New Ideas in Psychology

[ Reversal of Values ] [ Immoral Compulsions ] [ Morality & Ethics ]

[ Sexual Abuse of Children ] [ Suggestion ] [ Examples ]

I explore catharsis in more detail. It occurs when the emotion is narcissism, in the first stage of the abreaction of guilt. The person becomes excited and happy, often experiencing states of joy.

It is the most peculiar stage of the process of abreaction. It usually has either a sexual theme or a theme of self-praise. The sexual theme is the more peculiar of the two, so I focus on it.

The usefulness of the sexual theme is that it highlights a feature of catharsis that does not appear to have been noticed in literature on psycho-therapy that I have read. Catharsis reverses values !

Catharsis originates from the repression of ‘immorality’ and ‘immoral ’ beliefs. Repression has the function of removing from awareness unsuitable desires and attitudes and the memories of unpleasant events, and also of inhibiting the anxiety associated with those events, desires and attitudes. The anxiety indicates that an unsolved problem has been buried within the subconscious mind. The anxiety indicates that the unsolved problem is creating a little bit of determinism.

When we have an insight into the cause of a psychological problem, then we find that the problem no longer needs to be repressed ; the reason for this is that the insight allows some or all of the underlying anxiety to be released. The joy that the person feels arises because we are releasing the anxiety (though the person does not usually know that he / she is releasing anxiety). This release is a main function of a psycho-analysis.

When the repression is dissolved by an insight into the cause of the problem, the stored-up anxiety bubbles up into consciousness, producing the excitement of the catharsis. In the past, usually as a child, the person had stigmatised the event or desire as being immoral and undesirable. Therefore when the catharsis begins its course its content is this immoral event or desire. The event may be an objective one, or a subjective experience (as, for example, in the child’s interpretation of its relationship to its mother). Because of the excitement, the memory is no longer stigmatised. Now the peculiarity of catharsis is felt :

There is a reversal of values :

it becomes fun to phantasise on the immoral, on the forbidden ; immorality is felt to be exciting.

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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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