which I learned were usually associated with times when his marriage wasn’t going well, and he wasn’t talking much with his wife. Other times were when he was assigned to a new work group where he apparently felt too much like an “outsider,” to do much talking, or when he worked too much alone and had no opportunity to talk with others where he could have reduced the level of his unconscious entity by turning it back into subtly expressed anger. With not engaging as much in talking with others as he usually was, he would become unable to go to work for fear of falling, which came from a primary feeling of an impending personal disaster arising from his increased level of unconscious entity from repressing too much anger. He told me that his experiencing episodes of where he had a fear of falling, such that he couldn’t walk the girders as he did before, was just the “nature” of his work for he knew of other ironworkers who would often have the same problem. When he couldn’t work, he’d see me briefly, and with his eventually talking about how bad his wife could be at times, he would subtly express anger to an unconsciously perceived part of me that was predicate-equated with his wife. That subtly expressed anger to me was arising from his recently increased unconscious entity reverting to anger. Expressing that anger, decreased the level of his unconscious entity, causing his incapacitating fear of falling to diminish. His problem wasn’t the “nature” of his work though I never told him so. His incapacitating fear of falling was always his unrecognized increased unconscious entity, that only occurred when he wasn’t involved enough in talking with others. He wouldn’t resolve that incapacitating fear of falling until his uncomfortable level of increased unconscious entity was turned back to a more comfortable level from his subtly expressing anger to me in the talking he did with me, that he could have earlier done with friends if he had only had the chance. With this talking he did with me, his basic emotional need was being better met. With a better met basic emotional need, he felt more “lucky” walking high up on the girders, and had more of a feeling that “everything is, and will be, all right.” With an accompanying lower level of unconscious entity, he felt less “unlucky,” and had less fear of an impending personal disaster. But even when he could walk the girders, he always had enough unconscious entity to be advantageously apprehensive or hyper-vigilant. This was an asset to him, and not a liability at all. It was only when his unconscious entity increased to higher levels that it became a liability. It was then that he would return to me telling me that his incapacitating fear of falling was arising from a memory of a good friend of his who had fallen to his death. That recurrent memory he felt was the cause of his currently feeling so fearful. He would tell me, at those times, he couldn’t get thoughts of his friend falling to his death from his mind. He would have nightmares of his friend falling, and during the day he experienced “triggers” that would bring forth memories of his friend’s fatal fall. Initially talking to me all about the details of his memory of his friend falling to his death, eventually led to his talking about how bad his wife could be at times, with some of his anger being directly, but subtly, expressed to an unconsciously perceived “wife”-equated part of me. This decreased his unconscious entity from a very uncomfortable level, to a much less uncomfortable level, so that he became less fearful about walking the girders. I never did prescribe a psychiatric medication for him, because of the nature of his work. Like drinking and driving, walking girders and taking drugs should be avoided. (Couldn’t we say the same about engaging in combat?) He became emotionally comfortable, not from the little talking I did with him, but from the talking he did with me! He didn’t need counseling. He needed listening! With my listening, his becoming more emotionally comfortable didn’t take long at all.
When this patient told me about his friend falling to his death, I asked him if he was able to work right after that occurrence. He not only said he could, but he told me others with whom he worked, and who also had witnessed the accident, could too. The reason this patient and his co-workers couldn’t “walk the girders” at later times was a direct result of their recently accruing an uncomfortable level of their unconscious entity and wasn’t due to their remembering that terrible misfortune of a friend falling to his death, as they thought it was. The memories and nightmares of that terrible misfortune only came back secondarily, when these people’s unconscious entity currently reached enough of an uncomfortable level to resurrect that memory of that person’s death by some unconscious “that could happen to me because I’m now feeling that unlucky” predicate-equating. That predicate-equating was making them identify with 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