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Self - Awareness
The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.
Reclaiming Experience To understand the methods used in psycho-analysis we first have to understand the problem that has to be overcome. And the problem is that we have never learned to handle skilfully the emotions that we do not like. Rather than learning to master unacceptable emotions, we prefer to deny that we experience them. The traditional ways of handling unacceptable emotions are really self-defeating and self-debilitating. |
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| Sub-headings | |
| Awareness training | |
| Value of these ideas | |
| Will | |
| Mindfulness | |
| Variations on method | |
| Feelings | |
| References |
Freud postulated that there are three ways of doing this.
Repression is the major stratagem for most people. It shapes the person’s opinion of themself. The use of repression arises in childhood and largely governs the way that a person remembers their past. As such, it is not important whether childhood memories are true or false ; actual events are of secondary value. What is important is the way that a child experienced its life. This means that it is how a person sees their life that determines their conscious and subconscious reactions to it.
I put this view in another way: the child’s subjective interpretation of its relationships to its parents and other significant people outweighs the importance of objective events. Unless this is accepted, the origins of psychological trauma and psychosis in childhood cannot be understood.
Repression means the forceful denial of some parts of a person’s consciousness, of a person’s being. What are denied are usually some unpleasant aspects of either relationships or social situations (a social situation may have no existing relationships for the person, such as going to a party where he / she knows no-one). Hence the person can only harmoniously handle a relationship or a situation when these aspects are not present or relevant. When these aspects are present or relevant, then the relationship or situation becomes constrained for that person. The result is that the denial results in behavioural determinism in circumstances that the person finds unpleasant or restrictive.
The aim of analysis is to bring these repressed parts of consciousness back into the person’s awareness so that they lose their power of controlling him / her.
The methods used in analysis, therefore, have the function of allowing repressed experience to rise into consciousness where it can be examined. I list the branches of method that I used.
- Awareness training.
- The manner of using will and feeling.
- Reverie and dreams.
- Language and body.
- Psychological attitude.
The first two methods are the subject of this article. The rest come into the next article.
Awareness Training
The practice of awareness means to become an observer of our own social relationships and of our own individual desires and attitudes and emotions. We observe what we are experiencing and how we are behaving. Why is this training needed ? . It is the foundation for developing self-consciousness in a systematic manner.
Usually self-consciousness only arises when a contrast is felt between how something appears and what it really turns out to be. More often than not we try to patch over the difference ; this tactic keeps us chained to confusion and self-deception. The real defect of this tactic is that when we deny something, then we cannot accept responsibility in the aspect of consciousness that is denied. So long as we remain in confusion over our ‘vices’ and limitations then we cannot become fully responsible people, we cannot acquire full self-responsibility (both for our successes in life and for our failures). [¹]
One meaning of confusion is that we have disconnected our experience from our behaviour.
Our experience only becomes linked to our behaviour once we have developed awareness.
With this awareness we can monitor our behaviour so as to clarify and know our experience. Experience without awareness is rendered meaningless because that experience is inherently confused – for example, motivation that is subconscious produces experience that is subconscious. If we are unaware of what we are experiencing, of how we are behaving, we cannot change voluntarily our pattern of response. Awareness is the key for eliminating confusion in our experience, by bringing the subconscious mind into consciousness. Then we can begin to act from choice and not from confusion or determinism. [²]
The greatest difficulty in awareness training is the identification of emotions. Detecting emotions is difficult enough, except for a few obvious ones like anger and fear, but thinkers have produced conflicting ideas about what actually is an emotion. For example, emotions have been confused with attitudes, beliefs and aspirations ; in particular, the most confusion has been exhibited over the issue of what love really is. [³]
These difficulties are bad enough, but what complicates them even more is that a person experiences two emotions at once, one being from his / her normal consciousness (what I sometimes call the surface consciousness) and one being from the subconscious mind. So a person is under the influences of both a surface emotion and a subconscious one. To these two emotions we can add a third one that is often present as well, that being anxiety.
The way out of this maze of confusion is to use a combination of empiricism and intuition (or insight). See the third article on Emotion : Identifying Emotions.
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. [4]
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.
In the scenario of human evolution that I use, there are three kinds of consciousness.
| 1. | First, the person develops
consciousness of the world. This is an unreflective awareness of individuality in a world of external objects. This is the pre-social age of long, long ago, and is also the world of infancy. |
| 2. | Then the person becomes a
member of society and develops the moral consciousness. The individual now predominantly defines themself to be a social being. |
| 3. | Finally, the person is a
member of society, who yet can separate themself from it,
if necessary, by their individuality. Now the person develops self-consciousness. |
In this scenario, the development of self-awareness is the necessary condition for acquiring full self-consciousness. Awareness brings into the open our limitations due to determinism and confusion, and the ways that we act as a source of violence (mental as well as physical violence). We begin to realise what our deepest motivations are. We cannot change our limitations and our motivations until we become aware of them – without awareness, all we can learn is to be inhibited.
In this scenario, there are stages to becoming an individual. The progression is always away from a reliance on tradition. The person becomes able to use tradition and its values, without being dependent on it. This is perhaps easier to understand if I highlight the role of politics as one means of developing awareness of oneself and one's relationship to issues of power and dependency.
A person who defines themself to be a Conservative is still buried in tradition : their individuality is struggling to emerge. The Liberal is only partly an individual, since their limited degree of self-consciousness precludes the full adoption of self-responsibility. The Anarchist is more of an individual, since he / she does not desire power over other people.
However, a person’s attitude to life is not always this simple. Sometimes life is easy, and sometimes it is hard. During the easy times a person may develop some individuality, but when times get hard he / she may retreat into conservatism again. The development of self-consciousness is always a zig-zag process : first one step forward, then one step back, and at other times it is one step forward and two steps back.
In modern times, the conscious attempt to extend self-consciousness has usually been the preserve of the existentialist and psycho-analytic thinkers.
Will . (or will-power)
In the practice of awareness in social situations the will presents a problem. To be able to identify my subconscious motivations I had to let them rise into consciousness. I had to minimise my will in order for this to happen ; a strong will keeps the subconscious mind repressed. Hence I had to accept having a weak or vacillating will until I could identify my motivations. This vacillation can intensify anxiety to unbearable levels. The uncertainty of a weak will left me vulnerable to any hostility and ridicule from other people. [5]
To identify my emotional response to a situation I have to use my will to stay on the threshold of the state of mind that I want to analyse. I do not repress my negative emotions, nor do I express them in any social relationship. I keep the unpleasant side of my character to myself, I do not socially enact my unpleasantness ; I do not inflict my negativity onto other people. So if I am feeling hateful to others, nevertheless I am considerate to everyone. This procedure builds up anxiety to intense levels. Only my idealism gives me reasons for practising such self-control. The saving grace is that intense anxiety facilitates insight.
The intense anxiety forces me to put my current problem into the centre of my awareness ; the whole force of my mind revolves around the problem.
Then when I am alone I embrace the emotion in my phantasies, I let my desires have full reign ; in that mood I analyse my ideas on any social field, such as ethics, politics, sexuality. Each different emotional mood casts its own individual influence in these fields.
For example, my views on politics change as my mood changes : narcissism swings my views to the left, whilst resentment makes me conservative. By comparing different emotional responses the real roots of desires and obligation can be determined. This procedure takes the confusion out of ethics and other contentious issues. Some emotions produce phantasies of violence and destruction, and others have sexual motifs. Analysing the dramas of these phantasies enabled me to discover the roots of the psychoses and of sexuality. [6]
In difficult situations I used my will to stay on the threshold of the state of mind that I wanted to analyse. It is very hard to examine unfamiliar states of mind : repeated exposure to them is necessary. Initially we just become aware of the highlights of an unfamiliar state ; the mundane aspects become noticeable only when the novelty has worn off. Usually, though, unfamiliarity means nothing more than that we were not aware of what we were doing previously ; we had regularly engaged in some states of mind without having noticed them.
This procedure of exploration became hell itself when I had to analyse states of madness that my journey to self-consciousness put me through.
When the anxiety level becomes unbearable I practise the technique of mindfulness. The determined use of this method enables any amount of distress to be kept at bay, even madness itself. All emotions, all desires, rise and then fade away. No emotion, no desire, is permanent. Emotions and desires cause us pleasure or distress when we indulge in them or react to them.
Mindfulness is the practice of trying to remain neutral whilst watching the present emotion or desire. We watch the emotion or desire arise, we watch it at its peak intensity, then we watch it fade away. Sometimes it may take only a few minutes to fade away, whilst at other times it may take hours. This watchful state neutralises our usual reactions to distress (or to happiness). Practising this watchfulness lessens anxiety to bearable levels of intensity.
The effect that mindfulness has on us is to develop the attitude of detachment. The Buddhist manner of expressing mindfulness in a neat way is:
| In the seeing, | there is only the seen. |
| In the hearing, | there is only the heard. |
| In the touching, | there is only the touch. |
| In the smelling, | there is only the smell. |
| In the tasting, | there is only the taste. |
In other words, we avoid reacting to the situation from our usual value judgements. The usefulness of mindfulness is that it is not necessary to identify emotions in order to practice it. The watchful, neutral state prohibits reflective self-awareness though – since we are avoiding evaluations, so we will not generate our customary desires or emotional responses (that is, the desires and responses that arise as a result of making evaluations). Therefore mindfulness is not needed in states of low-intensity stress.
Variations on Method
Anxiety in the subconscious mind is attached to unpleasant memories ; in fact, in most cases anxiety is this unpleasantness. A secondary source of unpleasantness is generated eventually by the person's idealism.
For the high-powered idealist the unpleasant memories denigrate his self-image, and the sense of denigration remains even when anxiety has been removed from them. The reason is that the usual idealistic response to denigration is bitterness, not anxiety. I used mindfulness primarily against anxiety. Errors produced by trying to live one’s idealism are handled by learning to accept oneself. One’s responses to social situations can be made value-free, but not one’s idealism.
Now I can give my two variations on method in social situations.
First variation :
this is practised when I am still investigating emotions and motivations.
It requires repeated experiments with this method in order to detect all the nuances that any emotion can generate. New experiences cannot be analysed effectively ; their novelty side-tracks the experimenter. Only when the person is thoroughly familiar with an emotion can he detect all its connotations. Unfortunately, this means becoming thoroughly familiar with all the variations of distress too.
Second variation :
I follow this method once a list of symptoms and attitudes corresponding to particular emotions has been developed, and my investigations have ceased to be interesting (either temporarily or permanently).
One area of confusion in psychology is that feelings are often loosely equated with emotions. This is alright for colloquial use. I can ask a friend how he is feeling today, that is, is he happy or sad, etc ; it would be awkward to ask him how emotional he is being today. Some people might take offence if they were thought to be emotional, whereas it is acceptable for them to show feelings.
Also, the word ‘feelings’ has a wide range of connotations – such as sensitivity, concern, susceptibility – which are relevant only in an informal sense, since they carry an aura of vagueness. To avoid such obscurity I need to be specific. In studying the mind, we have to accept that there are fundamental differences between feelings and emotions. For the moment I concentrate on feelings.
There are just three feelings : the pleasant one, the unpleasant one, and the neutral one. This is the Buddhist understanding and I verified this fact directly during the time when I used to practise meditation. In the past, some moral theorists believed that the neutral feeling is only an equal mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, so that the net effect is zero. But meditational awareness disproves this assumption.
Either feelings or will can be made the foundation of consciousness. Feelings help to give rise to emotions, and will to desires, with the mind being involved in both cases. Therefore the person’s relationship to the world can focus on either emotions or desires.
In older times, when the intensity of stress on the individual was much less than that of today, will was more important than feelings, in terms of motivation. Hence many traditional ideas on spiritual development, found in religion and in meditational practices, focused primarily on the enhancement of will power (for example, the practice of duty requires will power). But now in modern times the stress on the individual is primarily caused by the intensification of emotional motivations, which depend on feelings.
Therefore, for the modern person:
Feelings are the foundation of consciousness.
Most of a person’s repertoire of emotions arises from the two feelings of pleasure and displeasure. These feelings form a complementary pair, a pair of opposites, or what I call a ‘binary’. Hence all the emotions that spring from them can be arranged in pairs of opposites, or binaries, too.
By contrast, the neutral feeling is unique, it is not part of a binary. It is the basis of equanimity, the ability to be unaffected by any kind of stress. Equanimity should not be confused with indifference or even peace ; indifference is a protective mechanism of withdrawal from responsibility and is underpinned by fear, whilst peace is achieved by repressing internal conflict. Equanimity denotes the absence of making value judgements, hence the absence of desiring anything. In Buddhist terms, equanimity means ‘in the seeing, only the seen ; in the hearing, only the heard’, etc.
In psychological language, equanimity is the state of mind that denotes the absence of projection and introjection.
The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my websites are on the Links page.
[¹]. There is an article on Confusion on my websites The Strange World of Emotion and Discover Your Mind. [1]
[²]. There is an article on Determinism on my websites Discover Your Mind and A Modern Thinker. [2]
[³]. My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See home page. [3]
[4]. Self-deception is described in the article Characteristics of a Psycho-Analysis. [4]
[5]. Anxiety is an emotion, and is described in the three articles on Emotion. See home page. [5]
[6]. My website for exploring sexuality is The Strange World of Emotion. For exploring madness and confusion, see the articles on my website Patterns of Confusion. [6]
Books
Moore, G.E.
Principia Ethica. Cambridge
1903. (sections 78-79).
Nyanaponika, Thera.
The Heart of Buddhist
Meditation. Rider, 1983.
A standard exposition of mindfulness.
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The articles in this section are :
Self - Awareness
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© 2002 Ian Heath
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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
http://members.freezone.co.uk/ian-heath/
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