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There is no short-cut to identifying emotions.
It is a long and hard process of becoming more and more aware of the
influences that are associated with important beliefs, attitudes and
behaviours (minor beliefs, etc, do not carry much emotional weight and
so will be exceedingly hard to examine). Insight / intuition is needed.
And the development of insight / intuition is a slow process, requiring
perseverance and single-mindedness. [¹]
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Empiricism
As an example of empiricism I give an analysis of the effects of two
common food chemicals.
I use caffeine to illustrate the influence that mood has on the ingestion of
drugs, particularly mood-changing ones. Contrary to popular belief
caffeine does not give energy ; caffeine just makes the person use up
their reserves. By experiment I found that the effect of it on the nervous
system depends upon the psychological mood of the person at the time of
drinking the tea or coffee or cola.
If the mood is one of shock: then caffeine is beneficial.
If the subconscious mood is fear: then caffeine eases the fear, but
drains the body of energy by inducing a low blood-sugar reaction,
hypoglycaemia.
If the subconscious mood is pride (mode of hate): then caffeine
produces pain around the heart.
The intensity of the reactions above depends upon the amount of caffeine
that is drunk and the intensity of the person s mood. For myself, when
pride (mode of hate) is intense then two cups of moderately strong tea
will often generate incipient heart pain.
The other food chemical that I experimented with was vitamin C. Many
nutritionists consider that high level dosages (500 milligrammes or
more) of vitamin C are harmless. This is not my view. During my 30s
and 40s my gums were always a problem: they were in poor condition,
receding, and bled easily, often swelling up. This was in part a sensitivity
to acid fruits and to vitamin C tablets. What confused me for a long time
was that vitamin C is often recommended as a treatment for bleeding
gums  but the more vitamin C that I took the more gum trouble I had. I
found that drinking acid fruit juice upset my stomach and furred up my
tongue. Apart from making my gums bleed, acid fruits and drinks and
vitamin C (in excess of about 50 milligrammes) affected my biting
pressure: chewing became painful. Once, on holiday, I breakfasted solely
on a half litre of grapefruit juice ; when lunchtime arrived I almost cried
with pain as I chewed my salad.
By experiment I finally resolved my gum difficulty. If I took too much
vitamin C (100 milligrammes or more) the gums bled easily ; if my
intake of vitamin C was insufficient then the gums became puffy and
swollen, and my tongue became sensitive to the sharp edges of the teeth.
A tomato a day was usually sufficient to keep my gums healthy, except
in winter when I had to supplement it with the occasional vitamin C
tablet (50 milligrammes). Then once my gums improved I found that I
could tolerate a higher level of vitamin C, up to 250 milligrammes.
Tomatoes remain the only citrus fruit that cause me no problem.
Therefore, high levels of vitamin C are only beneficial to the gums if the
gums are already healthy. The poorer the condition of the gums, the
smaller the dosage of vitamin C that is tolerated without harmful effects.
THE VALUE OF THESE IDEAS
What is the use in identifying emotions? By being able to identify our
emotions we can begin to acquire first-hand knowledge of the mind s
influence on the ego.
What is the value of identifying emotions? This knowledge is essential if
we want to understand the meaning of sorrow and mental pain. So this
knowledge lays the groundwork for clearing confusion and self-
deception from consciousness.
Once we can identify our range of emotions we can begin to investigate,
directly through our experience (that is, by empiricism), questions
concerning truth and falsehood, and questions concerning ethics. We will
then find that our empirical experience will challenge all traditional
attitudes to these questions. G.E. Moore summarised a certain
perspective in philosophy derived from Immanuel Kant (Moore, 1903) :
... just as, by reflection on our perceptual and sensory
experience, we become aware of the distinction between truth
and falsehood,
so it is by reflection on our experience of feeling and willing
that we become aware of ethical distinctions.
By considering what perception and sensation mean  we may discover
what properties the world must have, if it is to be true . So, too, by
considering what feeling and willing mean  we may discover what
properties the world must have, if it is to be good or beautiful .
The way that I interpret this quotation is that the first kind of reflection
develops self-consciousness, whereas the second kind of reflection
develops a moral consciousness. [There is an additional comment to this
view in the article  Awareness , same sub-heading].
More importantly for the therapeutic point of view, the identification of
emotions enabled me to establish that the unconscious mind works in
deterministic ways. Some emotions flow in invariable sequences -- these
sequences underlie the major problems that present themselves to
consciousness during a psycho-analysis. A long psycho-analysis will
bring into awareness intense states of resentment, bitterness and anger.
The emotional sequences form part of the traditional concept of
abreaction, which had not been clearly delineated till my investigations.
The analysis of abreaction, and why it ends in resentment and bitterness,
is the subject of the next article.
CONCLUSION
Emotions are just concepts which are energised by feelings. The
concept introduces the factor of mind and so each emotion has its
own cluster of ideas associated with it. Once a person learns to
identify their full range of major emotional responses, then they
can use them to clear confusion from the traditional debates about
truth and goodness.
References
Moore, G.E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge 1903. (sections 78-79).
The number in brackets at the end of the reference takes you
back to the paragraph that featured it.
[¹]. In these articles on psychology I treat insight and intuition as
equivalent terms. However, I separate them in my article Reason &
Intuition on my website A Modern Thinker. See Links. [¹]
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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved
The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be
reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.
Ian Heath, London UK
e-mail address:
iheath3.tsm@relative-mindmatter.co.uk
New Ideas in
The Subconscious Mind
Psychology
Home List
Self - Awareness
The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this
article.
Reclaiming Experience
Sub-headings
To understand the methods used in psycho-analysis
Awareness training we first have to understand the problem that has to
be overcome. And the problem is that we have never
Value of these ideas
learned to handle skilfully the emotions that we do [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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