Section Headings [ Weak Self-Image] [ Definition of Psycho-Analysis] [ Subconscious Determinism]

[ What is Anxiety?] [ Switching]

The previous chapters dealt with emotions on their own. Now I begin to describe the effects that they produce.
In this description, anxiety takes a central place, mainly because it helps to weaken our image of ourself.

Our image of ourself is strongly influenced by two factors : our memories and our ideals.

When our self-image is weak it is usually associated with memories of ourself that we dislike. If most of our memories remind us of our failures in life, of the mistakes that we made, then our feelings about ourself are likely to be mainly negative ones. So one way to self-improvement is to improve our valuation of our memories. There are two factors that can apply to a memory of an event that has become negatively valued.

a). The memory can be inharmonious to the person’s sense of idealism.
b). The memory can be coupled with anxiety.

Factor (a).
I begin by considering the influence of the person's sense of idealism. There are two components to this influence. They focus on the two major aspects of ourselves, which are the orientation towards being a social person and the orientation towards being an individual. I call these orientations the social identity and the individual identity. [¹]

The first component derives from guilt and my social identity, whereas the second component springs from bitterness and my individual identity.

First component. When my mood is based on my sense of being a social person, on my social identity, then the memory of any social activity that was below 100 %  perfection is felt to be anathema to me – here it is guilt (mode of self-pity) that is temporarily dominant.

Second component. This is more intense in me. When the memory is of the way that I responded to some social activity by allowing social rules to control my behaviour or inhibit my independence then it is bitterness that becomes uppermost in my mind at that moment. It is my sense of my own individuality, my own individual identity, that is being undermined by that memory.

These valuations of memory are discomforting and lead to the desire to improve my ethical conduct, but they do not produce determinism in the way that anxiety does.

Factor (b).
This leads me to a definition of psycho-analysis, which is explained in the next article : Definition of Psycho-Analysis.

Footnote

[¹]. The social identity and the individual identity form the two identities of each person.

The idea of having two identities is introduced in the article Confusion, on my websites The Strange World of Emotion and Discover Your Mind. For a more detailed analysis of how they are formed, see the article Two Identities on my website The Subconscious Mind. See Links page for their web addresses.

Copyright @2002  Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine and the articles are free to use. They can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.