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Fundamental principles of this website
In terms of understanding the causes of anxiety, this website draws on key concepts that were proposed as central tenets in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a huge and broad discipline encompassing numerous schools of thought concerning the nature of psychological inbalance, and this website certainly does not adhere to all ideas that come under the heading of Psychoanalysis. I will outline below the core Psychoanalytical concepts upon which the information found on this website is based.
1. If we desire something, but force ourselves not to act on this desire, energy is consumed.
This is the central tenet of this website. Let us take a simple example to illustrate this point. Imagine that you are on a diet. However you love chocolate. Someone presents a chocolate cake to you. Now imagine you haven’t eaten much for the last few days and you really want a piece of this cake. Determining to refuse the offer of cake will create a certain amount of tension for you. If cake is not something you are particularly keen on, then I am sure you can think of something else that you really want, and that if you decided for some reason to refuse it, then this would cause some tension.
2. We have a limited amount of energy available for the purpose of suppressing our desires.
In life we often need to suppress desires. We may want to stay in bed when our alarm clock goes off in the morning, but if we have to go to work, it is necessary to suppress the desire to stay in bed. In the same way that we have a certain amount of physical energy available for the purpose of doing exercise we have energy available for suppressing desires. But in the same way that if we do a lot of exercise we will get physically tired, and eventually will not be able to exert any more energy, if we suppress enough of our desires, we will become emotionally drained. As a result of this, we will begin to find it hard to function properly. Consider the following example. Imagine that it is the middle of the week, and you are working, and you have had to stay late into the evening every night at work for the past few days. Imagine also that at the weekend you were not able to relax, but had to help a friend move house. Imagine also that you have had a family crisis and that last night you had a big argument with your partner. Imagine now that you have children, and they are running around the house chasing each other, and screaming at the top of their voice. Now, if under normal circumstances you aren’t too bothered by your children running around making a noise, it might just be that with all the pressure of recent events and all the stress, you blow a fuse and end up shouting quite aggressively at them. Hopefully this example serves to show how if we are starved of too many basic needs, our reactions and behaviour may be less controlled and our anxiety level may increase. It is proposed, that the suppression of needs underlies anxiety and most psychological disturbance.
3. If a need is suppressed, we typically channel the need into some other activity that doesn’t really fulfil the original need. The new focus of our attempt to fulfil this need is called a ‘derivative’. Since derivatives only partially fulfil the real need, we typically become addicted to the derivative, since it is fulfilling our need, but only a little.
If I hand you a glass of water, you will probably not find drinking this glass of water a particularly exciting event. However, if you had drunk nothing for over a day, and I then gave you a small glass of water, the experience of drinking this water may be highly invigorating. The experience of drinking the water becomes extremely powerful and the water tastes amazing. The water has not changed, it is just the need that has changed and this makes the level of stimulation created by drinking the water far greater than usual.
It is proposed that addictions typically are a telltale sign that there is a suppression of some need that is creating the addiction. However, the reason the person is addicted to the substance is that the substance is not really fulfulling the underlying need; it is only partially fulfilling it. The substance to which the person is addicted is therefore experienced as though it is ‘water in a desert’.