New Ideas in Psychology

[ Removing Compulsion ] [ Purification ] [ Eliminating Weakness ]

[ Social Abreaction ] [ Examples ]

Why does the purification of the subconscious mind produce so much distress ?

Why is the elimination of determinism so disturbing for the adult ? The distress turns upon the links between determinism, sensuality and conformity. The young child desires support above all else. It needs boundaries within which it can feel secure. If these boundaries are not supplied by the parents, or if the parental boundaries are inharmonious to it, then the child has to create its own boundaries as it grows up. Boundaries are created as a way of producing a safe haven. Why does the child, and the adult, need a safe environment ? . Because the person fears his freedom! The fear of freedom, the fear of venturing into the unknown, underlies most human activity. [9]

The boundaries that the person accepts or creates are ones that offer the promise of happiness. He / she prefers to seek happiness and conformity rather than freedom. Happiness and conformity are safer options to the fear of freedom. [10]. And happiness is sought within forms of sensuality. Freedom is buried and denied by activities such as the over-indulgence in sex, alcohol, cannabis, television and by the pursuit of a nice respectable social status. This burial of freedom is characterised by the sense of alienation or by the sense of there being no meaning to life.

As the desire for freedom grows within the person, so he / she must devote more and more energy to repressing it. As freedom is denied more and more, so sensuality grows in intensity. The more that a person is dominated by any form of sensuality, the more compulsive becomes their behaviour, and the more difficult it is for them to cultivate broad-mindedness and flexibility. A psycho-analysis has the effect of eliminating weakness and determinism (though only if they were created in the current life, and not in past lifetimes), and so enlarges the possibilities of freedom. Therefore a psychoanalysis always affects the sensuality of the person. [11]

The fascination with sensuality is almost overwhelming for the great majority of people. And the few individuals who have traditionally denied sensuality (at least outwardly) – the mystic, the meditator, the solitary contemplator – do not practice a style of living that is appealing to other types of personality ; the advocacy of asceticism, or even world-denial, is only for the few.

The problem for modern times is to learn to handle sensuality and conformity without being swallowed up by them ; there is a place in a human life for both sensuality and conformity, but it is the over-indulgence in them that causes problems. Relationships need to become based on harmony and quality of life, rather than on sensuality. This demands an attitude of mind that is very hard to attain : flexibility with depth of character. The Victorian mind had character but also rigid and repressive traits. Whereas it seems to me that many modern people have flexibility but little depth of character.

How does a person develop character ? . And how does a person switch from rigidity to flexibility ? . Usually by working through sorrow. Happiness does not motivate a person to change their way of life. Why should a person change when life seems good to them? . But the demand of modern times is to develop the capacity to change, to become mentally flexible, to cast away inadequate beliefs, and in the process to develop character. Unfortunately it is only prolonged periods of resentment and of bitterness that force the person to achieve these abilities. Only prolonged periods of such unhappiness lead to the re-structuring of belief systems.

The major obstacle in life is to surmount this unhappiness instead of being engulfed by it, which happened to those who embraced Fascism and Nazism in the 1920s onwards.

[ E1 [ ] E2 ] [ E3 ] . [ Table of Contents ] . [ A1 ] [ A2 ] [ A3 ] [ A4 ] [ A5 ]

[ Glossary ] [ Links ] [ References 1 & 2. ] [ Appendix 1 & 2. ]

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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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