Internalisation

of . Mental . States

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.

Repression of a mental state is the attempt to remove it from consciousness ; repression is usually a subconscious action, though it can be done deliberately. The end result of repression can be neurosis.

For comparison, internalisation of a mental state is always a subconscious process, never a conscious one, and it produces a different effect. The person feels frustrated by the social prohibition forced on him 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. Dreams of being attacked often produce physiological effects: the body heats up and may produce 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.

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. There are no noticeable physiological effects in dreams that accompany repression. [¹]

A difference of emphasis
Sublimation is not an automatic process ; it requires some degree of idealism and personal choice. Internalisation is forced onto a person, 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 will they produce sublimation. Sublimation works by acting on the unconscious ideas that maintain the unpleasant emotions, desires or attitudes. 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. [²]

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.

Sublimation is the re-direction of emotion.

Projection and Introjection

How is internalisation produced? Nietzsche produced some good ideas (‘On the Genealogy of Morals’, second essay: section 16, for example). I need to be more definite. I repeat some ideas from the article Dynamics of Projection.

In social situations I use both projection and introjection: these two mechanisms combine to form a loop. This loop works in two ways; one way reflects my individuality (or my individual identity), and the other way reflects my social orientation (or my social identity).

Pride and narcissism work in tandem in individual identity, and jealousy and guilt work together in social identity. [³]

The two ways are:

1) When individual identity is dominant in me then I admire idealists and desire compatible friends, people who can handle emotion in the manner that I do:

First I project my image onto an acceptable person – this action arises from pride.

Then I introject the subconscious montage – this action arises from narcissism.

2) When social identity is dominant in me then I desire role models or partners, people with bearing and poise that I would like to emulate:

First I introject the image of a person who is a role model – this action arises from jealousy.

Then I project the subconscious montage onto other people that I admire or would like to have as a partner – this action arises from guilt.

Consider these two loops. When my individual identity is dominant I use pride to generate projection of desire and attitude and image, and narcissism for introjection of emotion and attitude and image. 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 egoistic desire. 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.

Mechanics of Internalisation

I give my view of how internalisation occurs. Suppose that I am jealous of someone’s image of sexuality or manner of authority. I introject that image or manner 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.

I summarise these ideas
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, which is that aspect of ourself that focuses on the attainments of self-assertion and creativity.

This understanding enables me to see the importance of catharsis more clearly. Catharsis transforms the violence into exciting forms of immorality, so allowing it to be abreacted rather than letting it generate social chaos. However, without an understanding of the process of abreaction, the idealist may often be filled with dismay over his immoral thoughts. Immoral thoughts are just something that the idealist has to learn to live with and ignore as best he can. [4]

In effect, the person faces two choices. His idealism can exorcise internalised values and create social chaos – his idealism becomes destructive. This choice is often seen in the political arena: for example Lenin in his role as supremo of the USSR, when he introduced terror as a political weapon against his ideological opponents. Or the person’s idealism is directed into enduring what seems to be an endless process of abreaction, and the resulting endless resentment cleans up his moral standards. This choice is often reflected in religious themes, in the contrast between the temptations of the catharsis and the subsequent atonement.

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 and psycho-analysis together 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 causes problems: the ascetic / existentialist person manifests will in his social consciousness and relegates emotion and egoistic desire to his subconscious mind. But when he is on his own, in his individual identity, he becomes very emotional in his subjective consciousness as his will deflates. It is only in social situations that he prefers to be emotionally inhibited and controlled. 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 sexual (that is, transference), social, political, or religious – creates the subconscious mind. This subconscious mind becomes a potpourri of unidentified, vague and diffuse, unvalued emotions, memories, beliefs, attitudes.

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. Psycho-analysis creates a new reality from the subconscious mind. This new reality becomes the person’s sense of being an 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. [5]

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.

Moral training brings the will into consciousness,

and

psycho-analysis brings emotion into consciousness.

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 !

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it.

[¹]. Such dreams of conflict are different from antithetical dreams.
More ideas on dreams are given in the article Reverie and Dreams, on my website The Subconscious Mind. See Links page.

My website Patterns of Confusion contains descriptions of conflict dreams in articles : Depression and Autism, sub-section Internalisation of Emotions ; and in Violence and Loss of Freedom, sub-section Violence in Dreams. Dreams which feature either paranoia or revenge are described in the article Destructiveness, sub-section Dreams of Conflict. See Links page. [1]

[²]. The definitions of the terms ‘subconscious’ and ‘unconscious’ are given in the first article on Emotion ; their use is illustrated in the article Characteristics of a Psycho-analysis, section Levels of the Mind, on my website The Subconscious Mind. See Links page. [2]

[³]. My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See home page. [3]

[4]. My analysis of catharsis and the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See home page. [4]

[5]. For a description of a person's individual identity and social identity, see the article Confusion. [5]

The internalisation of emotion is described briefly in the article Depression and Autism, sub-section Internalisation of Emotions, on my website Patterns of Confusion. See Links page.

Books

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by W. Kaufmann. USA, Vintage, 1969.

Copyright © 2003 Ian Heath
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Ian Heath
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