Section Headings [ Weak Self-Image] [ Definition of Psycho-Analysis] [ Subconscious Determinism]

[ What is Anxiety?] [ Switching]

When anxiety becomes attached to the memory of an event it causes the problem of subconscious determinism.

Such determinism is predominantly learned in childhood. If a child finds itself in a situation that causes a problem for it, then it will experience confusion and anxiety. Now if it can work through that problem and the anxiety it feels about that problem, then it can assimilate the lesson to be learned and move on to other problems. If it cannot handle that anxiety, then it becomes motivated to avoid and deny that problem ; the memory becomes repressed. Now the problem remains permanently in the subconscious mind, even when the child has grown up. So an unpleasant experience in childhood becomes, in a similar social situation, an unpleasant experience for the adult. Why?  Because the adult replays the anxiety that the child generated in that situation. The adult is still utilising avoidance and denial (though he /she no longer knows why, since the memory is repressed).

The deterministic behaviour is the attempt to avoid re-experiencing that anxiety. The forcefulness of the determinism depends upon the intensity of the anxiety.

Subconscious determinism occurs because the motivation is compulsive in anxiety-provoking social situations. And this motivation is itself subconscious. Subconscious motivation is a central problem of human life. A person will behave in inflexible and stereotyped ways, and not understand why he does so.

Many of the major ideas or themes of Western intellectual thought have only been attempts to bypass this problem. [¹]

I list a few of the main philosophical themes of modern times that I consider were influenced by subconscious motivation :

Max Stirner was a nineteenth-century sceptic who explored narcissism (about 70 years before Freud and Jung), and is usually packed in with the anarchists and nihilists for want of a better classification. Michael Bakunin was a nineteenth-century anarchist, the major opponent of Karl Marx.

Footnote

[¹]. Subconscious motivation is mentioned in the article Confusion, on my web site Discover Your Mind. See Links page for the web address.

Books

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Penguin, 1988.

Paterson, R.W.K.
The Nihilistic Egoist: Max Stirner. Oxford University Press, 1971.

Stirner, Max.
The Ego and His Own.  Translated by Steven Byington. London, 1907. Also, The Modern Library, USA.

Copyright @2002  Ian Heath
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