New Ideas in Psychology

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

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

In the catharsis the person feels that he / she is breaking free of the constraints of tradition.

The person’s daydreams focus on overturning the social constraints on morality and sexuality. Naughtiness becomes compelling and compulsive in his / her phantasies. In fact there is definite emotional pressure to phantasise: this pressure creates the compulsion. This pressure is due to the release of anxiety. (See article End Stages).

This pressure determines the intensity of the excitement. The greater the amount of anxiety that is associated with a repressed memory, the greater becomes the excitement that is experienced and the more protracted becomes the fun phantasy of immorality. The greater the amount of anxiety that needs to be released, the longer will the catharsis last, even up to several weeks duration if necessary.

Only when all the anxiety is released can compulsion cease.

Because there is a reversal of values the initial starting condition has to be narcissism in vanity mode. Excitement needs vanity as a base, and a mood of narcissism enables a person to handle immoral attitudes without passing pejorative judgement. The imagination, which produces the phantasy, becomes free to use material that formerly was forbidden. A memory cannot be analysed unless it is allowed to rise into consciousness. So long as a memory is forbidden, it remains repressed and its associated anxiety restricts conscious choice. In the catharsis, a forbidden idea of childhood is now presented in full consciousness to the person, who is now an adult. The excitement neutralises moral judgements, the anxiety is released from memory, the confusion created by the child is cleared up by the adult, and a little bit of determinism is eliminated.

As narcissism fades away and jealousy becomes the current emotion, so sexual desire adds spice to the immorality. Now the person becomes vulnerable to forming a temporary sexual attachment to anyone who may give him emotional support or who can make him feel good about himself (before the client can fall in love with the therapist, that client has first to experience catharsis).

When the excitement has finally evaporated, guilt arises and the backlash begins. Guilt feelings are generated as a reaction to the immoral content of the phantasies. The person now repudiates what he felt in the catharsis. Disgust at himself is produced, leading to resentment. Morality becomes emphasised ; the person decides to clean up his act.

At last, when the resentment ends, a new balance is acquired. The immoral phantasies are neither repressed nor repudiated ; they simply cease to be compulsive. Choice is now available in an aspect of consciousness that was formerly forbidden. If the person so wishes, he can indulge in such phantasies without feeling guilty. But because the phantasies are no longer taboo they cease to have their former fascination. Detachment is the fruit of abreaction.

Since the adult mind contains a multitude of immoral thoughts from childhood and adolescence, so a multitude of abreactions are needed to completely clear the mind of immorality.

What catharsis achieves is that it allows formerly-repressed ideas to come back into association with the person’s normal consciousness. In this way his consciousness is enlarged. Each catharsis gives a different theme to the phantasies. No catharsis is a duplicate of a previous one. Any problem may have several factors to it, and hence may require several episodes of catharsis to completely solve it. So in a long psycho-analysis the person finds that his problems regularly change as he slowly abreacts the various factors of them. Any difficulty that does not feature in the catharsis is not affected by the tail-end state of resentment.

The excitement of the catharsis is really just a form of dis-orientation. The hallmark of a change in subconscious motivation is always an episode of dis-orientation. The reduction of anxiety alters the way that the person uses his will or willpower. And dis-orientation denotes uncertainty in the use of will ; that is, the person is changing his use of will. This change is not always noticeable ; it depends on the gravity of the problem.

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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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