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Life and Life-Energy
Chapter 5
Table of Psychological Correspondences
I.
Phases of transformation of psychic energy in the
formation of identity: The Rebirth Mechanism
II.
The archetypal family: Father, Mother and Child. The
domestic drama as metaphor for psychic renewal: Conflict,
Death, Insemination, Pregnancy, Birth.
III. The 3 physical energy cycles: Potential accumulation ;
Potential to Kinetic cycling ; Kinetic discharge.
IV. The fundamental emotions: Depression (attachment to
Past), Anxiety (to Present), Anger (to Future).
V.
The categories of Time: Past, Present and Future. Their
incorporation in the Instant.
VI.
Philosophical categories: Being, Non-Being, Becoming.
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Local and Global Linkages of Emotional Interaction
The psychological state underlying someone’s behavior exerts a
strong influence on the mental states of persons dependent upon or
attached to him. This influence extends far beyond the local context of
human relationships. These external chains of transformations of life
energy complement the internal cycles within each individual to which we
have given the name of the Rebirth Mechanism.
The entanglement of internal and external dynamics lays down a
multiply-branching network which, through connections between
communities, may reach across nations and even the entire planet. The
complex interactions of emotive networks contribute to the creation of a
global mental climate. Indeed the degrees of separation between the
psychic connections of persons may be much smaller than we believe.
Zen Buddhism has a keen grasp of this phenomenon. Our interconnectedness is formed from invisible yet surprisingly durable threads,
so that a single heedless act may cause calamity at a long distance from
our immediate circumstances.
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Taking its inspiration from hypnotists such as Anton Mesmer, the
Christian Scientists maintain that a single poisoned heart can
contaminate the mental, and even physical, health of the entire planet.
There is considerable exaggeration in this of course, but one does see it
on a small scale in normal human interactions. In popular jargon, the
phenomenon becomes the condition known as “bad vibes”. In the 21st
century these intangible webs of psychic determinism have been
materially enhanced by the development of Internet and the vogue for
Social Networking.
In the internal mechanism of psychological adaptation, contingent
Identity (Being) is affronted, challenged or undermined by external
events (Non-Being). The withdrawal of conscious energy from mental
structures creates a vacuum in perception. This state, akin to the death of
the body, is at the origin of the Unconscious Mind. The energies aroused
by this traumatic seed engender a state of psychological pregnancy
(Becoming), from which the child of the spirit, the reborn self, will
emerge, conditioned in a manner both creative and destructive, by
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previously unresolved psychic structures. This is the internal
mechanism.
The external linkages and cycles which inter-connect the internal
processes of individuals are as follows:
I.
A state of Depression in myself arouses tendencies towards
Anxiety, worry and insecurity in my dependants, or in those bound to
me by psychological attachment.
The grieving person withdraws into a shell, which renders him
indifferent to the outer world. He may take comfort in memories, dreams
and imagination. At the same time he withholds the conscious attention
that would allow him provide protection to others. If they are dependent
on him, they will respond with worry, fear of the future and anxiety.
Imagine a child crying because it has burned its hand, while his
depressed mother sits in a chair, reading a book.
II.
A condition of Anxiety in myself can arouse the sentiments
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and behavior patterns of a state of Anger in my dependents. The thermal
cycle of conversion of potential energy into heat, kindles the reactive
state of hostility through suppression and application of force.
The anxious person may seek relief in drugs, vices and other
psychological and physical opiates. His possessiveness leads to clashes
and fights as he and his neighbors compete for property and territory.
Such competition shifts the emphasis from gaining possession of the
initiating source of energy, to the secondary objective of winning. So
great is the need to win, that the prize itself may be sacrificed. Think of
the overly anxious mother who prevents her child from going outdoors
because of exaggerated fears of possible dangers. The child must fight
off the mother to escape.
III.
A condition Anger in myself arouses tendencies
towards Depression in persons attached to me. The intention of the
hostile individual is to gain control of the present by commanding the
future. This blocks the future aspirations of his subordinates. The
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blocking of the future annihilates hope. The annihilation of hope leads
to despair; out of despair comes Depression.
There is, at the same time a distinction between the inner state of feelings
of the individual, and the emotional release that is externalized by
behavior. A good analogy is provided by the phenomenon of color: a
green leaf is also red: the green is reflected by its substance, while the
red is absorbed as heat and enters into the process of photosynthesis.
Thus:
I.
The external expression of Depression is grief. The
anger and frustration that the grieving person feels are internalized in the
form of an unrelieved and incurable bitterness. One can characterize
Depression as a state of Anger turned against oneself.
II. The Anxious person will externalize his mental chaos while at
the same time he internalizes his acute unhappiness. At the base of his
frantic gyrations from one idle enthusiasm to the next, lies an incurable
dissatisfaction with life. No anxiety is more acute than that which is
coupled with enforced boredom. The combination with the spectre of an
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uncertain future makes such suffering all the more acute. The
miseries of imprisonment and solitary confinement stem from such
anxiety.
III. In the same way, the Angry person externalizes his frustrations
in the form of rage, while internalizing his fear of the future, that is to
say his Anxiety. Although the behavior of an angry individual may take
the form of directed violence, the internal person is helpless in the grips
of instability and chaos. One seeks through anger to restore or sustain
some tangible reference frame, some secure foothold in a turbulent
world. Insecurity is the keynote: insecurity causes panic, giving rise to
the need to bring about the restoration of order through the use of force.
Anger is counter-anxiety.
Each of the primary emotional states arises as in reaction to
some perceived external reality: one does not normally experience
fear or grief, guilt or shame, unless there is something to be afraid
of, a loss to be grieved, a deed acknowledged as wrong, a loss of
self-respect. One reacts defensively towards a perceived threat,
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positively towards a perceived benefit. The sequence of phases
involving dependency, transformation and activity are reiterated,
both in Man and Nature, through the coupling of energy storage
with energy liberation. One finds them in the cosmic cycles of
biology, chemistry, physics and cosmology, the carbon-nitrogen
cycle of living interdependency on the earth, the hydrogen-helium
energy cycle in the sun, and so forth.
In the simplistic model of the electrical circuit, the potential-kinetic
coupling of energy is present in the transformation of
chemical energy in a battery (exchange), its suppression through
resistence ( kinetic), and storage in a stored in a capacitor.
The homology of the physical and psychic cycles of energy
transformation unifies all of Nature, inner and outer, as an awe-inspiring
and stupendous architecture. The description of this
unity is part of the heritage of European philosophy, being
present as far back as the world systems of the pre-Socratic
philosophers, notably those enunciated by Anaximander,
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Heraclitus and Anaxagorus.
This “doctrine of correspondences” resurfaces in the belief
systems of the medieval alchemists, who developed a language of
symbolic substances that simultaneously describes chemical reactions
and the stages of spiritual transformation. Our expression, “to
sublimate” comes from this tradition.
Bound Energy; Free Energy
The spontaneous creativity that characterizes the living
nature is driven by the power of life-energy. Suffering arises from
the binding of life-energy to features of the inanimate cosmos. As
interpreted by the ideas presented in this essay, "mental illness" is the
external manifestation of the suppression or reduction of the innate
creativity of life-energy to the unregenerative, conservative cycles of
physical energy transformation: Potential, Thermal and Kinetic,
corresponding to the mental states of Depression, Anxiety and
hostility.
Those aptitudes which are normal to the spiritual being,
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sensitivity, love, empathy, compassion, tolerance and so on, are
blocked through the enslavement to causal mechanisms.
Behavior patterns latent in the Unconscious reduce free vitality to
a banal materialism . Such bondage cannot be overcome by reason
alone, but only through a process of adjustment that assimilates
the root conditions of the illness to the holism of a higher state.
The flow of life-energy through the human psyche is either
free or obstructed. In some sense we've returned (hopefully at a
higher level of sophistication) to Franz Anton Mesmer's theory of the
magnetic fluid. When the flow is obstructed our psychic energy is bound
up in some unresolved shocking or traumatic experiences. A sick
mind is therefore one in which a sick mental process is operative.
Life-energy in its bound state is likely to exhibit such traits as
egoism, vanity, self-love, self-pity, cynicism, neurotic guilt,
obsessions, rigid patterns of behavior, and blind clinging to a selfreferential system of beliefs impervious to all argument. Apposite
to each negative trait of the mind in bondage there is a
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corresponding state in the mind that is free. In the psycho-analytic
system, bound psychic energy is called a “cathexis”, its release a
“catharsis”.
Life-energy is therefore present in the human psyche in two
conditions, bound and free. The former is limited in potential and
in action. The other is unfettered and potentially limitless.
Let’s consider some quotations. The first is from an essay by William
James: "The Energies of Men “(William James; Writings 1902-1910, page
1226; Library of America, 1987):
“The existence of reservoirs of energy that habitually are not
tapped is most familiar to use in the phenomenon of 'second wind'.
Ordinarily we stop when we meet the first effective layer, so to call it, of
fatigue. We have then walked, played or worked 'enough' so we desist.
That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction, on this side of
which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press
onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a critical
point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher
than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until
then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer
of this experience. A third and a fourth 'wind' may supervene.
Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as the physical, and
in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue
distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to
own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we
never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points. "
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From Erich Fromm: “Escape From Freedom” (Avon 1972)
“The word ‘power’ has a two-fold meaning. One is the possession of
power over somebody, the ability to dominate him. The other meaning is
the possession of a power to do something, to be able, to be potent. The
latter meaning has nothing to do with domination; it expresses mastery
in the sense of ability....
Thus, power can mean one of two things, domination or potency. Far
from being identical, these two qualities are mutually opposed.
Impotence....results in the sadistic striving for domination...Power, in the
sense of domination, is the perversion of potency.”
From Heinrich Zimmer: “Myths and Symbols in Indian Art
and Civilization” (Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series VI, 1974)
Expounding upon Hindu philosophy, Zimmer makes reference to
Maya and shakti. Maya designates a very general phenomenon, akin to
the author’s “life energy”. Shakti corresponds to Fromm’s notion of
‘power’:
"Maya is any illusion, trick, artifice, jugglery, sorcery or work of
witchcraft; an illusory image or apparition, phantasm, optical illusion;
Maya is also any diplomatic trick or political artifice designed to
deceive....At the same time, Maya is the supreme power that generates
and animates the display: the dynamic aspect of the universal Substance.
Thus it is at once, effect (the cosmic flux), and cause, (the creative
power). In the latter regard it is known as Sákti, “Cosmic Energy”. The
noun sákti is from the root sák, signifying ‘to be able, to be possible’.
Sákti is ‘power, ability, capacity, faculty, strength, energy, prowess; regal
power; the power of composition, poetic power, genius; the power or
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signification of a word or term; the power inherent in cause to produce
its necessary effect; an iron spear, lance, pike, dart; a sword."
Although ‘shakti’ translates as spiritual energy, it does not
always manifest itself in a loving form: its presence can be
discovered in the action of the sword, the might of the tyrant, in
poetic power or genius, even in the compassion of a saint. Shakti
is Maya directed by living motivation. Such motivation may be
free, thus wholly conscious , or bound, therefore partly conscious
and partly unconscious. In the malevolence of the tyrant one finds
a living energy that is identical in every respect to the passion
firing the altruistic love of a saint. Fromm’s categories of power and
potency relate to an identical resource of psychic vitality. It is the state of
mind alone which establishes the distinction between them.
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