Unresolved inner conflict is a primary cause of anorexia nervosa.

Recently I watched a YouTube clip of Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil) counseling a 79-pound woman with anorexia, and it was a sad sight indeed. My sadness was felt both for the plight of the woman and for the plight of all people who get only shallow psychological knowledge from so-called experts and the media.

In this video clip from 2012, Dr. Phil succeeds only at shaming the woman for her anorexia. The woman already lives with considerable inner shame, and the unwitting Dr. Phil is only piling it on.

Anorexia can be treated and cured when its psychological origins are uncovered. Yet prominent websites on the subject—such as WebMD.com, the Mayo Clinic, and MedlinePlus, the website of the National Institutes of Health—provide only scanty and shallow psychological information. The National Institutes of Health, which favors a medical approach to understanding and treating eating disorders, claims that, “Family conflicts are no longer thought to contribute to this [anorexia] or other eating disorders.” I disagree with this statement, and I provide evidence in this article that family conflict, along with inner conflict, does indeed contribute to these disorders. When anorexics understand their inner conflict and how they act out that conflict with others, they have a decent chance of escaping their painful condition.

A statement at www.helpguide.org provides some psychological insight into the causes of anorexia:

Believe it or not, anorexia isn’t really about food and weight—at least not at its core. Eating disorders are much more complicated than that. The food and weight-related issues are symptoms of something deeper: things like depression, loneliness, insecurity, pressure to be perfect, or feeling out of control. Things that no amount of dieting or weight loss can cure. . . .

People with anorexia are often perfectionists and overachievers. They’re the “good” daughters and sons who do what they’re told, excel in everything they do, and focus on pleasing others. But while they may appear to have it all together, inside they feel helpless, inadequate, and worthless. Through their harshly critical lens, if they’re not perfect, they’re a total failure.

This is all true, and there is more. Let’s explore the psyche to understand better one of the indicators mentioned above—the feelings of helplessness. I explain these painful feelings in terms of inner conflict.

Anorexia is one symptom among many that is caused by an individual’s entanglement in feelings of helplessness. This painful emotion is usually experienced in conjunction with a lessening of one’s capacity for emotional and behavioral self-regulation. Why does the individual have such feelings in the first place? Many of us are unable to completely shake off the feelings of helplessness that we’re born with. We all strive and struggle through childhood and adolescence to come into our own sense of power and autonomy. Yet helpless feelings persist. Even everyday normal people experience it when they’re worried if not tormented by a fear of not being able to take care of themselves financially or otherwise. This is the fear that they’ll somehow be rendered helpless as they make the journey through life.

Feelings of helplessness are often associated with emotional issues related to control and domination. We can feel our helplessness most acutely when it seems that we’re at the mercy of others or are required to submit to others or to some imposing situation. In our unconscious mind, we can start to identify with ourselves through this feeling of helplessness. The feeling can begin to define us to ourselves. We don’t know who we are without it, even though it’s often quite distressful and painful. Consequently, we can be said to be emotionally attached to the feeling of helplessness. We hate to acknowledge this attachment, however, because it undermines our egotism and self-image. Common sense tells us that only a fool or a hopeless neurotic could be attached to feeling helpless. And hence we defend psychologically, on an inner level, against realization of this attachment. We deny the existence of this attachment. Yet the attachment, lingering from childhood, can become an emotional default position that greatly limits our powers of self-regulation and sense of autonomy.

The following examples can help us to understand emotional attachments as they relate to eating disorders. The examples also provide clues as to how the underlying inner conflicts can be resolved. The first example looks at a boy with anorexia, and the second discusses the plight of a girl with bulimia. The examples are taken from my book, Secret Attachments: Exposing the Roots of Addictions and Compulsions.

A gaunt nineteen-year-old anorexic, living at home with his divorced mother, was managing to torture himself with the word should. He agreed with his mother and others that he should be doing better and eating properly. The boy’s refusal of food represented “a refusal of mother” and was a passive-aggressive defense to cover up his attachment to feeling controlled by his dominating mother. His anorexia had caused serious health problems, and he had been admitted to hospital several times. The mother was emotionally insecure, and she required her son to behave according to her demands and needs. Unconsciously, she did not want the boy (who looked no more than sixteen) to grow up. On the surface, the boy went along with her control and domination. He was emotionally captivated by her intense though neurotic preoccupation with him. Still, his unconscious dynamics required that he cover up (or defend against realization of) his attachment to feeling controlled by her. As part of this dynamic, he tormented himself with thoughts that he should try harder to please his mother and be a nicer boy for her sake.

But that sentiment was in vain. He was compelled to act out a self-damaging defense against his attachment to feeling controlled and dominated. His defense (and resulting self-damage) was based on an unconscious formulation that produces an illusion of power: “Mother doesn’t control me. On the contrary, I refuse to eat her food. I refuse to comply with her demands. I even control her feelings and get her upset. True, she doesn’t like me behaving like this, but at least I have some sense of power. It is my behavior that is controlling her.”

This claim to power was, of course, an illusion. But it “worked” to some degree as a defense, even though it produces guilt, shame, low self-esteem, and self-defeat. In fact, the defense produced a great deal of guilt, shame, and low self-esteem, amounting to a considerable degree of suffering. The boy’s emotional entanglement in helplessness made him more passive, which meant that on an inner level he was less able to keep his inner critic at bay. In absorbing the inner critic’s attacks for allegedly being a bad or naughty boy, he felt considerable shame and guilt. Unconsciously he counteracted these inner accusations concerning his “naughtiness” with defensive claims that he wanted to be a good boy and knew he should be a good boy. (A girl and her mother could be involved in the same unhealthy dynamic.)

Inner conflicts are also associated with bulimia, which is characterized by binge eating and purging. One of my clients with a history of alcohol and drug abuse was concerned that her father would think less of her if he were to find out she was also bulimic. He was a successful businessman, and she was convinced he would see her as incompetent and a failure in her life. On the surface, she desperately wanted approval from him. But anyone who is desperate for approval is unconsciously attached to feeling disapproval. This woman had an emotional attachment to the feeling of being seen as a disappointment or in a negative light. By imagining her father thinking less of her, she produced negative emotions (such as anxiety or anger) through her inner conflict which involved wanting approval but expecting (or being attached to) disapproval. After psychotherapy, which addressed this conflict as well as conflicts involving deprivation and control, her bulimia became inactive.

A variety of inner conflicts are associated with eating disorders, and this article provides only a very small sampling. People in need of treatment have every right to expect and demand more insightful psychotherapy than what mental-health professionals are now providing.

Inner conflict contributes to alcoholism.

Many alcoholics and addictive personalities resist the idea that their plight is in any way due to character weakness. Any such allegation, they feel, categorizes them as substandard people who are to blame for their troubles. Weakness of character or “moral weakness” is not what causes alcoholism, one addiction website states emphatically. This is true, yet we can’t ignore the influence of a certain kind of inner weakness in the psyche.  

There’s an essential reason alcoholics are sensitive to this allegation that character weakness is behind their out-of-control drinking: inwardly they defend against this accusation which is directed at them on a daily basis by their inner critic. The inner critic (superego) is a primitive, aggressive agency of the human psyche, and it berates alcoholics with allegations that range in intensity from “You should be trying harder to stay sober!” to “You worthless, no good loser! Look at you! You’re truly disgusting!”

Everyone has an inner critic or superego, and for many of us that part of our psyche has assumed the role of the master of our personality. It can harass and scorn us for the slightest misdemeanors. Our inner critic can attack us for a wide variety of alleged “crimes,” most viciously for the idea that we are somehow a failure or a loser. In some people, the inner critic is an absolute tyrant that causes most of their unhappiness and suffering. 

Unconsciously, we give credence to these allegations. We become inwardly defensive and absorb emotionally the negative charges directed against us. As alcoholics struggle defensively to deflect these charges, they might say, “It’s not that big a problem” or “I’m trying, it’s not my fault, I don’t know what comes over me.” Even as they defend in this way, they still “buy into” the allegations or harassment dished out by the inner critic. This means they absorb the negative criticism and take it to heart. Consequently, they can experience considerable shame and self-loathing.

All of us have inner weaknesses, and we usually can overcome them when we understand them. If we want to excel at some endeavor or sport, for instance, we work on our weaknesses. With tennis, for example, a person might have to work on a weak backhand or weak serve. If we want to play the game of life and excel at it, we have to consider what weaknesses might impede us. Some people are weak athletically, or intellectually dull, or socially awkward. Alcoholics are weak in emotional and behavioral self-regulation, as are people with many other kinds of psychological challenges. We can all empower ourselves with deeper understanding of ourselves.

For the most part, alcoholics could just as easily be addicted to drugs or struggling with an eating disorder. Their addiction is not about alcohol per se. The heart of their addiction lies in their inability to stand up to the cruel and unjust allegations of their inner critic (superego). They don’t know how to live in inner freedom or how to liberate themselves from inner conflict. This is a psychological weakness, not a moral or character weakness.

Alcoholics and other addicts are attracted to the disease theory of addictions because that theory provides them with a psychological defense against the inner critic. This theory says that addiction is a disease of biological, neurological, or genetic origins. By embracing it, they can, at least temporarily, deflect the inner critic’s harassment. Through their unconscious defense system, they are able to say, “But it’s not my fault! I have a disease. If I didn’t have this disease, I would certainly be doing better!”

The theory of addiction to which I subscribe is based in depth psychology. It recognizes that our psychological weakness can be exacerbated by genetic flaws or other biological factors, yet it identifies unconscious conflicts in our psyche as the main problem. When we understand these conflicts, we can resolve them. Doing so strengthens us on an inner level, producing enhanced self-regulation. As part of this inner strengthening, we learn to keep our inner critic at bay. We see the inner critic more objectively as a part of us that has no business holding us accountable or passing judgment on us. We also see the part in us—inner passivity—that serves as an enabler of the inner critic. As we acquire insight and strength, we no longer give credence to the pronouncements of the inner critic. The inner critic retreats into the background and becomes less problematic.

I don’t at all wish to emphasize the idea that alcoholism is an “inner weakness.” I could just as easily say instead that alcoholics can become emotionally stronger and experience self-regulation by seeing more clearly the roles that their inner critic and inner passivity play in the struggle to maintain sobriety.

Factors cited for causing alcoholism include high levels of stress, anxiety, tension, or emotional pain. Yet where do these high levels of distress come from? They can certainly arise when a harsh inner critic is bullying us and getting away with it. Our challenge is to understand clearly the nature of this major conflict in our psyche. Our inner critic or superego dishes out self-aggression while our unconscious ego traps us in inner passivity. When we learn to stand up to the self-aggression emanating from our inner critic, we’re in the process of resolving the inner conflict. That conflict can only continue when, through inner passivity, we allow the inner critic to get away with its unwarranted and frequently cruel intrusions into our life. Our inner critic has no business butting into our business and passing judgment on us. Yet still it does bully us. To become stronger, we have to stand up to it.

Tormented by their inner critic, many alcoholics descend into self-loathing, self-condemnation, and even self-hatred. Unable to connect with their own goodness and value, they can’t recognize or affirm the goodness and value in their family members, nor can they protect them from emotional instability, financial danger, and social disgrace.  

A report published this year says that former alcoholics who feel shame about past drinking are more likely to relapse. That shame is produced by an inner critic that refuses to go away, even during abstinence.

With a harsh inner critic, people find it very difficult to feel good about themselves. The inner critic can belittle and ridicule us to the point that we become depressed. (Read, “The Hidden Cause of Clinical Depression.”) Meanwhile, our inner passivity makes us more likely to come under the unhealthy influence of drinking buddies who have no interest in our well-being. Through inner passivity, we can also be more easily influenced by advertising that portrays drinking in glamorous terms.

Alcoholics Anonymous has had great success for a variety of reasons, chief among them the warmth and kindness of its members. Alcoholics are warmly welcomed to the organization. Each alcoholic is accepted unconditionally. Each person is important, and members strive to help each other. This emotional generosity is a powerful antidote to the harsh belittling inner critic. The individual can use the kindness of the group to counteract the effects of the inner critic. Armed with evidence of one’s value, the individual can cause the inner critic to retreat—yet this approach doesn’t eliminate it. The inner critic can return with a vengeance, particularly when someone relapses. Typically, a relapse comes about as a result of the compulsion to plunge back into the unresolved inner conflict and to face the wrath of the inner critic. 

The “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous urges members to admit they are powerless over alcohol and to seek the help of a “higher power.” Through depth psychology, in contrast, the higher power is developed from within. This connection with one’s essential self, encompassing a new quality and depth of consciousness, emerges within us as the conflict between self-aggression and inner passivity is resolved. The resolution of this inner conflict greatly invigorates our intelligence and will to thrive. Through the new sense of self that emerges, we connect with our goodness, value, and strength. A craving to drink, should it arise, is no longer overwhelming. We acquire the determination and ability to support ourselves emotionally.

Alcoholism is just one way among many that psychological weakness manifests. When we examine the true sources of our self-defeat, we acquire emotional and behavioral self-regulation.

9/11 conspiracy buffs are misled by unconscious emotional issues.

More than ever, we need to discern what’s real and true about the events and circumstances of modern life. Unresolved emotions can clutter our mind, obstructing access to objectivity and wisdom. This is happening with 9/11 conspiracy buffs, many of whom believe that powerful individuals in the United States government orchestrated the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Studies have shown that various beliefs can be strongly influenced by our emotional issues (here, here, and here.) These issues, often relating to inner fear, are usually unconscious. People often aren’t aware of how, for emotional reasons, they can unwittingly be discounting or misreading relevant evidence while at the same time elevating the significance of marginal evidence.

Conspiracy adherents have evidence that they say supports their claim. Obviously, varied hypotheses can be drawn up from inconclusive evidence. Selected evidence can produce many logically consistent pathways through the maze of a complex event, yet only one of these pathways might lead to the truth. The remaining paths, though believable or plausible, lead to wrong conclusions. I want to present more evidence—psychological evidence—that conspiracy theorists have not included in their assessments.

Many of us experienced emotional disorientation and a sense of helplessness as we unwittingly identified with the thousands of victims of the calamity who were trapped in the targeted buildings and in the four airliners used in the attack. To cope with these feelings, some people desperately seek a compensating sense of power or orientation. Based on the proposition that knowledge is power, conspiracy adherents can proclaim: “I know what actually happened! I know the truth! I embrace the truth!” This “knowledge” produces an impression of power and a sense of orientation. It backfires, however, and becomes self-sabotage because it bestows pernicious power on the faceless government officials who allegedly orchestrated 9/11. In locating such horrendous evil in their backyard, conspiracy buffs feel even more at the mercy of powerful malicious forces and hence more “reason” to feel helplessly oppressed.

As one of the larger conspiracy websites indicates, conspiracy adherents continue to protest against “a nightmare scenario” in which they feel oppressed by the fallout effects of 9/11. Indeed, some of those fallouts have an oppressive quality—for instance, the global war on terror, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, warrantless phone tapping, and so on. Yet for emotional reasons, conspiracy adherents are tempted to magnify their sense of oppression and to feel overwhelmed and even impotent in the face of it. This leaves them less likely to engage in vital activities that could help the world get to a better place. Obsessing in this way about 9/11 becomes a form of psychological resistance, a way to avoid becoming truly effective and powerful.

Looking deeper still, we uncover the appeal of the uncanny. People enjoy a sense of the uncanny while watching horror movies or reading ghost stories and thrillers. According to classical psychoanalysis, this enjoyment is a tension that stems from the “libidinization” of inner fear. People actually enjoy spine-tingling thrills and the mild shock of fright. Though they feel distress and anxiety on a conscious level, they unconsciously indulge in the titillation of the uncanny. An early sense of the uncanny was encountered in childhood through the mystery of parental sexuality. Our tendency to libidinize fear gives terrorism a certain uncanniness, along with an added jolt of menace and power. (Another version of the uncanny is at play in the zombie craze now infecting popular culture.)

The events of 9/11 released repressed instincts of rage in the psyche of many people. Conspiracy theorists often feel rage against the government. They also tend to scorn people who challenge their beliefs. Out of a sense of helplessness, people can be quick to feel rage toward others. Anger and rage can feel like power. When children feel helpless or forced to submit to parental authority, they can erupt into temper tantrums and rage toward parents. The government is a pseudo-parent. Some people, particularly those on the Right wing, can feel rage toward the government for allegedly being too powerful and controlling. On the Left Wing, the rage can be directed toward “all-powerful” corporations.

It’s possible to go still deeper in this search for psychological understanding of the hidden appeal of the conspiracy position. We’re all born with considerable self-centeredness. All we know as infants are the sensations of our own existence. It can feel as if everything we see around us is just an extension of us. Classical psychoanalysis says we are born with a primitive megalomania along with a sense of omnipotence. The baby’s impression is, “Whatever happens is what I myself wished for.” These irrational impressions linger in the psyche of many of us, accounting for much of the egotism and narcissism that exists in the world. Under this unconscious influence, people can project great (even absolute) power on to some faceless entity.

A male child tends to experience his father as a powerful competitor for mother’s affections. A few years later, the boy has begun to identify with the father, and projects a sense of absolute power on to the father-figure. As adults, people can easily enough project lingering infantile megalomania on to some allegedly all-powerful entity, particularly when the entity is a father-figure such as the U.S. government. This projection can interpret the entity as either a benevolent or a malicious force, depending on other aspects of the individual’s psychology. A nationalist or patriot, for instance, can identify with the government as a powerful, benevolent force.

Conspiracy adherents are engaged in a modern, secular version of the bygone devil fixation: the individual projects lingering megalomania and his unrecognized dark side on to an imagined sinister entity while cultivating, through unresolved inner fear, a feeling of being at the mercy of that entity.

A person’s tendency to project malice on to others or on to some entity is also influenced by inner dynamics involving the inner critic or superego. In our psyche, we tend to be on the receiving end of malice (criticism, harassment, and mockery) from our inner critic. When we’re unaware of this inner dynamic, we can’t locate where the sense of oppression or malice is coming from, and we end up identifying false sources.

Our intelligence is much better equipped to discern truth and reality when we become more conscious of psychological dynamics. Now our intelligence weighs the evidence more astutely. Isn’t it evident that no government or private entity in the United States could remain undetected after killing thousands of Americans by flying four airliners into skyscrapers and the headquarters of the world’s most powerful military force? To do so, such an entity would have to be both evil and all-powerful. Fortunately, there is no such thing on the face of the Earth.

Knowledge from depth psychology opens a passageway to inner freedom.

We’re not as free as we think, even if we do live in a democratic country. People who have achieved substantial political freedom can still be sorely lacking in psychological freedom. We’re likely to feel like prisoners of fate when emotional conflicts limit our creativity and potential.

How can we be free if we don’t even have free will? Neuroscientists say humans are just puppets dancing to the brain’s unconscious tunes. Philosopher-neuroscientist Sam Harris writes in his recent book, Free Will:

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

Harris is right when he says we don’t have as much freedom as we’d like to think. But he’s wrong in other ways, notably his implication that the “background causes” of our thoughts and feelings are beyond our conscious influence. He says at one point, “No one has ever described a way in which mental and physical processes could arise that would attest to the existence of such freedom [of will].” With this statement, Harris apparently dismisses depth psychology. A discussion of that subject goes missing in his book.

Depth psychology, which dredges up unconscious content from our psyche and makes it conscious, becomes our means to acquire a higher range of free will and inner freedom. We become more conscious as we uncover the ways that our unresolved negative emotions have been producing our suffering and self-defeat. We’re indeed lacking in inner freedom until we’re able, at a deeper level, to break free of our compulsion to recycle and replay these negative emotions that are unresolved from our past.

The quality of our consciousness is the foundation of inner freedom. Many neuroscientists claim that our consciousness, meaning in this context our capacity to reflect on our existence and discern reality, consists of “working memory” stored in our brain. But it’s much more than this. Consciousness cannot be constrained by the boundaries of the brain or the borders of science. It is the essence of our humanity, a luminosity that acquires greater power and objectivity as it consumes the nutrition of experience and self-knowledge. Consciousness is best understood metaphorically, as the fingerprint of our individual existence, the poetry of the universe, the ticket to the next dimension.

Lacking the consciousness produced by self-knowledge, we can indeed be at the mercy of inner dynamics. As David Eagleman, author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, says, we are “not of one mind. Everyone is of many minds all the time.” Depth psychology tells us, though, that we can establish one dominant mind, a mind that reigns as our true inner authority and can be trusted for its wisdom and virtue.

We start by understanding the concept of self-responsibility, which means that we begin to see and understand how we can be our own worst enemy. The traditional sense of responsibility involves respecting others, obeying laws, taking care of our health, and contributing to the well-being of family, community, and nation. In comparison, a deeper sense of responsibility, as described here, requires that we learn to become responsible not only for our obvious daily duties and moral obligations but also for our negative emotions. With unresolved negative emotions, we lack inner freedom and free will because we’re inwardly compelled to recycle those negative emotions that are not only painful but produce self-defeat and self-sabotage.

Depth psychology offers a way to see more precisely how we produce anger, greed, fear, envy, paranoia, hatred, the lust for revenge, and weak self-regulation. Blaming others or difficult circumstances is no longer acceptable. Our attention turns to ourselves, not to blame ourselves of course but to see objectively into the inner processes that prompt us to react negatively to everyday events or challenging circumstances. We begin to see that we have been making unconscious choices to interpret ourselves, events, and circumstances from negative perspectives. We see how our suffering is based on a determination we have been unconsciously making to plunge into a negative way of experiencing a particular situation, based on emotional memories going back to childhood, instead of remaining neutral or positive.   

Now we’re able to see how and why free will is not so free. It has been hijacked by inner conflict. Our free will is impaired to the degree that we unwittingly make choices that contravene our best interests. We possess in our psyche an unconscious intention to limit our potential and to do ourselves harm. This is the dark secret of human nature that mainstream psychology is reluctant to approach.

Here’s an example from my own life. I used to be a classic injustice collector, determined to feast on alleged injustices and use them to account for my unhappiness. In my first career as a journalist, I often exhibited the symptoms of a neurotic whiner. I couldn’t see the extent of my own negativity as I sought to blame my unhappiness on others or on circumstances involving my workplace. My free will was limited by this condition, for I was unable (or lacking the freedom) to choose fulfilling job-related options that could advance my career and produce a higher caliber of work. Under the weight of inner turmoil, my will was made feeble and I did not have the power to avoid painful lapses into procrastination, creativity blocks, and depression. Much of the time I was able only to protest against alleged injustice and to act out the painful repercussions of psychological passivity. The resulting self-sabotage led me to quit my excellent job as a science reporter for a national news service. But thanks to psychological insight, I began subsequently to free myself from this suffering as I saw how I was retaining and circulating negative emotions in myself. I identified this negativity with precision, and I saw clearly the inner choice I had been making to hold on to it. Soon I was able to let it go.

The concept of free will needs to incorporate healthy choice and wise authority, or else it’s not a will that’s truly free at all. Instead, it’s imprisoned by unresolved emotional conflict. Much of our behavior in our daily life is predicated on how we wiggle and squirm in avoidance, denial, and defensiveness from the clutches and constraints of inner conflict. We’re tempted if not compelled to act out negative or self-defeating reactions to our inner conflict. Such reactions are instinctive, marked by a lack of freedom and a dearth of conscious choice.

Closely related to self-responsibility is the concept of co-creation. We co-create the life we experience. Most of us are not innocent victims suffering at the cruel hands of fate. Rather, we participate in the circumstances of our lives by giving consent, consciously or unconsciously, to much of the pleasure or the pain we experience. The notion of co-creation enables us to see, for instance, the existence and the nature of our inner passivity. Through this passivity, we indulge in negative emotions that rob us of initiative, remain inwardly defensive and self-centered, and resist the development of a more evolved self.

Most times we want to feel that our suffering is a bona fide experience, meaning it’s just what any normal person would feel in our shoes. We go around looking for evidence that we’re entitled to suffer, that we have no choice in the matter, while we try to enlist sympathizers to justify our distress. This is the default position of the unevolved person. Before we realize what’s happening, we’ve become chronic complainers, injustice collectors, and jailers of our own free spirit. Obviously, inner freedom is curtailed when we’re tangled in such conflicts and feeling oppressed by their negative reverberations.

A rising level of consciousness fortifies our intelligence, enabling us to see ourselves and all life more objectively, while making us more capable of producing pleasure from life’s everyday experiences. With such inner freedom, human nature matures and free will comes along for the ride.

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The essential knowledge of depth psychology is discussed in Peter Michaelson’s e-book, Freedom From Self-Sabotage: How to Stop Being Our Own Worst Enemy (revised 2011 Edition), available at www.WhyWeSuffer.com as a PDF file. The 1999 paperback version is also available.

Behind kinky sex are remarkable facts about human nature.

Sadomasochistic consensual sex play may be gaining some acceptance as a socially or culturally sanctioned sexual orientation. The New York Times reports in a featured story, “A Hush-Hush Topic No More,” that a significant effort is underway in the United States and Canada to “defend the rights” of kinky-sex adherents and to acknowledge the practice as an expression of freedom and normal sexuality.

The recent best-selling books in the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy have achieved their wide popularity (70 million copies sold worldwide) by exploiting the strange, mysterious human weakness to “libidinze” (eroticize or make pleasurable) the experience of being dominated, violated, abused, or otherwise mistreated. One popular website reports quite seriously that the books are introducing youths “to a brave new bondage-loving world.”   

Kinky sex in a playful setting doesn’t have to be a big deal in itself, providing one can take it or leave it. But behind the scenes, deep in our psyche, sexual arousal that is sadistically or masochistically produced tells a remarkable story about human nature. If adherents to sadomasochistic sex play were to examine these psychological dynamics, many would find their kinky pleasures less appealing. With greater understanding, we prefer real love to cheap thrills.

Pursuing sexual pleasure from sadomasochistic practices cultivates a deeper problem. Many people extract unconscious nonsexual gratification (a third-rate kind of pleasure) from their unwitting, stubborn allegiance to painful old hurts, memories, regrets, and sorrows. When sexual sadomasochism is practiced, this dark side of the psyche is awakened and stirred up. The consequences can include considerable emotional disturbance and disharmony, along with the possibility of psychological regression.

Sexual sadism and masochism are just the visible tip of a vast unconscious mass of psychological intrigue. To varying degrees, human beings become entangled in painful negative emotions that harbor elements of nonsexual masochism. People who frequently feel deprived, refused, controlled, criticized, rejected, and abandoned are likely to have “libidinized” their suffering. This means that, through the function of libido, their suffering is made into a bittersweet, third-rate gratification that, registered mostly unconsciously, becomes a compelling experience.

Libido often refers to the sex drive, yet it can be defined more broadly the pursuit of the experience of pleasure. Pleasure is needed, of course, to make life bearable, and it is a feature of the sex drive that compels animals to procreate. Libido does indeed serve to produce many healthy forms of pleasure. Yet some pleasures are obviously perverse. The so-called pleasure experienced by bullies, rapists, and pedophiles all have to do with experiences of power and submission, as does sadomasochistic pleasure. The libido of a rapist or pedophile is activated in the process of victimizing others, and it’s even activated when thinking about or imagining such behavior.

Many “normal” people can take perverse gratification in seeing others suffer. They might wish for misfortune to befall celebrities, competitors, coworkers, liberals, conservatives, the rich, the poor, members of other religions and races, and so on. Their penchant for doing this has a sadistic aspect. At the heart of this negativity and malice is a primitive side of human nature, one that, when we dare to look at it, offends our idealized self-image. Yet it’s important for us to see clearly how many of our actions and behaviors arise from our subconscious emotional life rather than our more conscious mental life. We tend to act out what is unconscious, and much of these inner dynamics have a negative, self-defeating bias. The great tragedy of modern psychology was to turn its back on Sigmund Freud’s essential premise that libido constitutes a biological drive that shapes our personality, influences our behaviors, and frequently produces suffering and self-defeat.

Libido can acquire a masochistic flavor even from early childhood. Think of the child who, in part, experiences life through impressions of being controlled, helpless, criticized, rejected, unloved, betrayed, and abandoned. These impressions live on in the adult psyche as emotional attachments. On the surface, we think we hate these negative feelings and very much want to avoid them. But this negativity, a product of unresolved inner conflict, doesn’t easily go away. People can feel, for instance, that they want to be respected and loved at the same time that, unconsciously, they’re unresolved with feeling disrespected and unloved. Unconsciously, we expect to encounter these old hurts. We live in fear of them, yet we don’t quite know who we are without them. We fear these negative emotions, yet unconsciously we’re attached to them. These negative emotions have become libidinized, meaning we now have a stubborn willingness to recreate and recycle them. The negative impressions accord with our sense of injustice as we become entangled in feeling victimized, oppressed, disrespected, and unworthy.

We develop an unconscious psychological defense system that’s designed to cover up our emotional attachment to old negative experiences. Through our defenses, we often blame others for our negative reactions, convinced their (alleged) ignorance and malice are the causes or sources of our failure, disappointment, self-doubt, or anger. We convince ourselves we’re victims of injustice and cruelty. Few of us are eager to acknowledge that our emotional suffering is produced by our willingness and determination to keep recycling it. Humans tap into this unconscious masochism when they experience sexual pleasure from various forms of abuse or denigration. This psychological process compares, perhaps, to the process of extracting opium from the poppy plant or converting the cocoa leaf into cocaine.

It’s important to understand, as well, that sadists are really masochists at heart; they get their thrills by identifying unconsciously with the passivity of the masochist. (Even everyday people who take glee in seeing others suffer are identifying with what, in their imagination, that suffering entails.) Sadists claim to get their pleasure from feeling power, but this claim is an unconscious psychological defense against their underlying passivity: “I’m not looking to feel passive or helpless—Look at how much I enjoy this feeling of power.” Rapists and pedophiles, for instance, are extraordinarily passive, as evidenced by their unwillingness or inability to regulate their criminal inclinations. Pedophiles and people addicted to child pornography have libidinized their own unresolved passivity as they identify with the helplessness and victimization of the children.

The dark side of human nature hides out in us all. It constitutes, for the most part, an emotional affinity for negative experiences. This is humanity’s basic neurosis, and it can produce many varieties of self-defeat and suffering that include defensiveness, apathy, self-pity, self-absorption, as well as cruelty, greed, hatred, and violence. We can make this dark side conscious and overcome its negative influence if we’re brave enough to see ourselves objectively.

When life feels like an empty wallet.

We’ve always known that being generous feels good, but now there’s scientific proof. New research published this year by the American Psychological Association says “the warm glow” and “emotional benefits” that result from spending money on someone else rather than for personal benefit appear to be a universal response among people in rich and poor nations. The international survey comprised more than 234,000 individuals.

The researchers conclude that such generosity has served our species as a “mechanism” that may have carried “long-term benefits for survival over human evolutionary history.” While that may be true, the APA report doesn’t investigate or explain why, in a more personal way, people feel good when they’re being generous. To answer that, we have to look to depth psychology.

People who are lacking in generosity are likely to be entangled to some degree in emotional conflict. That conflict produces negative emotions that shut down the impulse to be generous. Conversely, people who are being generous are less burdened, at least in that moment, by the inner conflict and resulting negative emotions that plague our psyche.

What is the nature of this inner conflict? When we’re unable to be generous, we’re likely entangled in conflicts having to do with feeling deprived. Many of us tend to know ourselves to a significant degree through the feeling that something important or even essential is missing in our life. As a result, we can be burdened with painful impressions of deprivation or refusal. Often we’re not aware of how much we’re being influenced by these negative emotions. If we were to find words to express this emptiness and negativity, we might say something to this effect: The suffering in my life, even my sense of self, can be measured through the chronic dissatisfaction of what I don’t have and what I may never possess. If I don’t acquire these possessions, or fill myself with the recognition and validation of others, I am ultimately worthless and my life is a failure.

When some people think about giving or being generous, they become emotionally preoccupied with the sense that they’ll now have less for themselves. This sense of deprivation blocks the impulse to be generous, leaving us to experience a sense of emptiness along with some degree of suffering.

This problem could be called “the Deprivation Conflict.” At a conscious level, we want to feel gratified and fulfilled, yet at an unconscious level we haven’t resolved an expectation, dating back into early childhood, dealing with impressions of being refused and deprived. Consequently, we experience a chronic sense of not getting and a feeling of missing out on life’s benefits and goodies. We’re often not aware of possessing this poverty mentality, and we believe that “wanting to get” is a worthy pursuit and that our desire or instinct to accumulate goods or wealth is commendable. On the surface of awareness we take our emotional life for granted, providing it’s not excruciatingly painful, and hence we fail to detect the underlying pangs of unfulfilled desire.

This underlying preoccupation with what’s missing in our life is strong enough that it can be termed “an emotional attachment” or “an emotional addiction.” The feeling has lingered in our psyche from the oral stage of childhood. Babies have a highly subjective sense of reality, and they can become frustrated when their desires for oral gratification aren’t instantly accommodated. The subsequent feeling of being refused or deprived lingers in our psyche, and as adults we can experience our world through these unresolved emotions. This hodgepodge of unconscious negativity doesn’t support the spirit of generosity.

Our ego hates to acknowledge that we could still be clinging to expectations of deprivation or refusal, and so we produce an unconscious defense which claims, “I’m not looking to feel refused or deprived. I want to get. My desires (and my credit-card debt) prove how much I want to get.” Hence, greed, envy, and fear of loss serve as unconscious defenses (just as they’re also painful symptoms) of the underlying conflict.

Even when people have all they need, they can still accentuate in everyday ways the feelings of being deprived. Though they have money, some people stare into empty cupboards or an empty refrigerator bemoaning their circumstances. Compulsive spending and shopping are self-defeating activities that are fueled by “the Deprivation Conflict.” Our defense system’s instinct to “prove” we want to get (to cover up our unresolved emotional attachment to feeling deprived or refused) is so powerful that many of us unwittingly enslave ourselves in the form of debt obligations. When debt-ridden, we heighten the sense of feeling deprived while producing the self-sabotage that accompanies inner conflict. The spirit of generosity wanes under these psychological impediments.

Acting out these unconscious attachments also produces another form of self-sabotage. Modern consumerism is, in part, a product of our instinct to cope with inner emptiness. In rampant consumerism, we’ve created a monster with a huge appetite for the planet’s natural resources. It’s depleting and polluting the planet, impoverishing us and future generations. Consumerism creates the illusion that we’re rich. Yet the goodies of the marketplace are trinkets compared to the value of the Earth and the value of our essential self. Who was fooled the most, the Native Americans who sold Manhattan to the Dutch for strings of beads, or you and me who are selling the Earth to its defilers for odd shapes of plastic, vinyl, and treated wood?

Another negative emotion is involved with the lack of generosity. Many people, in identifying with their ego, have a powerful desire to feel superior to others. For them, it’s either feel superior or feel inferior. They don’t like seeing people raised up from poverty because they no longer can easily feel superior to them. Hence, they feel no need to be generous. In fact, the impulse is to refuse to be generous. When they do give money, it can be for pet causes that promote their own shallow values or for the purpose of ego gratification (looking good in their own eyes and in the eyes of others). Such pseudo-generosity is less pleasurable than heart-felt generosity.  

We need to be smarter about the underlying psychological dynamics that drive our behaviors and emotions. When we comprehend, for instance, our emotional attachment to feeling deprived, our intelligence can now resolve the inner conflict (the desperate desire to get versus the unconscious determination to feel deprived and refused).

When this conflict occupies our inner space, we cannot feel or know ourself with any intimacy. Enthralled by materialism, our essential being and imperishable value fade into insignificance. We can’t cherish nature and absorb its magnificence because our consciousness has not yet struck the gold in our own nature. We hesitate to be generous because our emptiness feels even more painfully depleted when we think about giving to others.

Related Reading:

When Money Enriches Our Suffering

The Three Amigos of the Apocalypse

Inner fear can block the advance of women.

The women’s revolution has stalled, in part because of psychological barriers women impose on themselves, writes Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg in her book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2013).

These psychological barriers “are rarely discussed and often underplayed,” Sandberg writes. Instead, many women prefer to blame institutional or external barriers for their lack of progress. But “internal obstacles deserve a lot more attention,” she writes.

What are these psychological issues standing in the way of women’s progress? Sandberg identifies internal barriers that include fear, self-doubt, guilt, risk-adverse instincts, acceptance of cultural stereotypes, and sensitivity to the feeling of being disliked. The author cites numerous psychological studies and draws on her considerable personal experience to discuss these issues. The women’s revolution is a vital aspect of human progress, of course, yet this revolution could conceivably fizzle out if we don’t see more deeply into our psychological issues. In a previous post, I examined some deeper aspects of patriarchal oppression, and in this post I consider the deeper elements of women’s self-oppression.

Sandberg writes that fear is a major problem for many aspiring women:

Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

Both men and women have irrational fears, and these fears are produced out of unresolved conflict in our psyche. We benefit greatly from exposing the inner dynamics that produce these fears. Referring back to Sandberg’s statement above, let’s look more deeply into these dynamics.

Fear of not being liked. Consciously, the individual truly wants to be liked, but unconsciously she’s emotionally unresolved with the feeling of being disliked. She lives in some anticipation of being disliked because that negative feeling is a powerful expectation as well as a sense of identity and even an emotional attachment. The fear becomes self-sabotaging because she worries about it and focuses on it, causing the fear to arise even as she thinks, “I’m very fearful of not being liked.” In fact, the fear serves as an unconscious psychological defense. We instinctively defend against accusations from our inner critic or superego that we harbor self-defeating wishes or attachments. The defense claims, “I’m not looking to be disliked, I’m not attached to that feeling—Look at how fearful I am of that possibility.”

Fear of making the wrong choice. She desperately wants to make good choices, but unconsciously she entertains feelings associated with making a wrong choice. In such an event, she would feel criticized or even condemned by both her inner critic and her coworkers and supervisors. Even without doing anything wrong, she can through her imagination absorb the feeling of criticism and aggression being directed at her. This self-critical impulse lives in our psyche, and often we don’t know ourselves or we can’t experience ourselves without this inner limitation and torment. Resolving this conflict produces more inner freedom and sense of autonomy.

Fear of drawing negative attention. It’s quite common for people to expect to be seen in a negative light. It part, this is how, through our inner critic, we can see ourselves. Our inner critic can be harsh, mocking, and belittling. This makes us quite sensitive to the feeling that others see us in the same light. Again, this means we’re emotionally entangled in this negative impression, often to the degree that it becomes part of our identity. It’s an axiom of psychology that whatever is unresolved in our psyche is at times going to be felt intensely by us, even when the experience is quite painful.

Our unconscious defense says: I’m not looking for the feeling of being seen in a negative light. Look at how much I fear that possibility! In truth, though, this person does indeed choose unconsciously to feel that she is being seen (or is going to be seen) in a negative light. She might also remember a past incident that was embarrassing or humiliating, and she now feels a need to carefully monitor herself or stifle herself to avoid a repeat occurrence. Another axiom: We fear whatever we are emotionally attached to.

Fear of overreaching. The individual is trying to succeed without overreaching. The implication is that overreaching is a bad thing, allegedly an indication of grandiosity or self-importance. The individual is inwardly sensitive to unfair, demeaning accusations from her inner critic that such behavior is unseemly and arrogant. In contrast, society condones the behaviors of ambitious men who strive aggressively for leadership positions. Our inner critic can attack women more harshly because they don’t have the same degree of cultural acceptance for their aggressiveness. As well, their aggressiveness is often mocked and scorned by weak or reactionary men. Of course, the unwillingness to “overreach,” whatever that might mean to a person, inhibits one’s potential and can also produce failure.

Fear of failure. Someone who consciously wants to succeed might unconsciously expect failure. She might have an inner critic that demeans and belittles her. Her inner critic might mock her ability and talent and, like a caricature of a dysfunctional parent, constantly predict the “likelihood” of her failure. As mentioned, we instinctively defend against our inner critic’s accusations that we harbor self-defeating wishes or attachments. Her defense reads, I’m not indulging emotionally in the feeling or the prospect of failure. Look at how much I fear that I might become a failure.

Fear of being judged. She is likely, through the inner critic, to be quite judgmental of herself. She will also be prone to be judgmental of others and sense that others are judging her. Her defense reads, I’m not looking for the feeling of being judged. Look at how much I fear and hate that feeling! Another defense reads, I’m not looking to be judged. In fact, I’m the one who does the judging.  

Fear of being a bad mother, wife, or daughter. Again, the inner critic, which is negative by nature, instinctively holds us accountable as it poses as the mistress or master of our personality. It accuses talented women of being selfishly interested only in their own ambitions and not caring enough about others. For social and cultural reasons, women are particularly vulnerable to this accusation. This accusation, for the most part, is false. We’re all entitled to pursue self-fulfillment, and we can trust in our inherent goodness and intelligence to avoid being selfish and to remain sensitive to others. But through self-doubt, we unconsciously give credence to the inner critic’s accusations. This acceptance of the accusations is facilitated by a quirk in our psyche that I call inner passivity (an enabler of the inner critic). Both women and men are being inwardly passive when we absorb self-aggression from the inner critic. Our guilt is associated with this inner passivity (the part in us that enables the inner critic to get away with its bullying and presumptuous authority).

In writing about women’s self-doubt, Sandberg also cites “the imposter syndrome.” This refers to the sense of feeling fraudulent when presenting oneself as a competent professional. This emotional impression is produced largely by a primary conflict in the human psyche, namely the clash between our inner critic (superego) and inner passivity (sited in our unconscious or subordinate ego.) An inner moderator, our authentic self, is able to shut down this conflict as we become more self-aware. (Read “Our Messy Mix of Aggression and Passivity.”) When entangled in this inner conflict, we lose touch with our strength, goodness, and value. We feel fraudulent to the degree that we’re not in touch with our authentic self.

In my view, men tend to be more egotistical than women. That egotism, along with the male’s aggressive instinct, can serve as a buttress (though an unstable one) against self-doubt and inner fear. With less egotism, women probably need to connect more deeply with their authentic self to feel their value and power. This is achieved when they clearly understand the nature of inner conflicts.

One technique involves monitoring and witnessing the passive and aggressive voices or feelings inside us, while creating some detachment from them. We can’t always dismiss these voices or feelings; they have a life of their own. It’s okay to listen to them and acknowledge their presence. Yet we don’t want them to be too loud. As mentioned, we regulate them and keep them in their place as our authentic self emerges as the true representative of our well-being.

Through their empowerment, women can greatly improve the quality of our institutions. The world desperately needs leaders with true power, meaning people who know how to practice assertiveness and healthy aggression while being able to avoid taking offense, holding grudges, and practicing petty vindictiveness.

Feminine values and skills associated with nurturing, compassion, and social cohesion, along with traditional leadership skills, are needed more than ever in our stressed-out world. Women have to believe in these values and provide leadership to align our institutions with the common good.

Men have to grow in themselves in order to encourage women’s empowerment.

A lack of fairness and justice still handicaps women, and the causes for such discrimination run deep into the recesses of the human psyche. Humanity can only progress to the degree that women do. So we need to root out some of the primitive elements of this inequity.

Injustice surfaces everywhere. “Women are still the majority of the world’s poor, the uneducated, the unhealthy, the unfed,” Hillary Clinton said in a speech to the United Nations. “Simply put, the world cannot make lasting progress if women and girls in the 21st century are denied their rights and left behind.”  

For the most part, men are not being malicious. Their discriminating reactions arise from psychological influences that are largely unconscious. The “feminine discount” problem stems in part from an age-old mentality that still perceives social relations in terms of who is superior and who is inferior. This mentality, dating back hundreds or thousands of generations, has been acted out by both sexes through religious affiliation (“my religion is superior to yours”), wealth (“my wealth puts me in a better class of people”), race (“my race is superior to yours”), intelligence (“I am smarter and therefore obviously better than you”), political power (“my authority makes me a superior person”), and gender (“as a man, I am more powerful and therefore better than women.”)  

This mentality works both ways: while many people of both sexes eagerly believe in their superiority, many others passively accept their alleged inferiority without inner ripples of protest or rebellion. Either way, people are exhibiting a lack of consciousness or evolvement. The missing ingredient is an emotional and mental connection to one’s intrinsic value and goodness. 

In the West, oppression against women continues to exist in the form, for instance, of low wages, covert discrimination, or limited access to opportunities. Women are up against two forms of oppression: first, the oppression from men and the patriarchal order, and, second, the oppression they inflict upon themselves in the form of self-doubt and self-denial. (This post deals with the first oppression, and a later post will deal with the second.)

The oppression from men is based, in part, in men’s fear of femininity and of women. This theme was explored by Sigmund Freud when he wrote in his essay, “The Taboo of Virginity” (1918), that men have shown over time—through the taboos, customs, and avoidances involving their relations with women—“a generalized dread of women.” What is this dread? It’s based in the castration anxiety, which is man’s fear that women will take away his strength, infect him with their femininity, and reveal him to be a weakling.

It’s true that, when it flourishes, man’s love for women and our intimacy with them have the effect of making us more tender-hearted and compassionate. So why this continuing fear of femininity and its values? Is it that women, knowing the “baby” in the man, know our hidden fears? Are we getting revenge on Mother for challenging our infantile self-centeredness? Or is it the feeling that, in embracing our softer side, we’ll lose power and dominance, and hence be lesser creatures because of the loss?

Psychoanalyst Karen Horney once wrote, “Is it not remarkable (we ask ourselves in amazement) when one considers . . . that so little recognition and attention are paid to the fact of men’s secret dread of women?” Actually, it’s not so remarkable. Human resistance to exposing deep self-doubt (our emotional entanglement in a sense of worthlessness) is exceedingly powerful. Man is afraid that woman might be his better self. He’s afraid because he doesn’t want to acknowledge his resonance with (or emotional attachment to) a profound self-doubt at the heart of his existence. His primitive instinct is to cover up this largely unconscious part in him by making women out to be the weaker sex and himself the proud agent of mighty exploits. Men are reluctant to share power with women or to encourage women’s empowerment to the degree that, on an inner level, we doubt our own value and power.

Men can also feel overpowered by their sexual attraction to women, while entertaining a sense of insignificance in the face of the natural life-giving power of women. It’s common knowledge that many men are afraid of strong women and avoid relationships with them. Some men, skittish about intimacy, run away from acknowledging their inability (stemming from their entanglement in self-doubt) to affirm over time the intrinsic value of their partner. They frequently refuse to address this fear of “losing themselves” (their sense of autonomy, freedom, or independent standing) in a loving union.

For men to feel more at ease with powerful women, it means we have to grow in ourselves. Otherwise, we’re uncomfortable with their power. Yet our resistance to inner development is remarkable in its magnitude.

Much progress has been made, of course, since Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique arrived 50 years ago. Yet men can still project their self-doubt on to women, “seeing” their own weakness in the opposite sex. We can sense instinctively that, should women become stronger, we’ll be thrown deep into the horror of profound self-doubt. That means we might, even more frighteningly, become conscious of our emotional entanglement in that primal weakness. Our resistance proclaims, “I’m not a real man if I let women get the upper hand. Therefore, I’ll fight and oppose what they stand for and their attempts to assert themselves.” Through this pretext, men can manage to avoid the nagging assertion (from the aggressive superego deep in our psyche) that insists, “You’re a worthless fraud, and you’ll always be one!” Resisting the feminine side and, instead, equating manhood with an acceptance of war, conquest, and economic pillage allows us to escape into forms of denial such as the “glory” of heroism and the reckless pursuit of death.

War and violence (in which women are often the greatest victims) become part of the cover-up for humankind’s profound self-doubt. Glory in war is the manic thrill of riding the beast that ravishes our better self. Men will have this compulsion to destroy as long as they continue, however unconsciously, to project their own weakness on to women and oppose the advance of women.

When men aren’t tapping into the power of integrity, truthfulness, goodwill, and evolving consciousness, the only “powers” they can trust are self-aggrandizement, righteous indignation, and weaponry. With this mentality, we also use money, patriotism, and religion to recognize or proclaim our essential value, affirm our collective identity, and swear to our honorable intentions.

As we begin to recognize the fundamental self-doubt deep in our psyche, we expose our emotional entanglement in this negative impression. Even though the self-doubt is unconscious, we still identify with it. Until men get past this weakness, we will remain fearful of women’s empowerment. Meanwhile, with greater consciousness, our natural aggression becomes appropriate and much more pleasurable as it’s sublimated into healthy competitions, creative activities, and the pursuit of sustainable living.

The missing link lurks in our psyche behind the painful symptoms.

You can’t touch it, see it, or smell it. But it’s there all the time, the hidden instigator of numerous human ailments and miseries including obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Experts attribute obsessive-compulsive disorder to various sources such as genetic factors and dysfunctional brain processes, as well as allergies and other sensory problems that produce anxiety and stress. Yet a common cause of OCD—inner passivity in the human psyche—is hardly ever mentioned. The fingerprint of inner passivity can be found on all the common expressions of OCD.

Readers of the posts at this website are familiar with my descriptions of inner passivity. This inner condition was first identified in classical psychoanalysis as an extension of the subordinate or unconscious ego. I have shown how inner passivity is an emotional weakness that is linked to many painful and self-defeating experiences and behaviors such as anxiety, depression, procrastination, shame, guilt, panic attacks, and addictions. In this post, I provide explanations that show how inner passivity is the common link among the primary types and symptoms of OCD.

Inner passivity is a hidden glitch in human nature, and it can plague us even when in daily life we’re capable of being assertive and effective. As one of its most striking features, inner passivity, when experienced acutely, causes us to become emotionally entangled in a sense of helplessness and to feel overwhelmed by the everyday challenges of life. (Read, Lost in the Fog of Inner Passivity.)

One of the most common forms of OCD is called “checking.” People become anxious that they’ve failed to lock a door, switch off lights, or turn off the stove or toaster. Some OCD sufferers have persistent fears of hitting pedestrians while driving. After hitting a bump on the road, they might stop the car, and check under the car or along the road to see if they hit someone. In such cases, people are feeling profound self-doubt (a primary symptom of inner passivity). They can’t trust themselves to know what’s real and true. A nagging inner voice of self-doubt keeps saying, ”What if . . . what if . . .” OCD sufferers are failing to access their sense of inner authority, that confident part of us, our authentic self, that can take charge and can tolerate uncertainty (one of life’s inevitable challenges) without feeling overwhelmed by it.

The nagging voice of self-doubt is also the voice of inner passivity. Unresolved inner passivity, like our inner critic, is determined to make itself felt and heard, if only unconsciously. The weaker we are emotionally, the more we can let inner voices that are expressions of inner chaos and conflict, determine the manner in which we perceive reality. (Read, The Futile Dialogue in Our Head.) As well, OCD sufferers are frequently haunted by persistent, intense thoughts, feelings, impulses, and images, and find themselves unable to moderate such inner experiences. They feel overwhelmed by these intense thoughts and impulses, which is another painful way in which their inner passivity is experienced.

People with OCD sometimes live in acute fear of the self-condemnation they’ll experience should they do something wrong or “bad.” Their fear is that, in leaving the stove on, the house could burn down. If they leave the door unlocked, an intruder could enter their home and cause damage or harm others. Their fear is largely irrational because, for one thing, they take such exhaustive precautions. Yet through their emotional imagination they experience a sense of the inner condemnation they would absorb from their inner critic if they were to be even marginally at fault for a consequence of such magnitude. Unconsciously, they’re unresolved with inner condemnation. Throughout each day they absorb harsh criticism from their inner critic (superego) for minor transgressions or alleged shortcomings. Their inner passivity allows the inner critic to punish them in this way. Inner passivity blocks them from assuming inner authority (being more decisive and confident), and consequently their inner critic fills the vacuum.

The odds are remote that an OCD sufferer’s alleged negligence would cause a house fire, so their fears are irrational. Nonetheless, through their emotional imagination they can feel a sense of self-condemnation even though the catastrophe of a house fire, conjured up in their imagination, has only a flimsy semblance of reality. This prospect of self-condemnation, along with the inability to protect oneself against it, produces acute anxiety which is a primary ingredient in obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Why do OCD sufferers produce these unreal worst-case scenarios? We’re all compelled to experience whatever is unresolved in our psyche, even as we also experience forms of suffering such as anxiety and fear in the process. Through inner passivity we absorb self-aggression and self-condemnation. Any one of us would feel some degree of self-condemnation for hitting a pedestrian while driving our car. OCD sufferers, in comparison, acutely feel self-condemnation (at either a conscious or unconscious level) just thinking about (or imagining the possibility of) hitting and killing someone. Their obsession and fearfulness about doing so is a defense that covers up their emotional attachment to the inner aggression of self-condemnation. The unconscious defense reads: “I’m not looking for or anticipating self-aggression. I don’t want to feel condemned for hitting a pedestrian. Look at how fearful I am that it could happen.”

OCD sufferers are also unconsciously entangled in feelings of being at the mercy of life. One misstep, they’re prepared to feel, and life will crush them. Through inner passivity, they’re emotionally attached to this negative impression. As a consequence, they’re often attracted to the sense or illusion of having power. They frequently believe that their ideas, thoughts, feelings, impulses, or images have power to influence events, and that their aggressive or horrific impulses can do harm to others. They fear, for instance, that they will impulsively hurt others, especially children, just because they can do so. Even though they typically don’t act on these thoughts, the thoughts become obsessive and are appraised as dangerous. These individuals now feel helpless and powerless as they try to suppress the thoughts. They swing back and forth between feeling power and feeling passive, mimicking the conflict in their psyche between inner passivity and the aggression of the inner critic (superego). Because these individuals are so entangled in inner passivity and lack real power, they tend to produce these counterfeit impressions of power and aggression.

People with OCD can also act aggressively against their own body, cutting their skin or picking at it and pulling out their hair. In these cases, they become instruments of their condemning inner critic, attacking themselves physically in the manner in which their inner critic attacks them emotionally, while passively mimicking the inner critic’s primitive impulse toward self-aggression.

Sufferers who wash their hands compulsively and avoid hand contact with objects obsess about contamination. Unconsciously, they’re entertaining feelings of being overwhelmed by germs and rendered helpless against some imagined contagion. Others experience intrusive sexual images and fear of becoming a pedophile or rapist. Their inner passivity is tempting them to embrace out-of control feelings and a lack of self-regulation. Hoarders are also experiencing inner passivity, in their situation through indecisiveness about discarding objects. They also experience acute inner emptiness (a symptom of inner passivity), and use clutter to give them a sense of value or completeness.

Inner passivity is a hitch or glitch in our consciousness, and also a wayside ditch that could stall our evolution. It is, as mentioned, quite invisible. It can be identified, however, through many of our painful and self-defeating symptoms. As we bring it into focus, we become emotionally stronger and more capable of self-regulation.

An inner weakness in our psyche can instigate suicidal thoughts.

Suicidal thoughts are quite common, and even people living good lives can experience them now and then. For many, suicidal thoughts are fleeting considerations, following which they bounce back to their everyday sense of self.

Others are haunted by these thoughts on a regular basis. The risk of committing suicide is increased for a person who begins to think often on how to do it. 

Experts say the causes of suicide are varied. Suicide is associated with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, mood and personality disorders, depression, sleep deprivation, work failure, and drug abuse. Another cause cited across all the suicide-prevention websites is the feeling of helplessness.

This feeling of being helpless (overwhelmed, trapped, and unable to cope) appears to be a universal emotional experience among people with either fleeting or persistent thoughts of suicide. According to MedicalNewsToday.com, suicidal thoughts tend to arise when people “are no longer able to cope with an overwhelming situation, which could be financial, the death of somebody they love, breaking up, or a devastating, debilitating illness.”

An inner weakness in our psyche, one that goes largely undetected, produces the tendency for some people to collapse into helplessness. This weakness is sometimes felt quite acutely even by people coping with just everyday routine matters. We don’t need to be facing life-or-death situations to experience this debilitating weakness. This weakness, which I identify more precisely further along, can also instigate the other factors listed above that contribute to suicidal thoughts, particularly drug abuse, depression, work failure, and sleep deprivation. (This article deals with emotional issues, not the physical pain from various diseases or conditions that also induces suicidal thoughts.)

Here’s how this feeling of helpless is described at the suicide-prevention website of WebMD.com:

People who seriously consider suicide feel hopeless, helpless, and worthless. A person who feels hopeless believes that no one can help with a particular event or problem. A person who feels helpless is immobilized and unable to take steps to solve problems. A person who feels worthless is overwhelmed with a sense of personal failure.

People contemplating suicide “perceive the future as being hopeless,” says the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. Many “feel so buried under so many little things that have gone wrong that they feel like they are drowning.”

When people fail to rise effectively to deal with life’s challenges, they’ve likely come under the influence of inner passivity. According to psychoanalysis, inner passivity originates in our psyche’s subordinate or unconscious ego. Through this inner position, we relate rather weakly and defensively to our inner critic. Our inner passivity tries to represent us in the ongoing conflict with the inner critic, but it often feels overwhelmed, defeated, and rendered helpless by the persistent, primitive, and authoritarian stance that our inner critic (superego) assumes.

The inner critic has no business butting into our life and curtailing our inner freedom. With emotional strength, we’re able to shut down and neutralize our presumptuous inner critic. However, a person with greater deposits of inner passivity can be harassed and bullied by the inner critic to the point of experiencing helplessness against it and acquiring self-loathing and self-hatred in the process.

More people are now recognizing how we live under the spell of egotism, our mind’s chief operating system. It’s time now to recognize, as well, how much we are, mentally and emotionally, under the influence of both our inner critic (superego), which churns out negative self-aggression, and our unconscious ego, which wallows in inner passivity. The resulting conflict, when intensified, produces suffering and self-defeat, although the negative emotions can be “libidinized,” (made pleasurable) through perversity, as in sexual sado-masochism, bullying, the abuse of animals, or the manic thrill of violence and warfare. (Read, Our Messy Mix of Aggression and Passivity.)

Inner passivity can be recognized through its many symptoms, including procrastination, fear of intimacy, depression, and weakness in self-regulation. The connection between inner passivity and various negative emotions and self-defeating behaviors is described in many of my posts at this website.

Inner passivity is the main cause of a defeatist mentality, which is a “who cares, I don’t care” approach to life. Chronic complainers—the “I got screwed, I was taken advantage of” contingent—exhibit inner passivity as they cover up their affinity for experiencing helplessness and victimization. Inner passivity contributes to worry, anxiety, and fear as people entertain feelings of being at the mercy of bad things happening. Many sufferers with inner passivity identify with their mind and find themselves spinning their mental wheels in futile attempts to make decisions and emerge from confusion. Others feel swamped by the chaos of their emotions.

People with suicidal thoughts often are very hard on themselves. When our inner passivity is particularly feeble, it puts up little resistance against our inner critic. This gives our inner critic license to be particularly harsh and merciless. As the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy says, some individuals contemplating suicide “may be experiencing a steady decline in the quality of their lives, and may blame themselves and think that something is wrong with them. The more they blame themselves, the less worthy they feel of having success, having friends, or having fun.”

They blame themselves because, through an inner collapse caused by extensive inner passivity, they soak up the negative, aggressive insinuations and condemnations being issued by the inner critic. People in this predicament frequently succumb to clinical depression. (Read, “The Hidden Cause of Clinical Depression.”)

Other negative emotions, as well, can produce suicidal thoughts, among them an intense feeling of being unloved and abandoned. This experience, however, still relates to inner passivity because, through inner passivity, individuals have difficulty supporting themselves emotionally.

Now we come to quite a startling consideration. Suicidal thoughts, as well as acts of suicide, appear to be psychological defenses designed to cover up our unconscious participation in (or emotional attachment to) the experience of inner passivity. Because we are desperate to deny our passivity (to keep it unconscious) we need to try to “prove,” as a psychological defense, how much we hate to experience the helplessness. For the defense to work, we’re required to accentuate the sense of our misery. The defense goes like this: “I’m not looking for the feeling of being helpless. I’m not wallowing or indulging in that feeling. In fact, I hate the feeling so much that I’m wishing I were dead and didn’t have to feel anything.” Also driving suicidal thoughts is the individual’s temptation, out of profound inner passivity, to perceive suicide as a display of conviction and aggression.

Psychological defenses work in such a way that, in order to maintain their effectiveness as inner conflict intensifies, we often have to ratchet up the self-damage. Ghastly though it is, people kill themselves to “prove” they are innocent of any collusion in self-suffering: “I hate my suffering and now I’m going to end it.” Consciously, we do hate our suffering. But unconsciously we cling passionately to it and fervently deny our collusion in the experience of it. When we understand this, we can stop suicidal thoughts in their tracks.