New Ideas in Psychology

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

[ End Stages ] [ Universality ] [ Examples ]

The hell of abreaction resides in the end stages of resentment and bitterness,
which are the responses to the release of ‘pressure’ within the subconscious mind.

The first few stages of an abreaction may last from an hour to a day, to a week, to a month, depending on how important and intense the problem is. But the end stages may last many months.

The intensity of these stages is proportional to the ‘pressure’ within the subconscious mind, that is, to the extent to which social, sexual and political mores have been internalised involuntarily. When a person voluntarily internalises customs and conventions, this is social learning and it does not form anxiety. But when the internalisation is involuntary, then this is social conditioning : it creates anxiety and distorts beliefs in natural goodness as we learn to distrust people. This anxiety eventually becomes buried in the subconscious mind as the person grows used to the conditioning. The more intense the conditioning is, the greater is the intensity of anxiety that is buried. This intensity creates the ‘pressure’ that wants to be released. (See also article Immoral Compulsions).

The subconscious mind will always attempt to reject any form of involuntary conditioning, so the stronger that the conditioning is, the greater is the effort to reject it. Abreaction gives the subconscious mind the opportunity to release the buried anxiety. The length of time that resentment and bitterness are experienced depends on the length of time that is needed to assimilate the problems that caused the abreactions. The person has to re-structure their beliefs in order to accommodate to the elimination of anxiety from their subconscious mind. Changing one’s fixed beliefs, especially bigoted and repugnant ones, is never a pleasant experience.

In the abreaction of guilt, anxiety is most intense during the stage of guilt (this is why the sequence gets its name). The anxiety makes my eyes ache. The combination of anxiety and guilt also produces sensitivity to bright light, especially in the mornings. The eye ache is always worse in the mornings as compared to the afternoons (at least for me). The light sensitivity makes it especially difficult to work at a typewriter under a bright desk lamp, or to work with a computer VDU screen.

In the abreaction of pride, anxiety is most intense during the stage of pride, but there is little accompanying eye ache.

Now I can explain a paradox of psycho-therapy that puzzled Carl Rogers (Rogers, 1984). He often noticed that a client would leave a therapy session really excited, believing that he/she had finally solved a major problem. Life felt good. Then in the next therapy session a few days later the client would feel like a walking disaster – everything seemed to be going wrong, a complete contrast to the halcyon hopes of yesterweek. This is the way that the abreaction of guilt affects the individual ; it is the guilt that collapses the hopes. There is nothing to be done but to persevere till the nightmare passes.

The intermediate emotions in the abreactions are not always easy to identify, with the exception of the stage of sexual desire that comes after the catharsis. When a person cannot identify their emotions they cannot verify the connection between excitement and resentment, or between sorrow and bitterness. The person beginning empiricism may simply see the period of the intermediate emotions as a ‘lull ’ time between the beginning and the end emotions.

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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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