Wisdom Notes on Psychology

Internalisation of States of Mind

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For comparison, internalisation of a mental state is always a subconscious process, never a conscious one, and another emotion is added to the guilt and shame – this is fear. The person feels frustrated by the social inhibitions he experiences and so disparages himself for being unable to assert himself ; he turns the forbidden mental state against himself. This is destructive. The end result of internalisation can be madness.

Conflict Dreams

Conflict dreams illustrate these differences very well. When the dreamer dreams that he is being attacked, the attacking forces represent the mental states that have been turned against oneself – the attacking forces are the forbidden internalised mental states. The “attackers” can be hordes of people attacking you and wanting to kill you, or a lion that wants to devour you, or a devil that wants to cut you up into pieces, etc. Dreams of being attacked often produce physiological effects: the body heats up and may produce night sweats with copious amounts of sweating. Regular occurrences of such dreams can produce loss of weight as body tissue is burned up by the heat.

The early years of my self-analysis generated a lot of night sweats in me: as a consequence, I lost weight from my thighs and have never been able to put it back on again. The heat is generated by the stimulation of fear. I store most of my fear in my thighs, so that is the reason that I lost weight from them. In particular, it seems to be the left piriformis muscle in the buttocks that stores most of the fear, since I detected trembling there when my fear was strong.

For comparison, repression produces dreams where the dreamer is trying to escape from prisons or confining situations: he wants to release his inhibited mental states. I never detected any noticeable physiological effects in dreams that accompany repression.

Mechanics of Internalisation

There is a difference of emphasis between sublimation and internalisation. Sublimation is not an automatic process; it requires some degree of idealism and personal choice. Internalisation is forced onto a person by his fears of society, and the unpleasant mental states are directed at himself instead of towards other people. When these mental states are suitably re-directed by the person’s idealism they produce sublimation. Sublimation works by changing the unconscious ideas that drive the person [¹]. Before sublimation I see myself as an unpleasant person because of my nasty mental states; after sublimation I see myself as a pleasant person having good traits of character.

Both internalisation and sublimation feature desires and emotions, but with a different emphasis. By highlighting the dominant feature of each process I see that:
Internalisation is the re-direction of desire, by using the will.
Sublimation is the re-direction of emotion, by using idealism.

How is internalisation produced?  Nietzsche produced some good ideas.[²]. He stated that all instincts that are not discharged outwardly turn inward – he called this “the internalisation of man”. A person’s inner world acquired depth to the same degree that outward discharge was inhibited. Once a person found himself enclosed within the walls of peaceful society then he found that he could no longer discharge instincts of destruction, hostility, cruelty. When these instincts turned against him he developed the bad conscience. In my view, the bad conscience is primarily guilt and shame.

I need to be more definite than Nietzsche. I repeat some ideas mentioned previously. In social situations I use the loop of projection and introjection [³]. This loop works in two ways; one way reflects my individuality (or what I also call my individual identity), and the other way reflects my social orientation (or what I also call my social identity).

Pride and narcissism work together in individual identity, and jealousy and guilt work together in social identity. When my individual identity is dominant I use pride to generate projection of states of mind, and narcissism for introjection of states of mind. But when I am socially-centred I use jealousy to initiate introjection, and guilt for projection.

So as an individual I centre on pride and use this as the base of my projections. But when I am in a social situation that I find unpleasant and that I cannot easily manage, then anxiety arises and pride disappears. Now my social identity becomes active. So far I have practised repression of pride and individuality, due to frustration of egotistic desires. To continue into internalisation requires the frustration of idealism or of one’s standards of individual ethics (but not one’s social ethics). This is achieved through the ascendancy of guilt. Internalisation is orchestrated by turning the will to power against oneself, as retribution for harbouring guilty desires.

As an example, suppose that I am jealous of someone’s display of sexuality or authority. I introject that display in order to stimulate my own sexuality or my own sense of authority; but now it disturbs my sense of idealism or ethics, since it is an external factor and not a part of my own self. As guilt arises I project this disturbance onto myself and initiate the process of internalisation. I have now created internal conflict, internal destructiveness. Guilt begins this process.

This state of affairs is not acceptable to my conscious mind, so the whole process operates subconsciously (the process only becomes conscious when the person has achieved a sufficiently-deep state of self-awareness). If the process were conscious, then when I leave the situation and re-access my individual identity, pride would make me reject the forbidden mental states. I would re-assert my own values. Then I would become very destructive and anti-social in my behaviour for the period of time needed to exorcise the forbidden attractions.

This possibility of being destructive is prevented by fear. Fear maintains internalisation. Fear inhibits the external direction of destructiveness. This is the function of fear in the evolution of the person. Fear is paramount at the beginning of one’s spiritual life. Eventually as the person evolves so idealism functions as a conscious factor to reinforce (or even to replace) fear. My idealism operates consciously to prevent me engaging in anti-social behaviour.

Summary 1

Guilt begins the process of internalisation, and fear maintains it. Internalisation causes internal conflict; fear keeps this conflict chained within the subconscious mind. If fear is released then this violence is likely to erupt into consciousness and spill-over into the social situation. The problem within a spiritual practice is to learn to handle fear without becoming violently anti-social. The drive that orchestrates internalisation is the will to power [4], which is that aspect of ourself that focuses on the attainments of self-assertion, self-control, and creativity.

Creating the Subconscious Mind

The above manner in which the mind operates creates a profound evolutionary consequence. Repression and internalisation create the subconscious mind of each individual. From this material, sublimation can create a new consciousness. I outline how this happens.

Ethical and spiritual idealisms create the ascetic control of mental states in social situations. This appears to be a worthwhile achievement, but it causes deep problems. As an existentialist, I manifest my will in my social consciousness and relegate emotion and egotistic desire to my subconscious mind. But when I am on my own, in my individual identity, my will deflates and I often become very emotional in my subjective consciousness. It is only in social situations that I am either emotionally controlled or, more usually, emotionally inhibited. This divide between solitude and society is produced by the internalisation of both emotion and anti-social attitudes.

Ascetic moral training separates the will from both emotion and worldly desire; will power is valued, emotion is not. The repressed or internalised emotions become the basis of the subconscious mind. The process of being ruled by any authority, of being dominated by any form of control – whether social, political, religious, or sexual mores – creates the subconscious mind. This subconscious mind becomes a potpourri of unidentified, vague and diffuse, unvalued emotions, memories, beliefs and attitudes.

How can this potpourri be resolved most effectively?  In modern times the tool for this is psycho-analysis. Psycho-analysis is the process of identifying, crystallising, and valuing these unvalued mental contents. As analysis clears away confusion, so the person can clearly see what in him is individual and what is social, what is useful and what is redundant. Psycho-analysis creates a new reality from the subconscious mind. This new reality becomes the person’s sense of being an authentic individual, of having an individual identity. Upon this new basis of a stronger individuality, the person can create a new and stronger social identity too if he so wishes.

Resolving Internal Conflict

Psycho-analysis has not always produced significant results, in terms of resolving deep conflict within the person’s mind. Why is this?  In my view, analysis needs to be complemented by a study programme. The psycho-analysis that I engaged in during the 1990s and after was not a standard one. I did it on my own, without using any therapist, so I call it my self-analysis. I used the analysis as the central core of a journey of self-discovery which entailed developing self-awareness. I read any and all accounts of personal experiences and relationships that I could get hold of, whether social, existential, political, mystical, sexual, ethical. I also read up on major events and processes like modernism, industrialisation, social movements, religious movements, liberation movements, etc. During my study programme, I read hundreds of books, most of which I obtained from my local library. If the library did not have the books I wanted, it could order them from other libraries which did have them. I used my local library so much that it seemed like my second home.

The reason for doing this study is that our beliefs and values affect our approaches to all forms of human life. Hence our needs will shape not only our view of ourself, but also our political views, religious views, sexual views, social views, etc. In order to free ourself from the influences of redundant beliefs, we need to explore all these views. We will find that as our view of ourself changes, so our other views will change too in some ways.

In brief, in order to understand our difficulties and dislikes, we need ideas. When a psycho-analysis fails, it fails because the person lacked both a sufficient level of awareness and a sufficient range of ideas. When a person does not have the ideas with which to solve a problem, then he cannot understand that problem.

Summary 2

The person’s idealism and his sense of ascetic moral training develop his will power. Psycho-analysis develops his ability to handle emotions. Therefore I see that:

The conscious mind can be moralised,
but
The subconscious mind has to be sublimated.

Another way of looking at this viewpoint is that moral training brings our manner of handling the will into conscious awareness, and psycho-analysis brings the influence of emotion into conscious awareness.

Moral training produces character at the cost of inflexibility of mind (such training tends to produce a rigidity in one’s attitudes, as a method of strengthening the will). Psycho-analysis creates mental flexibility. Putting both together produces an holistic person. The combination of ethical idealism plus self-analysis creates flexibility of mind with depth of character.

This is New Age man, New Age woman!

[¹]. I describe unconscious ideas in my three articles on Emotion. See Home page for them. [1]

[²]. Some of Nietzsche’s ideas on internalisation are in the book On the Genealogy of Morals, second essay: section 16, for example.
On the Genealogy of Morals, Random House, Vintage Books, 1969. [2]

[³]. See my article Projection and Introjection. [3]

[4]. I first describe the will to power in my article Power. [4]

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