SORROW

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

Religion gives meaning to suffering – this is the power and the attraction of religion (see previous article Meaning in Life). This meaning is based on the promise of future happiness. However, such meaning is illusory.

The basic deception in a religious morality is that happiness and unhappiness can be separated, that good and evil are separate and always will remain so.

This viewpoint is not validated by empirical experience that is based on psychological awareness. Nietzsche underlined one factor of this illusion : he saw that Christian conceptions of what is good, pious, reverential and holy have their origins in that which is evil. Good and evil are linked together. Goodness is the beautiful flower that has evil roots. [¹]

[ In my view, this linkage exists because mankind has free will. In other life forms that have no use for free will, then good and evil may be completely separate. The necessary condition for free will is that the life form has a subconscious mind. [²] ]

I see the other factor of the illusion : even goodness can deteriorate into that which is bad. Goodness can be maintained only so long as justice is maintained. When justice is felt to be denied to oneself then goodness easily transforms into selfishness and badness. When justice is denied, then the individual can only orientate on survival, on trying to survive in an unjust world. [³]

Good and evil are eternally joined together in a circular process. Goodness slides into badness, and badness transforms into goodness. The infant orientates itself around pleasure and pain, but why should the adult continue to do so? . The central task of human evolution is to go beyond utilitarianism, to go beyond happiness and sorrow, to go beyond good and evil.

Any morality is a system of value judgements based on pleasure and pain. Every person has his own scale of values. So the morality espoused by anyone is just an indication of the order of importance of his particular values. The different ways of conceptualising pleasure and pain are the reasons for the variety of ethical theories in traditional philosophy.

Potency of Abreaction

What links good to evil is the dialectical nature of experience within a material life. Sorrow is usually tied to the process of abreaction, and abreaction functions in a dialectical manner. This dialectical nature of experience is not usually noticed because abreaction creates its effects within the subconscious mind. [4]

My self-analysis, which extended over a period of about seven years, included an analysis of traditional morality and immorality. As it came to an end I looked forward to the final cessation of the regular episodes of abreaction, to the final cessation of resentment and bitterness. My inquiry into morality seemed to be complete. But I remained unsettled.

Gradually it dawned on me that though my analysis was over, yet the abreactions still continued ; they were not fading away. Peace eluded me. I remained enmeshed in sorrow. Why ? . It seemed utterly pointless for abreaction to persist. Then I understood the reason. I still experienced abreaction because I still desired to experience happiness. Happiness is usually linked to excitement and anxiety, and excitement and anxiety always produce abreaction.

All forms of excitement flow within three possible emotional sequences. Two of these sequences start from the excitement : these are the abreactions of guilt (and of its variation, the abreaction of vanity) in either insight mode or else in feeling mode (which then usually lead to the abreaction of pride). [5]
The third sequence is that of manic depression, where the excitement is generated as a reaction to the preceding depression. [6]. The abreactions end in resentment (and then to bitterness), and the ending of mania usually creates the conditions for a new depression. All three sequences require the presence of vanity: mania and the abreaction of guilt result from the vanity mode of narcissism, and the abreaction of vanity results from vanity alone.

Law of Sorrow

Putting all three sequences together I can state a general rule, which I call the law of sorrow. [7]

All self-generated joy ends in sorrow.

or

All self-generated joy leads to unhappiness.

Now the abreactions of guilt in insight mode become rare after a psycho- analysis ceases. And the individual may learn to avoid the generation of mania. But the abreactions of guilt and of pride in feeling mode can continue all through the person’s life, from birth to death. [8]. The person never escapes from the regular occurrence of these negative states of mind.

Hence a psycho-analysis can never completely eliminate sorrow, since it does not affect emotional sequences in feeling mode.

Abreaction affects everyone, even people who have no understanding of guilt and pride. I give some examples.

Children
This fact was demonstrated to me when, for a few months, I helped out in a school for children with learning difficulties. One child, aged about twelve and with a short attention span, showed a particular physical phenomenon during abreaction : she ‘switched-off ’ in the stage of guilt (in the abreaction of guilt), and the eyes rotated upwards, showing mainly the white, with the iris partly hidden by the upper eyelid.
Note: the stage of guilt can be sensed by an empathic observer, since guilt (in the mode of self-hate) shrinks the aura around the person.

In general, the stage of resentment made some children unwilling to learn new material, whilst the stages of jealousy and pride (in the abreaction of pride) made learning temporarily impossible.

Party time
A common way of interrupting the abreactional flow is the conscious induction of intense excitement or other ‘positive’ emotional states, for example by going to a party. But when the emotional ‘high’ is exhausted then abreaction resumes.

Concentration
Abreaction can also be temporarily suspended. The practice of concentration clears the mind of emotion except for hate (which is always the emotional basis of concentration). But the abreactional process is only dammed back ; when it is powerful enough the stored-up emotional pressure floods the mind and the person succumbs to mental weariness. The state of concentration has to come to an end. It is usually the accumulation of self-pity (as a mode of guilt) that produces the mental tiredness ; when this happens to me I usually prefer to go asleep. Prolonged concentration depends on having a strong will. Hence the ability to use concentration as a refuge from abreaction correlates to the person’s will power : as will power develops, so the person can use it to temporarily suppress abreaction for longer times.

Meditation
Abreaction affects even the practices of contemplation and meditation. These abilities depend on concentration, but states of deep thinking and trance cannot last indefinitely – they are brought to an end by the accumulating emotional power of the abreactional backlash.

Rationality and Intuition
The emotional states of abreaction hinder rational thinking but not intuition. This effect on rationality explains why rationality is a problem for many people, whereas intuitive thinking is an easy way to handle life’s difficulties.

Aspirins
Many people have a narrow view of sorrow. They may consider that their life is a good life, even a happy life. This viewpoint is almost certain to arise from selective memory ; they remember the good aspects of their life and conveniently forget the bad side. This rationale is partly due to the ambiguity of abreaction : it is not always intense. When abreaction is in feeling mode there may be nothing specific to resent. Then the only obvious effect of resentment may be a headache, or perhaps just a mood of irritation, or a hangover after the party. An optimist forgets the headaches, the aspirins, the irritations, the hangovers, and remembers only the joys.

What causes excitement?
It needs vanity as the present mood, and the initiating cause is the desire for happiness, with anxiety being the dynamic of the whole process. In abreaction the cathartic excitement begins the release of anxiety. And in manic depression the depression always generates anxiety – the mania is the compensating reaction which suppresses that anxiety. The attraction of mania is that it is a state of mind that is free from anxiety, which is why it is so hard to give up the yearning for it.

A Psychological Law

The law of sorrow is a psychological law and not a moral one. This is because abreaction itself is a psychological process, not a moral one, even though it often centres on thoughts about morality and immorality.

This amoral feature of abreaction can be illustrated by using music as an example. Suppose that a person plays a tape of rock music. It may be loud, frantic and energetic music, and he may start dancing to it. Eventually, as he tires of the music, he experiences guilt and resentment. We older ones might think that the rock music is repulsive and applaud the fact that it leads to resentment. We may generate indignation at the antics of the younger generation ; their resentment is obviously due to their ‘poor’ sense of taste.

If now, however, we put on a tape of light and ethereal Chopin preludes or nocturnes, the same effect happens : this experience of enjoyment ends in resentment too. We may find it difficult to blame ourselves or Chopin for our vexation. Even if we play some soft and gentle music just for relaxation, we cannot escape from abreaction. Although the intensity of abreaction varies (and so the intensity of sorrow varies), nevertheless, all musical enjoyment ends in sorrow – this effect is quite independent of themes of morality and immorality. Hence abreaction is purely psychological in its nature.

I generalise these ideas.
The basis of a person’s interaction with life is the psychological loop of projection and introjection. [9]. This loop functions with either vanity or anxiety as its basic dynamic. The loop causes the expectation of happiness to arise as the means of satisfying one’s vanity or neutralising one’s anxiety. Hence so long as a person lives his life within a prison of projection and introjection he can never escape from sorrow: vanity or anxiety will always instigate abreaction in feeling mode.

Since the end states of abreactive resentment and bitterness are frequent occurrences in people, they produce a specific effect on a person’s character. They are responsible for the popularity of films that centre on violence. [10]

Such films enable the person to find an emotional focus for his internal conflict. This focus may lead to anti-social behaviour if the person objectively expresses his conflict in social situations.

It seems to me, since I became aware of abreaction, that I have never experienced joy in my own company except as a component of abreaction. This means that all my solitary joys ended in resentment and bitterness. Perhaps only in social company have I experienced joy that did not turn sour. Maybe this is the only genuine argument for being socially-centred.

How can social company prevent joy ending in sorrow ? . In the abreaction of guilt, narcissism in vanity mode generates the excitement and the joy. When it fades the vanity mode changes to its binary, so that the self-pity mode of jealousy is now dominant. Normally the jealousy will lead to guilt and resentment. But if the person receives social approval from another person then the self-pity mode of jealousy can be neutralised. Hence guilt is prevented and the emotional sequence of abreaction is broken.

Even if the social approval is only partial, the tail-end stages of abreaction are still lessened in intensity.

Two Choices

If my understanding is correct, if the law of sorrow is invariably true, then the individual has just two basic choices in life if he wants to avoid constant sorrow. Either he has to rise above all emotion, seeking equanimity and detachment ; or else he has to rely on social endeavours and relationships for his pleasures. However, the latter choice makes him socially-dependent. Equanimity means being above all emotional turbulence, but this is so difficult that he may prefer to aim for internal peace, if he has ability in concentration and meditation.

In a spiritual idealist the pain of abreaction will always lead in the direction of dis-associating from vanity modes. Idealism requires a base of vanity, and this necessity sensitises the person to psychological pain. [11]. The more intense that one’s idealism is, the greater is the sorrow that is induced by abreaction. Hence the pain of abreaction nearly always leads to the cessation of idealism, as either internal peace is sought or else bitterness becomes an insuperable barrier to idealistic endeavours.

The person may decide to seek happiness through social relationships. But this is not a soft option ; it is perhaps nearly as difficult as the achievement of peace. For sorrow to fade into insignificance then social relationships have to be harmonious throughout all their diversity. This concord pre-supposes a deep understanding of psychology and the willingness to give up games of power and dependency. These requirements will change the nature of partnerships, whether bonded through sex or not.

When a partnership of two people (a binary partnership) is mutually harmonious, each person validates the other and so annuls abreaction, that is, when one partner is emotionally ‘down’ he or she can be supported by the other partner who is emotionally ‘up’. In my view this is the spiritual ground of marriage. In other words, the spiritual reality that grounds the assumed sanctity of the marriage rite is that an harmonious partnership is the only way for the majority of people to lead a life of happiness that is relatively free from sorrow.

The world is a world of opposites. The world is a world of pairs. For most people the only possibility of living a joyful life is in a binary partnership. So, perhaps:

The unit of harmony in a binary world is a binary partnership.

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

[¹]. Nietzsche's ideas on morality are presented in the book -
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals/ Ecce Homo. Translated by W. Kaufmann. USA, Vintage, 1969. [1]

[²]. In my use of terms, ‘subconscious’ is different from ‘unconscious’. The definitions of the terms ‘subconscious mind’ and ‘unconscious mind’ are given in the first article on Emotion.
The use of these terms 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]. There is an article on Survival on my philosophy website A Modern Thinker. See Links page. [3]

[4]. My analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See home page.
The dialectical nature of abreaction is explained in the article Dialectics & Evolution. [4]

[5]. The abreaction of vanity is briefly mentioned in the article The Conversion Experience on my website Patterns of Spirituality. See Links page.
The two modes of abreaction – insight mode and feeling mode – are described in the third article on Abreaction : Catharsis and Suggestion, section Suggestion. [5]

[6]. Mania and manic depression are described in articles on my website Patterns of Confusion. See Links page. [6]

[7]. The philosophical considerations of the law of sorrow are described in the article Morality and Psychology on my website A Modern Thinker. See Links page. [7]

[8]. My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions (which includes anxiety) are given in the three articles on Emotion. See home page. [8]

[9]. See the article Projection and Introjection. [9]

[10]. Resentment and bitterness are the subject of the fourth article on Abreaction : Resentment and Bitterness. [10]

[11]. The relation between idealism and vanity is that idealism is the sublimation of vanity. See the article Sublimation. [11]

Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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Ian Heath
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