New Ideas in Psychology

[ Terminology ] [ Abreaction of Guilt ] [ Abreaction of Pride ]

[ End Stages ] [ Universality ] [ Examples ]

When anxiety is attached to a memory it helps to create determinism.

The deterministic behaviour is the attempt to avoid re-experiencing that anxiety. The forcefulness of the determinism depends upon the intensity of the anxiety. Now the anxiety is removed from the memory by the process of abreaction. Abreaction eliminates determinism. After an abreaction has ended and been assimilated, the quality of life is improved to some degree, depending on how intense the abreaction was. [4]

Unfortunately, abreaction can be hell itself to experience.

Note :
For the sake of brevity I write about the abreactions of guilt, pride, jealousy, and narcissism, whereas in fact it is the anxiety attached to these emotions that is abreacted.

I work out in detail only the first two abreactional sequences (those which I label guilt and pride), since they are the most common of the four, and the easiest to recognise. [5]. In the sequences, the switching of emotions occurs when one emotion is replaced by its binary mate ; in both sequences the binaries that switch are 'vanity - self-pity' and 'love - hate '.

I repeat the factors of guilt, pride, narcissism and jealousy for convenience. They are first described in the article Compound Emotions.

Guilt = self-pity + self-hate.
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.

Narcissism = love + vanity.
Jealousy = love + self-pity.

Consider the abreaction of guilt, or moral abreaction.

This begins with catharsis (the person experiences states of joy and excitement) and ends in resentment.
The sequence is :

Narcissism leads to jealousy ; then jealousy leads to guilt ; then guilt leads to resentment.

There are four steps involved in a full sequence.

Step 1.
The excitement of catharsis represents the stage of narcissism in vanity mode. When the excitement ends, vanity transforms into self-pity, so jealousy is now present.

Narcissism (= love + vanity) leads to jealousy (= love + self-pity).

Step 2.
The stage of jealousy usually produces sexual desire, because the self-pity mode is dominant (see article Jealousy and Narcissism) and it is following the excitement. In the therapy situation, the client may fall in love with the therapist during this stage, that is, the therapist may become a suitable object for the sexual desire. When the sexual desire ends, the love mode of jealousy transforms into self-hate, so guilt now arises. The person hates themself for what they felt in the catharsis.

Jealousy (= love + self-pity) leads to guilt (= self-hate + self-pity).

Step 3.
When guilt fades the final product is resentment ; the resentment occurs because guilt, with self-hate mode dominant, ‘shrinks’ the ego of the person. The change to resentment increases blood pressure. Sometimes depression follows the resentment, but this effect does not seem to be a regular reaction. If the resentment is intense then it usually creates a headache (on the left-hand side of the brain ; headaches on the right-hand side of the brain are due to fear or anxiety).

Step 4.
When the resentment has finally been worked through, the end result is detachment to the problem which originally caused anxiety. This stage is not always achieved ; it depends on how important it is for the person to hang on to their grievance. Detachment arises because there is no longer any anxiety permanently attached to the problem.

The other main process of abreaction is the Abreaction of Pride, in the next article.

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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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