New Ideas in Psychology

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

[ End Stages ] [ Universality ] [ Examples ]

I give examples of different creative attitudes of mind and the ways that the effects of abreaction have been portrayed.

The mystic is subject to the ebb and flow of emotion : sometimes he / she seems to be walking in sunlight and at other times he / she sinks into darkness. Sometimes he / she is elated, sometimes he / she is in despair. This alternation of mood has been called the hill and valley experience that the mystic has to endure. So mystics, who usually have no desire to understand themselves, still experience intense periods of abreaction. The dark night of the soul in mysticism is just a prolonged spell of abreactive resentment or bitterness. The dark night usually follows a period of exceptionally-good sentiments (the catharsis), and so is exceptionally bad. [Where the catharsis is absent, then the dark night should be classified more accurately as a ‘trial ’, such as the trials of fire, air and water]. [7]

Philosophers experience abreaction. In ‘Ecco Homo’, Nietzsche describes his feelings of joy when he was writing ‘ Thus Spoke Zarathustra’. When the writing was finished he felt ‘distress without equal ’. So he wrote ‘ Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ during a period of intense catharsis, and was afterwards engulfed in bitterness. In his book ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’ he provides many examples of bitterness in his aphorisms (an example, picked at random, is essay 3, aphorism 14).

Writers experience abreaction. Hermann Hesse spent some time in 1916-1917 going through a Jungian analysis. His sense of spiritual liberation led eventually to 1919 being his happiest and most productive year. The next year ‘was the most unproductive and despondent year of his life’ (Hesse, 1985. Introduction). So 1919 was a long period of catharsis, and 1920 a long period of abreactive resentment and bitterness which stopped his creativity.

Even in psychological therapy that is not psycho-dynamic, such as forms of behaviour therapy, abreaction still occurs. The therapist may sometimes find that the client falls in love with him/her. This emotional attachment to the therapist signifies that the client is experiencing the abreaction of guilt.

By reading biographies that feature the subjective states of mind of people we realise that abreaction is not limited to psycho-analysis. It is not limited to people who are aware of abreaction. Ignorance of dynamic psychology is no defence against abreaction. Each person engaged in the process of character development has to eliminate undesirable or immature emotional responses. This requires the elimination of anxiety. So each person following his or her own idea of evolution or fulfilment will, voluntarily or involuntarily, experience the trauma of abreaction. It cannot be bypassed.

The strangeness of catharsis and suggestion is the subject of the next chapter, beginning with the article Reversal of Values.

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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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