity. A more detailed analysis is given in the article Two Identities, on my website  The Subconscious Mind.

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]. Resentment and bitterness are analysed in the fourth article on Abreaction. See Resentment and Bitterness. [4]

[5]. My in-depth analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See Basic Ideas page. [5]

[6]. There are two articles on violence. See Violence & the Loss of Freedom, and Destructiveness. [6]

[7]. A person is his present and past, or ego + karma. A philosophical analysis of this relation is given in the articles Existentialism & Psychology (read first) and Structuralism, on my website A Modern Thinker. [7]

[8]. I define an emotion to be the activity of feeling directed into a mental concept. This is why beliefs and attitudes are associated with emotions. See the first article on Emotion. [8]

My website that specialises in psycho-analysis is  The Subconscious Mind.

Books

Ellenberger, Henri. The Discovery of the Unconscious. Basic Books, USA, 1981.

The articles in this section are :

Copyright @2003  Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

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