• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

WhyWeSuffer.com

Transformative Insights from Depth Psychology

  • BASIC PRINCIPLE
  • About
  • Services
  • Comments
  • Contact
  • Books
  • Show Search
Hide Search

A Chaos Theory of the Mind

Peter Michaelson · December 20, 2013 ·

As adults, we like to think we’ve put away most childish things. But infantile and childish ways of experiencing ourselves and life linger in our unconscious mind. That baby in the adult’s psyche can be highly mischievous and harmful, producing chaotic reactions.

There are some childish things we still haven't put away.
There are some childish things we still retain and need to put away.

Early childhood’s influences on our adult experiences have parallels to the scientific concept of Chaos theory. This mathematical theory attempts to understand erratic behavior as it occurs in certain nonlinear systems such as weather patterns. The theory proposes, as one example, that small air disturbances in one location can result, days or weeks later, in storms or hurricanes more than a thousand miles away.

Comparatively, the unconscious mind of adults is buffeted by gale-force winds of emotional chaos that originated as an infantile effect decades earlier. Emotional associations from our distant past now buffet our life in incredible, mysterious, spectacular, and frequently painful and self-defeating ways.

Emotions percolate and circulate in our unconscious mind with some degree of chaos. We all know what it’s like to be happy one moment, sad the next, with no conscious input from us. We also know how hard it can be to regulate our desires, impulses, and emotional reactions. Both neuroscience and psychology have established that our brain struggles mightily and often unsuccessfully to limit the effects of irrationality. Often we try to apply common sense and reason to moderate unpleasant emotions or to curb self-defeating impulses. Yet our emotional side, with a life of its own, can often be impervious to rational entreaties. Still, we can bring order to the chaos when we understand just what we’re dealing with.

Even if we had loving and nurturing parents, we can still be tormented by chaotic spin-offs and emotional turbulence from the first 18 months of life. Before describing this oral stage, I must note that the psychoanalytic understanding to which I subscribe has unfortunately been shoved aside by modern theories of child development. In my view, this has happened because people are determined unconsciously to idealize the childhood experience and reject the radical knowledge from classical psychoanalysis that sees us more objectively. This repudiation of vital self-knowledge is all part of our continuing self-centeredness, denial, resistance, and irrationality.

Developmental psychologists observe correctly that the children’s first signs of self-awareness show up after twelve months. They detail the emergence of growing rationality in the second year and beyond. Yet their scientific methods seem unable to penetrate a deeper existential reality. Their observations are not illuminating a parallel development, namely the baby’s instinctive irrational consciousness and intense entanglement in a false reality driven by acute self-centeredness, primitive wishes, libidinal instincts, inner aggression and fear, and self-defeating compromises. This infantile consciousness continues in various degrees over a lifetime to influence our struggle to distinguish the rational from the irrational and wisdom from folly.

One particular problem, perhaps the greatest turbulence in the chaos, stands out. Early childhood marks the birth of the adult compulsion to recreate and recycle, in present-day contexts, unresolved negative emotions such as feeling refused, deprived, controlled, helpless, criticized, rejected, and abandoned. We keep dragging these negative emotions through life. I’m often asked why we become so attached to them. Here, from classical psychoanalysis, is a theory of how this happens. 

It all starts with the baby’s experiences of the oral stage, when the mouth is the primary zone of pleasure. In this oral stage, the baby experiences feeding as self-given, meaning that the feeding and the food itself are services and substances that are provided through the baby’s own powers. What accounts for such irrationality? According to psychoanalysis, babies experience the world through megalomania, or profound self-centeredness, along with a sense of omnipotence or magic power. All the child knows are the physical and emotional sensations of his or her own little body. In this primitive consciousness, nothing exists except what the child experiences directly. Whatever is given to the child by others is experienced by the child as an act of his or her magic power. The illusion of having such magic powers still resonates very strongly in adolescents and teenagers, as evidenced in the widely popular Harry Potter series of books and movies.

This profound misreading of reality may be the infant’s evolutionary compensation, a will-to-live booster-shot for the reality of being so profoundly helpless.

A complication soon arises. Food is not always available exactly when baby wants it. Mother may be busy with other children or obligations. Baby begins to experience not getting the food when the food is desired. The baby can’t understand the relativity of time, so a 10-minute wait for food can seem like eternity. This not getting is a serious affront to the baby’s sense of magic power, and loud wails of protest often result.

How does the baby compensate psychologically? He or she is determined to preserve the magical feeling of being a little wizard at the center of life. The baby “decides,” in an instinctive manner of deduction, that not getting must be what he or she wants. The baby is able to turn displeasure into pleasure (as do sadists, masochists, pedophiles, bullies, oppressors, withholders of emotional support and love, etc.), and make the feeling of not getting acceptable and gratifying. “It’s what I want,” the child deduces irrationally, “so it must be good.”

In psychoanalysis, the ability to eroticize or “sugar-coat” various experiences is attributed to libido or the pleasure principle, which refers to the psychological-biological process whereby both pleasant and unpleasant experiences can be enjoyed or eroticized. As one example, everyday people are quite capable of indulging in an unhealthy yet compulsive way in bittersweet feelings of victimhood and self-pity. Another example: People can “libidinize” inner fear, enabling them to experience macabre delight reading thrillers, going to horror movies, and speculating incessantly about terrorist threats.

So the impression of not getting—feeling refused or deprived—is libidinized, producing a compelling though third-rate pleasure that acts as an emotional attachment. The feeling becomes a default position in our psyche. Not only is it familiar, it easily becomes an indulgence. We become hooked on the feeling, or attached to it. It can even be described as an emotional addiction. This attachment or addiction tends to become an integral part of our identity, meaning we don’t quite know who we are without it.

From another perspective, we’re answerable to this psychological axiom: Whatever remains unresolved from our past becomes an emotional attachment. We’re easily triggered into experiencing the unresolved emotion no matter how negative or painful it is to do so. At this point, we typically cover up, through denial and other psychological defenses, the unconscious choice we’ve made to plunge back into an experience of the negative emotion.

We’re all prey to the repetition compulsion, as Freud called it, meaning we’re creatures who seek consciously or unconsciously to experience situations in ways that replay our unresolved emotions, whether positive or negative.

What are some repercussions of unresolved oral issues? They include chronic feelings involving dissatisfaction, refusal, and deprivation, leading frequently to struggles with self-defeating behaviors. Greed, envy, boredom, anger, and passivity are symptoms of this lingering oral attachment to deprivation and refusal. It’s possible our consumer-based economy—with its environmentally degrading, entitlement-inducing, and debt-driven side-effects—is stimulated, in part, by our deep grievances about allegedly having been deprived and refused at this early age.

Of course, other factors such as genetics and individual biology can influence the degree to which individuals are swept up by irrationality, leading sometimes to mental illness. Incompetent child-rearing also tends to make the negative consequences of the inner chaos more problematic. The chaotic irrationality also goes on to influence later stages of child development beyond the oral stage.  

Evidence supporting a chaos theory of the human mind is overwhelming. It abounds in millions of examples of individual and collective suffering and self-defeat recorded in mythology, literature, scripture, and history. Growing awareness of this magnificent chaos can speed up our evolution.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Share This:

Filed Under: Consciousness, Psyche, Psychoanalysis Tagged With: attachments, Chaos theory, child development, defenses, emotional reactions, irrational, libido, oral stage, self-pity

Primary Sidebar

MOST OF OUR suffering is avoidable. Our emotional and behavioral problems can be resolved. We just have to understand how our psyche works. This website is dedicated to teaching vital psychological knowledge. Do you need help to curb drinking or to get off drugs? Are you facing a divorce or a career failure? Are you anxious, depressed, or overwhelmed by life's challenges? Perhaps you're simply unable to get your mind or intelligence into high gear. I can help. I'm Peter Michaelson, an author and psychotherapist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I teach people how to overcome unconscious programming that produces suffering and self-defeat.

WHY WE SUFFER–THE BOOK

My book, Why We Suffer--A Western Way to Understand and Let Go of Unhappiness, is the story of what mainstream psychology has failed to teach the world. The depth psychology in this book has vital insights, answers, and solutions for you. Click on the Books link above for more information. --

Other Articles

  • The Blindness of the Species
  • Why Americans Are So Wretchedly Divided
  • Are You Passive to Your Mind?
  • What Freud Knew That We Still Hate to See
  • The Emotional Conflict Behind 50 Mental-Health Symptoms
  • A Novelist’s Quest to Unravel His Madness
  • When Inner Growth Feels Impossibly Difficult
  • Haunted by Incessant Wanting
  • My New Book: Healing Our Deadly Flaw
  • Inner Conflict’s Role in Child Suicide
  • Putin’s Psyche
  • The Flaw Wars that Sabotage Relationships
  • Can You Be Your Own Therapist?
  • The Difference Between Learned Helplessness and Inner Passivity
  • The Sad Sordidness of Inner Conflict
  • The Deep Knowledge that Liberates the Self
  • The Four Dimensions of Our Ego
  • Are You Overly Sensitive to Rejection?
  • Evolving Consciousness is the Lifeblood of Mental Health
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 9)
  • Don’t Be Duped by Your Defenses
  • The Shocking Secrets of the Psyche
  • The Undercover Enabler of Habitual Oversleeping
  • Understanding the Assault on the U.S. Capitol
  • The Sheepishness of the Psyche: A One-Act Play
  • Three Self-Defeating Reactions at the Heart of American Disunity
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 8)
  • Our Compulsion to Self-Punish
  • Ego and Self Do Battle for the Soul of America
  • The Hazards of Inner Conflict
  • A Toxic Inner Process Afflicts Humanity
  • Don’t Let America Betray Herself
  • Inner Conflict Ripens in the Hothouse of Pandemic
  • Living and Dying with Coronavirus
  • How the Coronavirus Plays with Our Mind
  • Access the Genius Within
  • How Meditation and Depth Psychology Overlap
  • Guilt: A Favorite Way to Suffer
  • Understanding the Psyche of Boys
  • The Joy of Militant Ignorance
  • Answers to Questions From Readers (Part 7)
  • Breaking the Chains of Self-Imposed Oppression
  • Jordan Peterson’s Blind Spot
  • Learning to See Ourselves Objectively
  • When Food is Used to Feed Inner Conflict
  • How You Can Save the World
  • The Inner Critic is a Primitive Brute Force
  • The Self-Defeat of Passive Morning Thoughts
  • Get Rid of Guilt with Deeper Insight (II)
  • Discover Sublimation, the Agent of Success
  • The U.S. Government’s Flawed Intelligence on Clinical Depression
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 6)
  • 12 Ways We Fail to See or Experience Reality
  • Is Ambivalence a Hidden Factor in Much of Human Misery?
  • Inner Conflict is the Source of Cognitive Distortion
  • A Psychological Hindrance to National Unity
  • A Technique for Overcoming Insomnia
  • Liberals Need More Psychological Insight
  • Why We Urgently Need Inner Truth
  • Notes to Psychotherapists on Addressing Inner Passivity
  • Are You Living Your True Story?
  • Another Visual Portrayal of Our Psyche’s Dynamics
  • Get to Know Your Psyche’s Operating Systems
  • Illustrating the Characters Who Mess With Our Mind
  • How to Love Yourself
  • Don’t Let Inner Passivity Undermine Democracy
  • Connecting With Our Best Self
  • The Deeper Roots of Social Unrest
  • The Las Vegas Killer’s Hidden Motive
  • My Latest Book is Now Available
  • Insight that Conquers Incessant Negative Thinking
  • New Editions of All My Books Now Available
  • The Exhausting Race against Time
  • The Perils of Past, Present, and Future
  • The Mocking Voice of Inner Resistance
  • The Essentials of Empowerment for Enablers and Codependents
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 5)
  • The Appeal of Alternative Facts
  • Are You a Clone of Your Identifications?
  • Unmasking Fear Itself
  • Fundamentalism and the Psyche
  • Ascending to Joy
  • Now’s the Time for Heroes
  • Feeling Like a Fraud or an Imposter?
  • The Invisible Wall of Psychological Resistance
  • Cognitive Therapy’s Flawed Premise
  • Dealing with Election Aftershock
  • After the Election: Healing the Divide
  • Collapsing into Helplessness
  • Solve the Mystery of Your Suffering
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 4)
  • An Insightful Case of Self-Injury
  • Understanding Inner Evil in Mass-Killers
  • A Common Theme in Relationship Strife
  • Breaking Free of Inner Passivity
  • Are You Hopeless of Ever Finding Love?
  • Words to Enlighten Younger Children
  • Deeper Reflections on Inner Passivity
  • Escape the Misery of Moodiness
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 3)
  • Emotional Fortitude for Anxious Times
  • Follow Your Fantasies to Self-Awareness
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 2)
  • The Art of Self-Regulation
  • The Thrill of Fear
  • Answers to Questions from Readers
  • “Why Am I so Easily Discouraged?”
  • Paris and Our Discontents
  • Unconscious Bias in Race Relations
  • Acquiring a Feel for Natural Aggression
  • Defensiveness for Dummies
  • Exposing the Roots of Emotional Suffering
  • Who Wants to Be a Celebrity?
  • Say Goodbye to Your Regrets
  • How to Recognize Good Psychotherapy
  • Visions of Human Destiny
  • Tears of Self-Deception
  • Westerners Who Identify with Terrorists
  • A Decisive Look at Indecision
  • Neurotics on Capitol Hill
  • Inner Passivity Impairs Leadership Skills
  • Hidden Dynamics of Racism
  • Unconscious Factors Fuel Abortion Fight
  • The Two-Minute Inner Workout
  • Defeating the Inner Bully
  • When Life Becomes Unreal and Dreamlike
  • Releasing Inner Passivity
  • Deliverance from Addictions & Compulsions
  • Life’s Painful Entanglements (Part II)
  • Insight into Gender Identity Disorder
  • The Psychology of Wealth Disparity
  • How Do We Achieve Self-Control?
  • Anger and the APA
  • A Painful Game People Play (Part I)
  • Prisoners of Guilt
  • Neurosis Unbound
  • The Lingering Pain of Old Shame
  • Emerging from Shyness
  • An Unconscious Factor in PTSD
  • When in Doubt about Sexual Orientation
  • Why Students Fail to Learn
  • How to Enhance Your Verbal Skill
  • Be Brave when Truth Comes Knocking
  • What Warps the Mind of Domestic Terrorists?
  • Greed as a Mental-Health Disorder
  • The Core of Being
  • The Folly of Modern Psychology
  • The Scoop on Intimate Partner Abuse
  • Tormented Mothers, Endangered Babies
  • Terrific Knowledge for Trying Times
  • Stung by Ingratitude
  • How to Be Your Own Inner Guide
  • Does Inner Growth Require Practical Steps?
  • A Remedy for Feeling Trapped
  • The Golden Rule Needs Depth Psychology
  • A Deadly Case of Inner Conflict
  • Vital Knowledge for Marriage Intimacy
  • Stressed Out in America
  • Four Steps to Stifle Our Inner Critic
  • Oh, Sweet Narcissism
  • The Pain We Lock Away
  • Cognitive Therapy’s Distorted Thinking
  • Indecisive No More
  • Chasing the Shadow
  • How Inner Passivity Robs Men of Power
  • A New Understanding of Bipolar Disorder
  • A Chaos Theory of the Mind
  • Free Yourself from Inner Conflict
  • Curbing Our Appetite for Brutality
  • The Futility of Compulsive Approval-Seeking
  • How Worriers Unconsciously Chose to Suffer
  • Get to Know Your Psychological Defenses
  • The Love Song of the Self
  • Finding Inner Longitude
  • Overcoming a Type of Resistance to Studying
  • Understanding Anorexia
  • The Human Weakness behind Alcoholism
  • Rebutting 9/11 Conspiracy Beliefs
  • Achieving Inner Freedom
  • The Mysterious Allure of Kinky Sex
  • Hooked on Deprivation
  • Aspects of Women’s Empowerment (Part II)
  • Men’s Resistance to Women’s Empowerment
  • The Missing Link in OCD
  • A Hidden Reason for Suicidal Thoughts
  • Overcoming Fear of Intimacy
  • O Shame, Where is Thy Secret Source?
  • The Correct Interpretation of Our Dreams
  • Escaping the Clutches of Helplessness
  • The Double Barrels of Gun Mania
  • Exterminate Infestations of Negative Thoughts
  • The Psychology Behind Mass Shootings
  • Our Messy Mix of Aggression and Passivity
  • Speeding Up Our Evolution
  • Why Our Emotional Suffering Persists
  • Easing Tension and Stress at Family Gatherings
  • Wallowing in the Lap of Bitterness
  • The Hidden Dynamics of Marital Strife
  • The Psychological Roots of National Disunity
  • The Futile Dialogue in Our Head
  • Psychologists of the World, Go Deeper
  • When You Feel Bad About Yourself
  • Cultivating a Life of Disappointment
  • Lost in the Fog of Inner Passivity
  • The Private Joke behind Our Laughter
  • Why We Fear and Hate the Truth
  • When Eyes Are Blinders of the Soul
  • How Deeper Insight Relieves Stress
  • When Money Enriches Our Suffering
  • The Common Ingredient in Human Misery
  • The Infantile Basis of Our Fears
  • Cynicism: The Battle Cry of the Wimp
  • Desperately Seeking Validation
  • Being Seen in a Negative Light
  • The Need to Believe in Yourself
  • Why We Dither on Climate Change
  • Avoidable Miseries of the Workplace
  • Taming the “Little Monsters” of Insomnia
  • A Plague of Neurosis Upon Our House
  • The Origins of Feeling Overwhelmed
  • Teach Your Children Well
  • Why We’re Quick to “Go Negative”
  • 8 Ways We Sabotage Physical Health
  • Occupy the Psyche
  • The Astonishing Basis of Our Addictions
  • Deliverance From the Lonesome Blues
  • Our Global Strategy for Self-Defeat
  • The Mayo Clinic’s Bogus Psychology
  • The Meaning of Evolved Consciousness
  • The Hanky-Panky Behind Our Anger
  • Lincoln’s Integrity, Our Integrity
  • Stubbornness: The Guts to Fight Reality
  • A Participant in National Self-Sabotage
  • Underlying Dynamics that Breed Bullies
  • Deliverance from Low-Level Anxiety
  • The Politburo in Your Psyche
  • Nagging: Love Destroyer, Marriage Killer
  • A Singular Cause of War
  • The Temptations of the Injustice Collector
  • The Dire Determinants of Divorce
  • Enjoy the Quality of Your Consciousness
  • The Helplessness Trap in Cravings & Addictions
  • Mark Twain’s Mysterious Misery-Machine
  • Obesity and the Dopamine Fallacy
  • Four Favorite Ways to Suffer
  • The Deeper Issues that Produce Meanness
  • Panic Attacks Arise from Within Our Psyche
  • The Overlooked Factor in Criminal Behavior
  • The Three Amigos of Woe
  • Overcoming Incompetence and Its Miseries
  • Three Great Truths from Psychology
  • The Hidden Cause of Clinical Depression
  • Terrorism and the Death Drive
  • Welcome Aboard the Voyage of Self-Discovery
  • The Bittersweet Allure of Feeling Unloved
  • How Inner Fear Becomes Our Worst Nightmare
  • The Problem with Positive Psychology
  • Respect, Disrespect, and Self-Respect
  • Neither a Procrastinator Nor a Dawdler Be
  • Prose to Shatter Writer’s Block
  • Stop Smoking through Psychological Insight
  • The Secret Allures of Pornography
  • How Deeper Awareness Can Eliminate Shame
  • When Sexual Desire Covers Up Self-Sabotage
  • The Dreary Distress of Boredom
  • Problem Gamblers are Addicted to Losing
  • The Tyrant that Rules Our Inner Life
  • The Negative Emotions Behind Addictions
  • Beware the Limitations of Superficial Psychology
  • Get Rid of Guilt with Deeper Insight
  • Riding the Emotional Wave of Turbulent Times

Article Archives



Copyright © 2023 WhyWeSuffer