that person who had fallen to his death. If we get emotionally uncomfortable enough from too much of an increased unconscious entity and too much of an unmet basic emotional need, we too may do some “identifying in part” the very same way.
We’ll see more of this fascinating entity in the next chapter.
Chapter Five
How Psychological Assets Can Become Liabilities
Our unconscious entity, which produces unwanted feelings, is our repressed anger that arises from frustrations of our basic emotional need. It has three possible forms. These are the self-felt, the misperceived, and the projected. They all produce unwanted feelings. The self-felt form produces unwanted feelings that are focused on us. The misperceived form produces unwanted feelings that are experienced by us as originating in a person on whom we have become overly dependent and are being directed toward us by that person. Becoming overly dependent brings on this form of the unconscious entity. This form can’t be decreased, but must shift to either its self-felt form, or its projected form, to be reduced. The projected form produces unwanted feelings that we see in someone else or in others. These feelings arise in us from our own stored unconscious entity but are unconsciously projected. The self-felt form can produce unwanted feelings that can be the cause of our reaching a high level of success in life that’s greatly admired by others. The projected form of unconscious entity is where we unconsciously or consciously project those unwanted feelings of dislike to a person we dislike. This person then becomes more disliked. How much more is equal to the unconscious entity we project to that person. We can then unconsciously turn that projected unconscious entity into directly expressed anger which can be hidden if we express that anger metaphorically in our talking where it may not be recognized at all by ourselves, or by the recipient of that metaphorically expressed anger. The unwanted feelings of ours, arising from our self-felt unconscious entity, which we, and perhaps only a few others might know we harbor, may cause us to work hard toward compensating those feelings. We may do so to show to ourselves and others, that we aren’t the way we’re secretively feeling we are. For instance, if our unconscious entity is making us feel unacceptably poor, we might work very hard to become wealthy. The best compensation for our feeling a failure, or worthless, in life, which could be entirely caused by our increased self-felt unconscious entity and the unwanted self-felt feelings it can produce, is to become outstandingly successful in some field of endeavor.
People, with their unconscious entity predominantly in its self-felt form, often do tend to be work-oriented, and that’s because the primary and secondary feelings that their unconscious entity produce, are often work-focused. These people tend to get their basic emotional need predominantly met by working hard at completing a difficult task, overcoming a challenge, or by climbing some personal Mt. Everest in their lives. It pleases them to be making the corrections indicated by the specific focus of their secondary feelings of their unconscious entity. These corrections are to make themselves much better than they are perceiving themselves to be. If they feel in some way unacceptable, they might not want to be satisfied with making whatever might be the focus of their primary feeling, “acceptable.” Instead, they might want to make that focus outstandingly so. If their self-felt unconscious entity makes them feel in some way “ugly,” they might not want to appear simply “acceptable” in appearance, but instead “beautiful.” It meets their basic emotional need to be laboring to attain goals that essentially can be traced back to their hidden self-felt primary and secondary feelings. Like research chemists working alone in their laboratories, people with their unconscious entity more in its self-felt form can meet their basic emotional need through their hard work, and their continued striving. As such, they’re not overly dependent on another person to get a predominance of their basic emotional need met. They aren’t dependent on the acclaim that others might later have for their accomplishments to meet what’s unmet of their basic emotional need. They meet their basic emotional need predominantly by turning their increased self-felt unconscious entity into inwardly directed anger. They turn that anger onto themselves in their striving to better themselves, their attaining goals, and their over-coming challenges. Doing so lowers the level of their unconscious entity in its self-felt form which is a pleasurable experience. It’s pleasurable because it causes these people to become less emotionally uncomfortable by decreasing the level of their unconscious entity. Because becoming less emotionally uncomfortable is becoming more emotionally comfortable, it is a pleasurable experience, and because it is so, it helps meet, indirectly, what is unmet of their basic emotional need. This makes them less necessary to meet that need directly from somebody. Because it is meeting better their basic emotional need, they can increase their emotional strength by this means. They don’t have to increase emotional strength by meeting their basic emotional need in any extended talking with someone else, or others, listening to them talk. They can build it with this “work”-related way. People, who are work-oriented, are most often so because of their increased self-felt unconscious entity producing secondary feelings conducive to working hard. Such people aren’t characterized by “wasting time in talking.”
Many people wanting to “make themselves much better,” as a secondary feeling from their self-felt unconscious entity, are unconsciously resolving their emotional problems, which are perceived dissatisfactions about themselves arising from their uncomfortable levels of self-felt unconscious entity, when they join, for instance, exercise groups. Such groups may go by a variety of different names depending on what their physical goals are. With becoming part of an exercise group, these people can gain emotional support for continuing with the group. They meet regularly for their particular form of physical exercise and then work hard at it. They may do very little talking with each other but they can diminish their dissatisfactions about themselves, by decreasing their self-felt unconscious entity and what is unmet of their basic emotional need in this work-related way. These people may do so under a reality-oriented guise of wanting to be more physically fit. They may have been told that their involvement in their exercise group “gets the endorphins flowing,” “tones muscles,” “boosts energy levels,” “promotes better sleep,” “improves sex lives,” “benefits cardiac function,” and “prevents obesity.” They don’t recognize that they become more emotionally fit, with more emotional strength, as they become more physically fit, with more physical strength, with their regular physical involvement in their particular exercise group. These people feel more emotionally comfortable, and have a better self-image, more self-confidence, less emotional problems, less anxiety, depression, and worry, and appear to handle stress better, from unconsciously turning an uncomfortable amount of self-felt unconscious entity, into a more comfortable level. They turn that uncomfortable level of self-felt unconscious entity into inwardly directed anger and this decreases the level of their unconscious entity. In doing that, they are indirectly meeting some of what is unmet of their basic emotional need in their becoming more emotionally comfortable. They might also be unconsciously decreasing their unconscious entity through subtle anger expression in any extended talking with others who are also exercising and talking. In contrast, this would be unrecognizably expressing their anger outwardly.
As people’s self-felt unconscious entity and their unmet basic emotional need increase, they may respond by working harder, which is due to their developing more demanding secondary feelings from their primary feelings becoming more intensified. The challenges they may now want to overcome, and the goals they may want to reach, may then become greater. A woman, for instance, that feels she looks “old,” can feel “more old” with more self-felt unconscious entity, and less acceptable to herself from a less met basic emotional need, and may, as a secondary feeling, want to be seen as “more young.” If people’s unconscious entity and their unmet basic emotional need increase enough, from increasing frustrations of their basic emotional need in their lives, and their repressing the resulting anger, their strivings might not now be able to lower their unconscious entity as easily or as well as they did before when their unconscious entity was at a lower level. The goals that these people’s secondary feelings from their increasing unconscious entity may now set for them, may become too difficult for them to attain. This is because the increasing self-felt unconscious entity from more repression of anger, and an insufficient
