Wisdom Notes - Emotions and Abreaction

The Nature of Emotion

This is the first of three articles on Emotion.

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

A person is always experiencing some emotion at any time, since when the present emotion fades away so another emotion will take its place and be felt by him /her. No single emotional response can be permanent. When any emotion, such as anger, is experienced the person can stay angry only for some time ; eventually the anger will fade away and a fresh emotion will arise.

Many people orientate on feeling responses to the world: an abundance of good feelings, and emotional satisfaction, become the criteria for a successful life. However, emotions present problems for the ego (which is just the personality). When emotions become intense they neutralise intellectual concerns. In fact, common negatively-valued emotions such as self-pity, fear, anxiety, as well as moods like depression, actually tend to inhibit rationality – in particular, intense anxiety seems to produce a mental fog in one’s mind, making it impossible to study.

Understanding the nature of emotions has profound implications for psycho- therapy. In this set of three articles I present my ideas on emotion. In the subsequent set of five articles on abreaction  I focus on their relevance to psycho-therapy and the development of self-awareness.

Feelings

Feelings are not the same as emotions. This fact is not clearly recognised, especially as definitions of them tend to be ambiguous and vague. Confusion often abounds in ideas and articles about them.

One area of confusion is that feelings are often loosely equated with emotions. This is all right for colloquial use. I can ask a friend how he is feeling today ; it would be awkward to ask him how emotional he is being today. Some people might take offence if they were thought to be emotional, whereas it is acceptable for them to show feelings. However, there are fundamental differences between feelings and emotions. 

There are a multitude of emotions, but only three feelings.

There are just three feelings : the pleasant one, the unpleasant one, and the neutral one. This is the Buddhist understanding and I verified this fact directly during the time when I used to practise meditation. In the past, some moral theorists believed that the neutral feeling is only an equal mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, so that the net effect is zero. But meditational awareness disproves this assumption.

The importance of feelings is that they help give rise to emotions, that is, the bases of all emotions are the three feelings.

Model of Emotions

Emotions are partly derived from feelings. To explain how this derivation occurs I use a model of consciousness that is a traditional one: consciousness has three modes ; these are will (or will power), mind, and feeling. Past variations on this model substituted action for will, and emotion or sensibility for feelings.

In this model, I distinguish between consciousness and mind. Consciousness is the totality of the person, whilst mind is only one feature of it. However, my model has an innovative feature: the three modes are separate, but they interlock by the production of desires and emotions.

In this model, mind has two aspects: intelligence and intellect.  Intelligence links to will and to feeling, and intellect is the source of abstraction.

• Intelligence expresses the activity of the mind.

• The intellect is an indication of the degree of maturity of the mind.

Mind is the key to consciousness. Mind, in fact, is the ‘cement’ that keeps all aspects of consciousness together. Now the mind, in its aspect of intelligence, helps to produce desires and emotions. In this aspect of mind we use ideas or concepts.

I give definitions of desire and emotion that brings out their reliance on concepts.

Will is a pure striving, an undirected effort. When will is united with mind, it generates desire.

• Desire is the activity of will directed by a mental concept. The concept governs the use of will. The concept directs the will.

For example, will plus the concept ‘social status’ gives rise to the desire to achieve social status. Will plus the concept ‘fame’ gives rise to the desire for fame. Without the presence of desire it is very difficult to sustain the use of will ; if a person tries to renounce desire then he /she is quite likely to become lethargic.

Feeling unites with mind to generate emotion.

• Emotion is the activity of feeling directed by a mental concept. The feeling energises a conceptual response to a preceding stimulus.

Feelings are primarily either pleasant or unpleasant ; rarely are they neutral. Hence there are two possible conceptual responses to any stimulus, which in turn leads to two possible emotional responses.

For example, feeling plus the concept ‘domination’ gives rise to the emotions of  anger and fear : anger arises because the pleasant feeling makes domination of others acceptable to me, whereas the unpleasant feeling makes fear arise when I become subject to domination by others.

For another example: feeling plus the concept ‘identity’ gives rise to the emotions of  love and hate. Here the pleasant feeling makes a social identity acceptable to me, since I am the same as everyone else: identity produces love. The unpleasant feeling makes me reject a social identity – I prefer to be different and have an individual identity: difference produces hate.

Unconscious Ideas 1

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. The mental concepts of emotions are not normally a part of our awareness. Emotions are not unique to any particular individual, so the mental concepts that underlie them come from the unconscious mind. Since the mental concepts are unconscious they are extremely difficult to identify. The mental concept is normally unconscious, so I call it an unconscious concept or an unconscious idea. [ I first came across the term "unconscious idea" from my study of Freud's writings].

Now an unconscious idea has two values : it is good or it is bad. The good value generates the pleasant feeling, the bad value the unpleasant feeling. This division leads to two choices. One choice gives rise to one emotion, the other choice to its complement.

In general, the definition of an emotion is that it is an unconscious idea powered by either a pleasant or an unpleasant feeling.

The unconscious idea enables all emotions to be arranged in pairs of complementary opposites. The one exception is that the neutral feeling is unique, it is not part of a binary. It is the basis of equanimity, the ability to be unaffected by any kind of stress. Equanimity should not be confused with indifference ; indifference is a protective mechanism of withdrawal from responsibility and is underpinned by fear.

I list some emotions which are complementary, or binary, opposites :

fear - anger
love - hate
jealousy - narcissism
pride - guilt
vanity - self-pity
resentment - bitterness

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.

For example, guilt comprises the two simpler emotions of self-pity and self-hate. So when the self-pity factor is being dominant, I describe this as experiencing guilt (in the mode of self-pity). Similarly, when the self-hate factor is being dominant, this is guilt (in the mode of self-hate).

I list some compound emotions and then I give a table of unconscious ideas that determine emotions.

Table 1. Compound Emotions

In the compound emotions of guilt, pride, narcissism, and jealousy, only one mode is felt at any one time – they are never experienced simultaneously. For example, guilt is felt as either the mode of self-pity or as the mode of self-hate.

How do I know that some emotions are compound ones?   Guilt was the first one that I identified. Once I learned to detect guilt by empirical awareness I became puzzled by the fact that it seemed to exhibit contrary impressions : it seemed to give rise to two different kinds of response. Then I realised that this difficulty could be explained by postulating that guilt consisted of two factors. It then became an empirical task to see if I could detect these two separate factors – and I did.

Now guilt equals self-pity plus self-hate. This arrangement of the two emotions within guilt has three other possible combinations, by taking the binaries of self-pity and self-hate (that is, vanity and love). So if my factorisation of guilt was correct then three other compound emotions should also exist, with their factors being:

Eventually I realised through intuition that these compound emotions represented jealousy, narcissism, and pride. Then again I empirically verified that my theorising was correct. The hallmark of a compound emotion is that it produces ambiguous responses ; the ambiguity always falls into two categories, thus indicating that two factors are present and need to be separated.

For example, in sadness there is sorrow (from the regret) plus a sweetness (from the jealousy). When the jealousy factor is highlighted, then I always find that sadness is a lovely emotion in which I often like to linger, whereas the sorrow element makes sadness unpleasant.

Unconscious Ideas 2

Now I turn to unconscious ideas. Deriving them was not easy. Some emotions occur three times ; for example, self-pity occurs on its own, and as a mode of jealousy, and as a mode of guilt, and each one produces a different response. To work out the underlying idea, the overall theme or motif of the emotion needs to be considered, that is, what the emotion is trying to express. Also, in a compound emotion, one unconscious idea needs to be harmonious with the other one, since both unconscious ideas relate to just one emotion. Below are the results that I derived.

I use the word ‘implies’ to indicate the central idea that determines a particular emotion. These ideas are focused on relationships. When a relationship is not the issue, then different responses may occur. For example, the vanity mode of pride, when applied to crafts, produces the satisfaction of doing good work.

Table 2.  Unconscious Ideas

The motif of guilt and pride is punishment / humiliation
Guilt is self-punishment
self-pity mode implies life is punishment.
self-hate mode implies I deserve punishment.

Pride is punishment / humiliation of other people.
vanity mode implies you are inferior to me.
hate mode implies I despise you / I will punish you.

The motif of jealousy and narcissism is responsibility
Jealousy is social responsibility.
self-pity mode implies I need a reward (from other people).
love mode implies I reward other people.

Narcissism is self-responsibility.
vanity mode implies I will do it my way.
love mode implies I do not depend on anyone.

The motif of self-pity and vanity is help
Self-pity implies I need help.
Vanity implies I do not need any help.

The motif of anger and fear is domination
Anger implies I need to dominate other people
Fear implies the world is dominating me.

The motif of love and hate is identity
Love implies I am the same as everyone else.
Hate implies I am different from everyone else.

The motif of resentment and bitterness is disgust
Resentment implies people are repulsive.
Bitterness implies life is repulsive.

The motif of paranoia is the betrayal of trust
Paranoia implies I trust no one.

The motif of anxiety is a sense of oppression by one’s conscience or by other people
fear mode implies do as you are told / control yourself.
vanity mode implies I am uneasy in the presence of other people.

Depression arises from self-pity ; there are three forms of the latter, so there are three forms of the former.
The most common type arises from jealousy (mode of self-pity) and is the depressive stage of manic depression (also known as bipolar disorder). Guilt-based depression (or ‘endogenous ’ depression) has its source in the infant’s traumatic experience of parental relationships and represents a response to the feeling of being rejected. Depression that arises from self-pity may be seen in political refugees denied asylum, and in anyone who is a victim of injustice. 

The motif of manic depression is victimisation
depression mode implies I am a victim.
mania mode implies I help victims.

The motif of guilt-based depression is self-denigration
Depression implies I am a sinner.

The motif of depression based on self-pity is equity or fairness
Depression implies there is no equity, no fairness in life.

End Note

The specific mental attitudes and ideas that have become characteristic of each emotion are the subject of the next article: Emotion 2.

The articles in this section are :

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