Section Headings [ Two Procedures] [ Empiricism] [ Value of these Ideas]

Since emotions are transient, what is the use in identifying them ?

By being able to identify our emotions we can begin to acquire first-hand knowledge of the mind’s influence on the ego.

What is the value of identifying emotions ?
This knowledge is essential if we want to understand the meaning of sorrow and mental pain. So this knowledge lays the groundwork for clearing confusion and self-deception from consciousness.

Once we can identify our range of emotions we can begin to investigate, directly through our experience (that is, by empiricism), questions concerning truth and falsehood, and questions concerning ethics. We will then find that our empirical experience will challenge all traditional attitudes to these questions. G.E. Moore summarised a certain perspective in philosophy derived from Immanuel Kant : [¹]

By considering what perception and sensation mean "we may discover what properties the world must have, if it is to be true". So, too, by considering what feeling and willing mean "we may discover what properties the world must have, if it is to be good or beautiful".

The way that I interpret this quotation is that the first kind of reflection develops self-consciousness, whereas the second kind of reflection develops a moral consciousness.

More importantly for the therapeutic point of view, the identification of emotions enabled me to establish that the unconscious mind works in ways that create determinism. Some emotions flow in invariable sequences – these sequences underlie the major problems that present themselves to consciousness during a psycho-analysis. In a long psycho-analysis, these sequences will bring into awareness intense states of resentment, bitterness and anger.

The emotional sequences form part of the traditional concept of abreaction, which had not been clearly delineated till my investigations. The analysis of abreaction, and why it ends in resentment and bitterness, is the subject of the next chapters.

Conclusion to Section 1,
The Theory of Emotion

My model of Emotions showed that they are just concepts which are energised by feelings.
The concept introduces the factor of mind and so each emotion has its own cluster of ideas associated with it. Once a person learns to identify their full range of major emotional responses, then they can use them to clear confusion from the traditional debates about truth and goodness.

The next chapter begins the theory of abreaction, starting with the Introduction.

Footnote

[¹]. Moore, G.E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge 1903. (sections 78-79).

Copyright @2002  Ian Heath
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