that can seemingly take flight and settle wherever it’s attracted. Where it eventually settles out in our reality can greatly affect our lives without our recognizing that it even exists. It’s an entity, that not only can influence our perceptions of reality, but when increased enough in size, can greatly distort those perceptions without our ever realizing it. Because it can affect our perceptions this way, it can secondarily distort our thinking which has to depend upon the perceptions we make of our reality. What we might conclude about ourselves, about how others feel about us, and about others, may be much determined by this hidden entity when it’s increased enough, and we wouldn’t know it. It can become the unrecognized determining factor for what we perceive of our reality. If this entity is distorting our perceptions, as it greatly can when increased enough, we won’t change our distorted perceptions about ourselves, or about how others feel about us, or about others, unless this entity is first reduced in size so that it has less of an influence in determining the perceptions we make.
This always unseen entity is never uncovered by any psycho-analysis, psychotherapy, hypnosis, or sodium pentothal interviews. It’s an entirely unconscious entity that stays unconscious. It can take its form from whatever it is that’s the focus of it in reality, disguising its very existence. To recognize this immensely important entity’s existence, and how it is capable of profoundly influencing our lives, is to better understand what can be the determining factor for our feeling emotionally uncomfortable to any degree, and what might be a major, but always unrecognized, component of any emotional problem we might have. Our recognition of the existence of this hidden entity, that can rival the immense psychological importance of the basic emotional need, introduces an entirely new unconscious dimension in understanding ourselves and our relationships with others.
This strange entity is like a chameleon that has most successfully evolved to fit unnoticed in its environment by camouflaging itself in the reality in which it hides. The psycho-analyst, Wilhelm Reich, suspected the existence of this entity when he described a hidden underlying “something” to people’s emotional problems as “dammed up sexual energy,” which reflected the usual psycho-analytic pre-occupation at that time, with things sexual. It is a “dammed up something,” but rather than “sexual energy,” as Reich theorized, this “something” is “dammed up anger” that then becomes something else that like a chameleon, can become so disguised as to be unrecognizable to anyone not knowing of its existence and therefore not looking specifically for it. “Dammed up anger,” “stored anger,” or “unexpressed anger,” is repressed anger. It’s from this repressed anger, from unrecognized and recognized frustrations of our basic emotional need that this most elusive entity comes into being. Let’s call this always hidden “something” that we all possess to some degree in our unconscious, our “unconscious entity.” We should always remember it’s our repressed anger that becomes our unconscious entity.
Our unconscious entity is as different from anger as ice is from water. It’s different because it has characteristics of its own. Calling this unconscious entity “repressed anger,” would be like our calling ice, “frozen water.” Though ice is “frozen water,” when we freeze water we dramatically change it. What can result is a great diversity of possible forms each with its own characteristics, properties, and deleterious effects on us that can be distinctly different from other forms. Sleet can produce problems for us that are much different from what hail, or frost, can produce, and those problems can be very different from the great diversity of problems that snow in its many different forms can produce. Ice in our outside faucets can produce a problem for us that’s entirely different from the problem that ice forming on the wings of our airplane could produce. Yet all these very contrasting problems, which can be most severe, if not fatal for us, arise from the very same entity. Freezing water, and the greatly contrasting problems that can arise from the different manifestations possible that can be produced by doing so, is analogous to our repressing anger. When we repress anger, we also dramatically change it. It too becomes something entirely different with its own distinctive characteristics, properties, forms, and effects on us, that are decidedly different from how anger affects us. This entity, in its many different forms, can produce very contrasting problems for us, as different from each other as the problems of ice, hail, sleet, frost, and snow produce. But like ice in a relaxing drink, a small amount of this unconscious entity can be most beneficial to us. In small amounts, this unconscious entity, like ice, can help us to live more comfortably in reality. Just as ice in our picnic cooler can keep our food from spoiling and prevent us from becoming sick, our unconscious entity can likewise be beneficial to us. But like unrecognized ice on a highway, too much of this unrecognized unconscious entity can be a major hazard to us on the road of life. It can be a hidden cause of worry, a reason to be depressed, and an always unrecognized component of our emotional problems whatever they might be. Unbeknown to us, it can drastically limit what we can do. When increased enough, it can ruin our lives, kill us, or cause the death of others. Like ice, it can cause Titanic-size disasters. Just as ice in its different forms, is able to revert to the water from which it was made, this unconscious entity can also revert to the anger from which it was derived. Until it does so, it’s how we store our anger within our unconscious. When we talked about our “stored anger,” in the previous chapters, we were referring to our unconscious entity. Our unconscious entity is repressed anger that is stored in our unconscious.
This unconscious entity is an entity that can manifest itself as any feeling unwanted by us. It’s not at all limited to any one unwanted feeling for it is characteristically kaleidoscopic in the unlimited possible ways it can show itself. It can show itself as one unwanted feeling at one time, and as an entirely different unwanted feeling at another time, where both unwanted feelings could be equally problematic if the same amount of unconscious entity is involved. Just as frozen water can appear in a multiplicity of greatly contrasting unwanted presentations, some more problematic than others, unconscious entity also has a multiplicity of greatly contrasting unwanted presentations that it too can make. Like a slight turn of a kaleidoscope can completely change what is seen, from what was previously seen, and where there might deceptively appear to be nothing at all in common in what is displayed at one time, to what is displayed at another time, so it is with this unconscious entity. It can produce any feeling implying a flaw, an imperfection, a deficiency, a dissatisfaction, or any feeling whatsoever we especially don’t want. Possible unwanted feelings that it can produce are feelings that are the very opposite to those feelings that can be produced by meeting well our basic emotional need. It can produce feelings of being “unacceptable,” or “inadequate,” or “inferior,” or “worthless.” It can show itself as a feeling of “guilt,” or “failure,” or being “wrong,” or being “incomplete,” or being “unclean,” “impure,” or “contaminated.” It can show itself as a feeling of being “out of place,” “misaligned,” “unworthy,” “out of control,” or as a feeling of “impending personal disaster.” It can show itself as predominantly a single feeling, or as a combination of several of these unwanted feelings.
All these unwanted feelings are feelings that are “self-felt,” meaning that we experience them as associated with ourselves, which is how we might experience the opposite of each one of these feelings if our basic emotional need was being well met. For instance, where my unconscious entity might cause me to feel very much unacceptable about myself, and cause me to have very unfavorable expectations for myself, meeting well my basic emotional need can make me feel very much acceptable about myself and cause me to have very favorable expectations for myself. All the possible self-felt unwanted feelings come from a form of our unconscious entity that is the self-felt form. We shall later see that this entity has two other forms that can produce the same unwanted feelings but with very contrasting orientations and characteristics. These two other forms do not produce self-felt feelings.
The self-felt feelings that can arise from our unconscious entity that are each the very opposite of what meeting well our basic emotional need could produce, we can call our “primary feelings.” These primary feelings will find a reality focus on something associated with us, and then can secondarily lead to other feelings that will have the same focus. We can call these our “secondary feelings.” A secondary self-felt feeling of the unconscious entity comes about
