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Envy is not always easy to separate from jealousy. Envy is behind the worst forms of destructiveness. Envy prefers to destroy, jealousy (love mode) prefers to control. Both envy and jealousy make the person seek social company ; but whereas jealousy seeks social involvement, envy lets the person rest content with being a social observer. When envy is dominant in me I like to have afternoon tea in a tea shop and watch the world go by (however, sometimes my mood then changes to jealousy in self-pity mode as loneliness arises).

In childhood, envy of the general character traits of a parent appears as a lack of attachment towards that parent (envy is one of the factors that underlie autism). The difference here between hate and envy is that hate can be considered to be a negative attachment, whilst envy destroys and neutralises any attachment so long as the child is in a position of inequality with the parent. [³]

Ian Health

Anxiety is a cerebral emotion: when it is intense it �fogs� the mind, producing mental tiredness and the incapacity for intellectual work. I feel it most in my eyes as a regular ache, which generates a sensitivity to bright light. When I am writing or typing under a bright light I control the eye-ache by regularly splashing my eyes with cold water, perhaps every half hour or so. Both the mental tiredness and the ache are intensified when combined with any mode of self-pity.

In social company, anxiety (in vanity mode) stimulates a compulsive need to speak (I get embarrassed by my silence) or compulsive behaviour (such as smoking, drinking alcohol, nail-biting, over-eating). When I have this fuzzy head at home I usually relax on the settee and doze. The cessation of anxiety can be quite sudden and produces an immediate clearing of the head � I �wake up� from my semi-consciousness. The need for a long sleep time each night is usually due to the presence of anxiety or to a mode of self-pity.

Anxiety keeps the person focused on negative emotions ; if I am absorbed in narcissistic joy or jealous love, then if anxiety arises I usually switch out of them into self-pity modes or even hostile feelings.

The fear mode of anxiety is generated by a dictatorial conscience, or the �voice of authority�. This voice has two origins.
It can originate from the family setting: the parents� commands become internalised into an oppressive conscience � �do as you are told�. The voice of authority also comes from one�s soul: the soul directs oneself to practise self-control (here the �voice� is not a clear verbal one but more like an intuitive prompting). If I do something that my soul does not like, then I immediately feel a burst of anxiety in my eyes. However, this �voice� is a subtle one and is unlikely to be noticed by a person who has not developed sensitivity.

In general, narcissism and jealousy are the two avenues to power, the two ways to express and achieve power. Pride and guilt are the two avenues to ethics. Resentment arises when the person�s sense of idealism is restricted by guilt ; bitterness arises when idealism is restricted by pride.

What needs to be accepted is that emotions are not good or bad in themselves, but that the goodness or the badness lies in the context that we experience them and view them. However, since it is common practice to value things rather than contexts, I prefer to label emotions as either positive or negative, rather than as either good or bad.

Ian Health

In 1986, Steinberg proposed a theory of triangulation: that defined three seperate elements to a loving relationship:

Passion – the sexual attraction between the two people.

• Intimacy – the communicative bond and trust; perhaps the most important factor of the three in the long term.

• Commitment – a loving relationship requires the short-term commitment of both people in terms of accepting each other as partners, as well as the long-term commitment to each other. Commitment, while required throughout the relationship, is perhaps the least important factor in the long-term, though.

Labelling Love

To what extend does our idea of love evolve from the culture we live? And if we didn’t have a word for this emotion, to what extent would we still feel it?

Hatfield and Walster in 1981 proposed that love is a form of ‘cognitive labelling’ which would suggest that love and, for example, the physiological arousal caused by the injection of adrenaline into the bloodstream, are indistinguishable until you label the emotion as ‘love’.

So, is your love of a close one just a state of physiological arousal? Are all our emotions simply chemical differences, categorised into love, hate and other feelings by society? Schechter and Singer (1962) aimed to find out if cognitive labelling really was viable with the Suproxin ‘Wonderdrug’ Test:

Schechter and Singer created what they advertised as a vitamin-containing drug, and tested it on participants to find out if chemicals could evoke true emotions. Some participants were given an injection containing epinephrine (adrenaline) that would cause a state of physical arousal (not necessarily an emotion, though) and others were give a simple salt-based compound that would have no significant effect. Some participants were told that the drug would have a significant effect on them, while others were told it would have a limited effect. Others were left with the impression that it would have no effects of physical arousal at all.

The experimenters wanted to see if the participants’ altered physiological state would make them believe their emotions were changing. Participants were left in a room with a confederate (a secret accomplice of the experimenters), who tried to make them either happy (by making paper aeroplanes) or sad (by reacting angrily to a personal questionnaire they’d been asked to complete). Did this make the participants change emotionally and ‘cognitively label’ their state? Yes, those given adrenaline and not told that it would alter their basic state did think they were more emotional.

Dutton and Aron (1974) put participants into a more naturally physically arousing situation. High on a suspension bridge, you might expected to be more excited than on a normal bridge. Participants of Dutton and Aron’s study were asked by a physically attractive interviewer to complete a questionnaire which, unknown to those being asked, measured their sexual arousal level. Those on the suspension bridge who were in a physically aroused state showed more sexual arousal than those in a less exciting place.

So cognitive labelling does indicate that psychological arousal and attraction to another person are linked, but it’s important to remember that not all research supports the theory, and ‘love’ as simply a name for an aroused state; Merañon in 1924 carried out a similar experiment to Schachter and Signer – to arouse participants, and 71% of them said that they felt different physiologically but were unchanged emotionally. The rest of the participants felt unsure that their emotional state was genuinely different, which suggests that there is more to love and other emotional feelings than simple hormonal imbalances.

psychologistworld

The link between the unconscious and emotion.

No feeling is permanent. There is a constant oscillation between the positive and negative feelings. Emotions are constantly changing, in part because feelings change, and in part due to the constant stream of ideas that flow in the unconscious mind. At the conscious and subconscious levels of mind we can focus on an unconscious idea and use it to pursue a trend or theme about something that interests us at that moment. Hence we can make an emotion last whilst we follow that trend.

The difference between the flow of ideas at the conscious and subconscious levels is mainly related to the issue of change. The conscious flow is easy to change, especially when we are in social company, but the subconscious flow seems to have a life of its own and is highly resistant to conscious attempts to change it. In social company or if we are idealistic we can give preference to our conscious ideas, and hence control our conscious emotional response. But on our own, without the influence of idealism, the subconscious mind usually exerts priority in emotional response. If the conscious mind is not dominant, that is, if we do not value what we are doing at any particular moment, then the subconscious mind is dominant (and so we may become subject to uncontrollable moods).

As I show below, emotions can be grouped into complementary pairs. I call these pairs �binaries’. A few lines above I used two examples of binary emotions. I paired anger and fear together, and then love and hate together. Another binary is vanity and self-pity. What determines the choice of either emotion in a pair ? For example, what governs a person, at a particular moment, in their selection of either anger or fear as their response to something? The choice is not a random one. The choice revolves around the dominating influence of value.

We put a value on emotional experience. By either liking or disliking things, relationships, situations, etc we put a value on them. At any particular moment we may either like or dislike something ; but this liking and disliking can take many forms. For example, the way that we like that something may lead us to choose between anger, love or vanity as our response. Anger allows us to dominate the situation ; love enables us to harmonise with other people ; vanity lets us feel important. The way that we dislike it may focus on fear, hate or self-pity.

So at any particular moment we are focusing on a trend of thought, with a relevant emotion being experienced. Then there is some change in the situation that needs an emotional response from us. Sometimes we can consciously choose our response, particularly if the situation is a pleasant one. But more often than not we act subconsciously. The value that we place on the situation at that moment determines which emotion will be felt. For example, if we are feeling discontented, we will place little positive value on our present experience ; then when we have to respond to something we are more likely to choose some form of hostile or fearful response.

As well as putting value on our situations, we also put value on our thoughts and ideas. Now an unconscious idea has two values : it is good or it is bad. The good value is supported by the pleasant feeling, the bad value by the unpleasant feeling. This division leads to two choices. One choice gives rise to one emotion, the other choice to its complement. Hence emotions can be grouped into complementary pairs, or binaries.

In general then, if we are free-wheeling in our thoughts, we can let our emotions be positive or negative according to whether the feeling is positive or negative. Otherwise, by placing value on our experience, we can generate positive or negative emotions as we choose. However, the generation of a positive emotion is often difficult if the feeling that is current is the negative one, and vice versa.

The unconscious idea enables all emotions to be arranged in pairs of complementary opposites. The one exception is that 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 (that is, conflict that is within the mind of a person).

In psychological language, equanimity is the state of mind which denotes the absence of projection and introjection. When a person uses the mechanisms of projection and introjection, they are making value judgements about the characteristics of other people that they admire or dislike. When they cease making such value judgements, they thereby cease to desire anything of a personal nature. [³]

I list some emotions which are binary to each other :

fear – anger
love – hate
jealousy – narcissism
pride – guilt
vanity – self-pity
resentment – bitterness

Some emotions have an additional complexity: they are compound and consist of two simpler emotions. I call such an emotion either a compound emotion or a �doublet’, and each of the separate emotions within a doublet I call a �mode ‘ of that doublet. For example, guilt comprises the two simpler emotions of self-pity and self-hate. So guilt is experienced as guilt (in the mode of self-pity) or as guilt (in the mode of self-hate).

I list some compound emotions and then I give a table of unconscious ideas that determine emotions.

Table 1: Compound Emotions

Guilt = self-pity + self-hate.
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.

Narcissism = love + vanity.
Jealousy = love + self-pity.

Resentment = guilt + idealism.
Bitterness = pride + idealism

Repentance = regret + guilt (mode of self-pity).
Sadness = regret + jealousy (mode of self-pity).

Paranoia = fear + pride (mode of vanity).
Anxiety = fear + vanity.

In the compound emotions of guilt, pride, narcissism, and jealousy, only one mode is felt at any one time � they are never experienced simultaneously. For example, guilt is felt as either self-pity or as self-hate.

How do I know that some emotions are compound ones ? Guilt was the first one that I identified. Once I learned to detect guilt by empirical awareness I became puzzled by the fact that it seemed to exhibit contrary impressions. Then I realised that this difficulty could be explained by postulating that guilt consisted of two factors. It then became an empirical task to see if I could detect these two separate factors � and I did.

Now guilt equals self-pity plus self-hate. This arrangement of the two emotions within guilt has three other possible combinations, by taking the binaries of self-pity and self-hate. So if my factorisation of guilt was correct then three other compound emotions should also exist, with their factors being:

self-pity + love

vanity + love

vanity + hate

Eventually I realised through intuition that these compound emotions represented jealousy, narcissism, and pride. Then again I empirically verified that my theorising was correct. The hallmark of a compound emotion is that it produces ambiguous responses ; the ambiguity always falls into two categories, thus indicating that two factors are present and need to be separated.

For example, in sadness there is sorrow (from the regret) plus a sweetness (from the jealousy). When the jealousy factor is highlighted, then I always find that sadness is a lovely emotion in which I often like to linger, whereas the sorrow element makes sadness unpleasant.

psychologistworld