Chapter I, Part III of Dionysus: Myth, Cult and Psychology (2013).
Emotions are psychological states that move us, compel us to act, obstruct our power of differentiation and create the necessary lowering of consciousness through which a new attitude can emerge. The solution to the problem of repressed instincts would be relatively simple were it not for the fact that, within the context of a particular culture (or an individual conscious attitude, for that matter), some emotions are more accepted and can be more easily expressed and lived, while others are not so easily expressed or acknowledged.
One need only consider the value Christianity places on sexuality and the emotions associated with it, or the difficulties encountered when attempting to deal with hatred or anger within the context of Christian life. Every civilisation values certain emotions more highly than others, while some emotions are considered more or less inappropriate and are therefore repressed or neglected. Yet they continue to exist and influence us regardless of our conscious attitude towards them. If this attitude is specifically negative, they in turn become negative towards consciousness.
By not accepting certain emotions, we cut ourselves off from the roots of psychological experience. As a result, these emotions are free to roam through the psychological landscape as spirits, ghosts and fiery demons that can take control of us when we least expect it. While my own experience of the war in Yugoslavia was limited, I can appreciate the danger of emotions that are neglected or repressed at one point and later assume the dominant role. In this context, we can understand the psychological importance of finding a safety valve for dammed-up emotions and new ways of allowing the flow of psychic energy.
The only way of dealing with these dammed-up emotions is to experience, relate to and assimilate them, together with the associated contents, before such an eruption takes place. This is only possible through a change in the conscious attitude that gave rise to such a condition in the first place.
With all this in mind, one may ask what emotions are in themselves, why we developed them, and what purpose they serve.
It seems that emotion, as experienced by consciousness, is the psychic component of instinct (or archetypal image) that develops as consciousness modifies and restrains instinctive expression. For example, one may need to flee, but for some reason cannot. The instinct is inhibited, and emotions such as anxiety and fear arise. Another example is sexual instinct which, when immediate satisfaction is not possible, manifests itself through desire and attraction. One can think in a similar way about aggression, which arises when the immediate instinctive reaction of self-preservation is inhibited and must find another mode of expression. In this way the same instinct can be carried out later and in a modified form.
The repression of instinct (or archetypal image) creates a damming-up of psychic energy. Just as a dammed river overflows into areas that were previously dry and eventually finds new outlets through which to continue its flow, so blocked psychic energy excites psychic contents that were previously independent of the instinct or archetypal image in question and seeks other channels of discharge. This time, however, it does so through contents and dynamics that were previously only loosely associated with the original instinctive action or archetypal image.
What connects these associated and repressed contents is their emotional tone, as demonstrated by the association experiment. The conglomerations of contents bound together by the same emotion are psychologically called complexes. They represent an attempt to find new channels for the flow of psychic energy when such flow has become impossible because consciousness has become too one-sided.
Emotion seems to be a great achievement in the development of human consciousness, arising from the conflict between nature (the archetype as such) and culture (consciousness). Within the cultural environment of Western man, the instinctive response is more often than not the problematic and inappropriate aspect of the archetype as such because of its simplicity, primitiveness, or because some inner or outer authority judges it to be so. The emotional dynamics created by the repression of instinct enable further associative connections between different psychic contents and open up new possibilities for responding to the original stimulus in a more differentiated and, hopefully, more appropriate manner.
Other parts of this chapter can be found here: