Wisdom Notes on Psychology

Domination and Submission

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The same phenomenon of collaborators becoming more brutal than the Germans occurred in Vichy France, and perhaps in other occupied countries in the war. I assume that it is a world-wide phenomenon if the circumstances are suitable for its occurrence. Why do the collaborators show such exaggerated brutality?  Here I am not interested in explaining the motives of career criminals, but only in explaining why some people take up the role of being brutal collaborators, when in other circumstances they would live a socially-acceptable life.

Bullying

A related topic is that of bullying. I describe an incident from my childhood that baffled me for most of my life. At school I was friendly and non-aggressive. One day when I was in the fifth form, age about 15 years old, I was asked by a prefect to help him supervise a class of younger students during the meal break. As I stood in front of the class I started to feel aggressive and felt like bullying anyone who made a noise or was unruly. This feeling shocked me and I had to force myself to refrain from bullying anyone. I became a passive watcher of the class. For decades I wondered where this streak of bullying came from. It was totally out of character.

Bullying is part of the issue of power and powerlessness. Suppose that a child or an adult does not have a sense of harmonious empowerment in himself. Most likely he has a subconscious sense of powerlessness. Then he is given the opportunity to control other people in some way, which means that he is given some form of social power. However, he will not usually be able to handle that power wisely because he is not used to having it. He is likely to alternate between either not using that power at all or else turning into a bully when he cannot get his way. So when he is given social power he is likely to use it in a confrontational manner.

Why does he have a subconscious sense of powerlessness? I consider that it arises from childhood trauma [²], when excessive punishment was given to the child, most probably by the father. The result was that the child felt crushed, or, to put this another way, its sense of being empowered was crushed, and the child experienced powerlessness. As it grows up it may appear to be a docile child, so long as it is not put into a position of authority and power. If given such power, then its reactions will be over-the-top. Overall, trauma prevents a child from being assertive when it needs to be, and this is because of the fear factor. Hence when he is in a position where he needs to be assertive, he doesn’t know how to be assertive, so instead he becomes aggressive. 

Another way of looking at this issue is in terms of social skills. Using ideas from stage theory in education, a young child is considered to use absolute thinking until it is around 10 years old. For example, an object is either big or small; it makes no sense to a child to tell it that an object is bigger than another one, or smaller than some other object. “Bigger” and “smaller” have no meaning to the child. Eventually its thinking matures into the ability to use relative terms like “bigger” and “smaller”.

Applying these ideas to social skills, the experience of trauma at a young age freezes the child’s social skills into a more-or-less absolute mould. The child is afraid to explore difficult relationships. Its relationship skills may be little better than the level it had when trauma occurred. It rarely learns negotiation as the way to get what it wants. It either can or cannot do something – there is usually no in-between. So its relationships tend to swing between extremes.

If trauma was caused by the father, then the child will have poor social skills in its dealings with male authority figures and yet can have good social skills when relating to women. If trauma was caused by the mother, then the child will have poor social skills when relating to female sexual figures and/or female authority figures, though still having good social skills with authoritarian men.

Overall, the long-term effect of childhood trauma is that it hinders or even prevents the development of social skills in the aspects of relationships that are compromised. Developing social skills implies risk-taking, but the fear that trauma embeds in the child prevents any desire to take risks. Childhood trauma is not the only cause of bullying, but I assume that it is the cause of why the most unlikely people can turn into bullies.

In summary, people who were traumatised as a child often make the worse bullies and camp guards.

Reversal of Values

To understand the emotional basis of domination and submission we need to understand a central feature of the subconscious mind, which is that of catharsis. Catharsis is the first stage in what I call the abreaction of guilt [³], and it brings our repressed desires into normal consciousness. Usually desires are repressed because they are not socially-acceptable ones. Suppose that in the past a man had been subjected to occasional or regular long-term denigration by a woman. Now he would like to takes his revenge by regarding women as sluts, but this is not a socially-acceptable thought and so he has to repress it. Hence if the word slut pops into consciousness, he will feel guilty about it. Then at a time when his mood is that of narcissism [4], he sees pornographic pictures that depict women as sluts. He now becomes highly excited as he begins to experience catharsis. Whilst catharsis lasts he doesn’t mind regarding women in denigratory ways. Catharsis makes it obvious what his subconscious views about women are like. Catharsis temporarily reverses his values and beliefs about the issues he is focusing on: his subconscious values and beliefs become conscious and his normal conscious values and beliefs are relegated to the back of his mind.

Or we can look at the issue of guilt in another way. When a person makes moral judgements, then some desires are disdained, so that when one of them appears in normal consciousness then guilt (self-hate mode) is switched on. If a mood of guilt is a regular occurrence for the person, then his quality of life is often poor. How can he turn this around, so that he can get some fun out of life?  One answer is to reverse values. His reverse values relate to what he has repressed about himself. Reverse values means that his subconscious beliefs temporarily become conscious, whilst his conscious beliefs temporarily become subconscious. His first introduction to reverse values will be through an episode of catharsis, which introduces him to a new world of strange phantasies. Under reverse values, what is disdained and rejected by guilt becomes very exciting in phantasies based on moods of narcissism and jealousy. Now he can enjoy his “immoral” desires. 

This phantasising is not always a product of free will. Usually the phantasies seem to be produced without there being any apparent reason for them. We may delight in them or we may try to repress them, but we cannot stop them till they have run their course and faded away. There seems to be a pressure that forces the phantasies into normal consciousness. What I learned repeatedly is that during catharsis there is intense pressure to phantasise, and quite often this meant phantasising on the forbidden and immoral. For someone of a puritan nature, that which is forbidden has usually become centred on aspects of sexuality. The pressure is due to the release of anxiety from the subconscious mind. It is anxiety that drives the phantasies.

Why is anxiety attached to forbidden and immoral beliefs?  It is due to the social conditioning we are subjected to in our childhood. In childhood we absorb the values and beliefs of the parents and of the social system of which we are a part. Sometimes these beliefs and values are harmonious for us, but sometimes they are limiting and intolerant, so preventing us from attaining maturity in various ways. So we develop into an adult who has a mixture of mature and immature beliefs in his subconscious mind.

As an adult, sooner or later we may desire to reverse some of our values because we crave excitement. We may seek socially-acceptable ways of doing this, as when we go to a party and dance the night away as a change to our normal unexciting existence. This kind of reversal does not cause problems for us. However, if we have been conditioned into accepting dull and degrading beliefs about sexuality (as in the days of puritanism), then we can inject excitement into sexuality by switching to different beliefs. We may then temporarily adhere to beliefs and values that are the opposite, or reverse, of the sexual conditioning we have been subjected to.

The reversal of beliefs and values occurs when aspects of the social conditioning of the child are not in accord with its deepest inclinations and feelings. The intensity of these reversed values indicates the intensity of the child’s rebellion against its conditioning. Another way of looking at this reaction is that the degree to which the person values himself, his degree of self-worth, shapes the immersion into reverse values. As a result of his social conditioning, the less that his sense of self-worth is, the greater becomes his immersion into the negative desires of reverse values.

Two Forms

A sexual catharsis can take two forms: it can feature role reversal and/or sex reversal. The reversal is most noticeable if in the past we experienced sexual guilt in our relationships with friends and partners, so that we have ended up with memories of sexual encounters that have been failures. Such memories are now associated with anxiety. One way of handling such unpleasant memories is by a reversal of values. What was unpleasant in sexual relationships becomes, when reversed, very pleasant in phantasy. What satisfactions I failed to achieve as a man I dream of achieving as a woman. This reversal temporarily releases the anxiety from the unpleasant memories.

For example, I used to dream of myself being an attractive woman who loved to wear mini-skirts – this is only sex reversal. Being an attractive woman was the reverse of my unattractive male persona of that time. Another example is when I compensated for occasions when I was impotent ( because of an intense state of anxiety) by dreaming of being a woman who helps an impotent young man – this phantasy contains both sex and role reversals.

In general, this switching leads to peculiar states of mind. Narcissism (mode of vanity) leads to the desire to overcome one’s sexual inhibitions by flaunting oneself sexually, as by wearing daring lingerie at parties, or by being a sexual slut, or even by flashing one’s genitals to passers-by. Guilt (mode of self-hate) leads to the desire to be punished: punishment is actively sought by the person. Similarly, jealousy (mode of self-pity) leads to the desire to receive denigration: the person now likes to be called by derogatory names, and even to be humiliated.

Underlying all these peculiar desires is the excitement generated by the temporary lessening of the influence of fear and anxiety in the subconscious mind. When fear is not a part of a subconscious memory or a repressed desire, then the memory or desire does not lead to reverse values. Overall, reverse values become a means of handling personality limitations (based on narcissism, guilt, jealousy and self-pity) in exciting ways.

• Unpleasant Desires

However, reverse values can lead to very unpleasant desires emerging. As the abreaction process continues to the stages of guilt and resentment, then hateful phantasies become highlighted. The adult switches from exciting and sexy phantasies to hostile and aggressive ones. The guilt stage energises my self-hatred, so I reverse values and hate the kind of people who crushed me in childhood – I hate people like my parents. I now see domineering men as bullies to be resisted, even crushed, and I hate domineering women, labelling them as sluts. This means that as the stage of guilt is reached, it intensifies my self-hatred and stimulates everything else I hate. This effect demonstrates that the origin of hateful attitudes to other people, and hateful beliefs about other people, and hateful activities, lies in the person’s subconscious hatred of himself.

For the non-sensitive person, the usual way of handling such peculiar desires was through religion. A major function of religion is to take the socially-unacceptable desires emerging from the abreaction process and sublimate them into rules of social conduct. This is necessary for most people, but it usually takes the fun out of life.

• Dacadence

Reversal of values has not been noticed as a particular phenomenon because in the past it was probably included in the theme of decadence. For a sensitive person, a common way of escaping from boredom and the dreariness of crass social values is the indulgence in decadence and fin-de-siècle desires. So a few sensitive minds and artists who feel independent of conventional social norms turn to decadence in order to find a source of stimulation and excitement in boring and otherwise non-exciting times [5].

The Motor of Reverse Values

Having described the mechanism of reverse values, I now describe its “motor”, that is, what is driving the person to switch values. There are two factors involved: the underlying emotional influences and the subconscious idea that reverse values give expression to.

The underlying emotional influences exist at two levels in the subconscious mind. The basic deep level is that of self-hatred. Then overlaid on this is a more superficial layer of guilt, either in the self-pity mode or the self-hatred mode. The self-hatred arises from childhood trauma and is a response to the lack of self-love in the child. Later in life this self-hatred can lead to reverse values in suitable circumstances. More generally, the influence of self-hatred helps to lead to the creation of the Six Variations and Seven Roots of distress within the subconscious mind [6].

If a person’s childhood was reasonably happy, then self-hatred will not be a significant influence in the subconscious mind. In this situation there will be little intensity in any subconscious immorality and unpleasantness. So any reversed values will only have minor impact on normal consciousness.

The superficial layer of guilt is more obvious and detectable in a psycho-analysis and it effectively hides the self-hatred from easy discovery. The influence of guilt (self-pity mode) becomes so pervasive that the person feels devitalised in a vague sense, by which I mean that the person cannot identify why he has a general lack of energy, no matter what he tries to do to stimulate himself. He may have enough energy to start some activity but soon gives up on it as his mental interest wanes. The pervasive nature of this mode of guilt enables other significant emotions to dominant the person, these being fear, self-pity and guilt (self-hatred mode).

One way to distinguish between self-hatred and guilt (mode of self-hatred) is in the effects that they produce. Self-hatred sees myself as being bad, so that I need to seek validation and emotional support from other people, whilst guilt (mode of self-hatred) seeks punishment for my sins.

Under reverse values:
a). Self-hatred is the background influence when the person takes pleasure from derogatory and degrading practices and fetishes such as gang-bangs, watersports, face sitting and rimming.
b). Guilt (mode of self-hatred) is the background influence when the person takes pleasure from being punished.

Fetishes

Fetishes are an important part of sexual play for many people. Some activity is a fetish when it has a sexual influence that is unusual and not part of conventional sexual play. For example, a man may get a lot of sexual excitement from the shoes or knickers worn by women. He may like pictures of women where the camera angle looks down her blouse or up her skirt. Or he may love wearing adult-size baby clothes and nappies and wants to be treated as a baby by his playmate.

How does a fetish originate?  Fetishes arise as ways of expressing the psychological pain in the subconscious mind that is due to the person’s confusion and limitations with sexuality and conventional sexual relationships. Some form of existing psychological pain is always the cause of a fetish. The person doesn’t have the social/sexual skills to be intimate with his partner and cannot express some of his sexual desires in the way that he really wants, so he displaces such desires onto objects or unusual sexual games that feel much safer because they do not stimulate his psychological issues. For example, a man may become sexually stimulated by women’s shoes: this indicates that he finds ordinary sexual relationships with women inhibiting in some ways. So he diverts some of his passion for sex into exciting phantasies of shoe worship.

Many fetishes originate in childhood. If a child gets excited and aroused by objects or ideas that have sexual connotations, then a fetish can develop. The child experiences or feels a strong positive feeling and at the same time attaches it to the object or the person he is looking at. So the child believes that the object or the person is the source of the positive feeling. From then on, any time he looks at or handles the object or sees the person he gets the same positive feeling again. When it is a person that the child focuses on, it is what that person signifies that is important to the child. If that person is an older woman, then the fetish is attached to some aspects of older women. Hence when he becomes an adult, he is attracted to older women that mirror in some way the woman he saw as a child. If the child focuses on some aspect of another child, then once he is an adult he will get sexual enjoyment from looking at pictures of children that portray that aspect.

The greater the excitement that is generated, the more likely it will result in a fetish desire being created. Fetishes created in childhood appear to be more long-lasting than fetishes created in one’s mature years. The power of the fetish to remain appealing to the person comes from its harmony with intense subconscious desires. If the subconscious desires are not very intense, then the fetish will not last very long.

The excitement of a fetish is followed in order to paste over the dullness of life, or the dullness of the past. Morality never removes the desire for excitement, and so morality can never remove the influence of unusual sexual desires. Morality can only repress such excitement.

• What are the Emotions underlying a Fetish?

A fetish is a means of deriving some excitement from the prevalence in the mind of subconscious guilt. Normally this deadens sexual activity. But under reverse values, it drives the direction of sexual excitement into unusual channels.

A fetish is a way of using reverse values to make guilt (mode of self-pity) very exciting. The person engages in forbidden or unusual delights, such as voyeurism or foot worship. These delights are ways of bypassing sexual difficulties. In this situation, the excitement produced by a fetish is the excitement of being different from dreary social norms. The guilt is subconscious, while the sexual excitement (which indicates jealousy) is conscious.

So the emotions underlying fetish excitement = jealousy (self-pity mode) plus guilt (self-pity mode).

Extreme Ways to Change

The psychic conditioning produced by trauma in childhood can later, in adulthood, be changed through two extreme means. The change can be either positive or negative, depending on how the person handles the intense psychological confusion produced by the change. The change will happen spontaneously rather than through the result of a conscious desire to change. It occurs from a spontaneous upwelling of influences from the subconscious mind. The means to effect the change comes from the abreactions of vanity and self-pity.

c). First I consider the abreaction of vanity.
A person may be inhibited in some aspect of his personality, say, for example, in his sexual identity. He may love to dress alluringly and seductively when he is with friends or at a sex party, but he is afraid to do so. The fear is too strong. Then one day when he is with his friends or at a party he experiences an abreaction of vanity. Now his subconscious desires explode into full consciousness and he finds that he just has to be alluring. His vanity has gone sky-high, and so he acts out his subconscious desires.

He has now acted “out of character” and he will feel confused, as well as confusing his friends. If he handles the confusion badly, he will lose his friends. If he handles it well, he will now be able to dress alluringly at any time without feeling the old fears. The abreaction of vanity has propelled him through the barrier of fear. The abreaction made him go “over the top” and so enabled him to change some of his old behaviours.

If the eventual outcome is a positive one, then the long-term effect of boosting his vanity to a more balanced level is that he gains in self-confidence. This increased self-confidence will enable him to change some of his negative beliefs about himself.

I experienced this abreaction in a feature of my transgender identity. It enabled me, whenever I wanted to, to feel confident with wearing feminine lingerie and sexy outfits, instead of staid and homely outfits, when I was with friends or in sex clubs.

d). Now I look at the abreaction of self-pity.
This abreaction is the more dangerous of the two abreactions. The dangerousness occurs in the stage of bitterness. The abreaction of vanity intensifies the person’s vanity, and similarly the abreaction of self-pity intensifies self-pity. But the self-pity propels the person in a very different direction to that produced by vanity.

If a person is emotionally very low because he is experiencing regular periods of negative states of mind, then the abreaction of self-pity leads the person into hell. As with the abreaction of vanity, the abreaction of self-pity makes the person go “over the top” in his reaction to a stimulus. Some event, some stimulus, activates the abreaction in the person’s subconscious mind; when the stage of bitterness is reached, the intensity of that bitterness is magnified sufficiently to make it explode into normal consciousness. The bitterness overwhelms the person. Or to put this another way, a scenario occurs which enables the person to vent all his subconscious bitterness and anger on it.

In the early 1990s, my psycho-analysis led me into the exploration of various mental disorders, such as mania and schizophrenia. My experiences enabled me to begin the analysis of the causes and meanings of these disorders, but simultaneously I was left in a very low emotional state. Then I had the feeling that my higher self rejected me and my efforts to understand my internal darkness. I was plunged into the abreaction of total self-pity. As I reached the stage of extreme bitterness, I metaphorically shook my fist at God. This abreaction led me into a quarter century of conflict with my higher self and God. I survived it because my spiritual idealism was extremely high, and I put the pursuit of truth before anything else. The pursuit of truth became my Ariadne’s thread leading me out of mental confusion. For me, the pursuit of truth and wisdom is more important than the pursuit of enlightenment.

This abreaction can have profound political and social consequences. If we look at the nastiness in a person’s character – not just ordinary unpleasantness, but real nastiness – then my view is that each kind of nastiness initially arose from an abreaction of self-pity. I assume that when a person in a position of authority issues orders that will be felt to be repugnant by other people not under his command, then he is responding to the bitterness stage of the abreaction of self-pity.

For example, the person who authorises the massacre of his opponents, or of heretics and apostates, will do so from the intensity of his bitterness. Other scenarios for the abreaction of self-pity are civil war atrocities and atrocities committed on ethnic minorities. One example is the various atrocities in the ethnic wars in the Balkans in the late 20th century. Another historical example is the American attitude to native Filipinos in the Philippine-American war beginning in 1899. The Filipinos were treated with extreme brutality.

As another example, I give my view on Germany in the early 20th century. Anti-Semitism was rife in the Germany after World War I, and most of Germany’s problems were blamed on the Jews. Hence Hitler’s anti-Semitism was nothing unusual in the Germany of his times.  When he became chancellor of Germany in the 1930s, his policies included a crackdown on Jews, but the policies were not extreme ones. However, during World War II, some event happened to precipitate an intense abreaction of self-pity in him. Once he reached the state of bitterness, his anti-Semitism exploded and he went down the path to initiating the Jewish genocide in the death camps of the "final solution" or Holocaust.

[¹].Graber, C.S. History of the SS. Robert Hale, London, 1978. [1]

[²]. See my article Childhood Trauma. [2]

[³]. I have six articles on Abreaction on the Home page. Catharsis is explained in Abreaction-3. [3]

[4]. I have three articles on Emotion on the Home page. [4]

[5]. Some books on decadence and fin-de-siecle are:
Huysmans, J.  Against Nature, Penguin Books, 1959.
Murger, Henri. The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter, Filiquarian Publishing LLC, 2007.
Richardson, Joanna. The Bohemians, la Vie de Boheme in Paris 1830-1914, MacMillan 1969. [5]

[6]. See the four articles on Six Variations and Seven Roots of Trauma, beginning with the first one. [6]

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