Suppose I went to Hawaii twenty years ago and had the most enjoyable time of my life which met exceptionally well my basic emotional need and made me feel very happy, and I currently have now an exceptionally well-met basic emotional need. I could now encounter “triggers” that seem to bring back memories of that Hawaiian trip. These triggers are a result of my unconsciously predicate-equating how emotionally comfortable I am now, with how emotionally comfortable I was when I went to Hawaii twenty years ago. Perhaps I see a picture of a palm tree and that gets me to remembering my trip to Hawaii, when I predicate-equate the palm tree with my trip to Hawaii. I might then have some recurrent pleasant thoughts of Hawaii during the day and I might have some very pleasant dreams of Hawaii at night. There may be nothing in my current situation that I recognize, or anyone else does, that is making me happy. No beautiful woman is wanting to marry me, and I haven’t just hit the lottery. But I’m feeling happy because my basic emotional need is being well met, on an unrecognized “part”-oriented basis, from my involvement with my friends, while I’m simultaneously getting rid of uncomfortable levels of unconscious entity on a “part”-oriented basis, by turning it back into unrecognized anger in my talking with those friends about what I dislike. What brings back those memories of my trip to Hawaii, about which I may now want to talk, and what creates the “triggers,” is my unconsciously predicate-equating how happy I feel now, with how happy I felt in Hawaii. Even if a person doesn’t understand unconscious predicate-equating, no one in his or her “right mind” would say that the reason that I’m now feeling so happy is due to my trip to Hawaii twenty years ago!
As we saw in the last chapter, the causes of why we feel the way we do, are in the present, and not in the distant past. We feel more emotionally comfortable, more optimistic, and have a better self-image and more “positive thinking” about ourselves, as the meeting of our basic emotional need, that we have in the present, increases. We feel less emotionally comfortable, less optimistic, and have less of a favorable self-image and less “positive thinking” about ourselves, as the meeting of our basic emotional need, that we have in the present, decreases. We feel more emotionally uncomfortable, more pessimistic, more worried about things, and have more “negative thinking” about ourselves, as we accumulate more unconscious entity in the present. We feel less emotionally uncomfortable, less pessimistic, less worried about things, and have less “negative thinking” about ourselves, as we diminish our unconscious entity in the present. Pleasant memories and pleasant dreams versus unpleasant memories and unpleasant dreams, like a “good” self-image versus a “bad” self-image, reflect this same “teeter-totter” relationship between our basic emotional need and our unconscious entity that we currently have.
Whether we see our kitchen waste basket, as “half full,” and needing emptying, or “half empty,” and not needing emptying, might depend on how much our basic emotional need is currently being met, and how much unconscious entity we have. The more our basic emotional need is met, the more we might see the waste basket as acceptably “half empty,” and a reason not to worry about emptying it. The less that need is met, the less we might see it as acceptably “half empty,” and the less we might feel a reason not to worry about emptying it. The more unconscious entity we have, the more we might see the waste basket as unacceptably “half full,” and the more we might feel it’s a reason to worry about urgently emptying it. The less we have of unconscious entity, the less we might see it as unacceptably “half full,” and the less we might feel it’s a reason to worry about urgently emptying it. That worrying, or not worrying, about the trash in the waste basket, and whether the amount is acceptable, or unacceptable, when that level of trash is constant, isn’t really due then to the amount of trash in the basket. It’s not at all due to the reality of the waste basket! It’s due, like it is in our remembering, or not remembering, unpleasant things of the past, or our remembering, or not remembering, pleasant things of the past, to how much our basic emotional need is currently being met, how much unconscious entity we currently have, and what unconscious predicate-equating is taking place.
A surgeon friend of mine told me that his kitchen waste basket is a measure of how much unconscious entity he currently has. He told me when he has days when things didn’t go well for him at the hospital, for one reason or another, the waste basket wouldn’t even have to be half full for him to feel an urgent need to empty it. Days when things went especially bad for him, he told me he couldn’t stand to see anything at all in the waste basket but had to empty it. Any level of waste basket trash, or even a single toothpick lying on the bottom of the waste basket, would bother him when it unconsciously symbolized his uncomfortably increased unconscious entity. Throwing out the trash, or the toothpick, if that was all that was in the waste basket, was like throwing out some of his unconscious entity. He told me that other times, when he had an especially good day where things went well for him and he had a lot of his basic emotional need met, and had a low level of his unconscious entity, the waste basket could be over-flowing and he wouldn’t feel any need to empty it. Somehow it didn’t seem to worry him and he felt no urgency to empty it like he could have felt at other times. He could comfortably wait until his wife would tell him to empty it when the waste basket got so it bothered her to see it.
A college student I knew had a phobia of germs. To him, lurking germs were representative of his unconscious entity’s primary feeling of an impending personal disaster. When his unconscious entity was increased, he could only open doors with a clean handkerchief draped over the door knob and would wash his hands immediately after shaking hands with someone. When that unconscious entity increased further, he’d wait for someone else to open the door first, and he wouldn’t shake hands with anyone. At other times when his unconscious entity was at a more comfortable level, he could turn a door knob without a handkerchief and could shake hands with someone without later washing his hands. This person was like a woman I knew who had a phobia of snakes where she would be panic-stricken in the presence of a snake at one time, while at another time, when apparently her basic emotional need was being well met, and she had a low level of unconscious entity, she seemed to have little fear of them. Another woman told me she couldn’t understand why some days she could drive herself over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, while other days she couldn’t, and required a policeman, who is stationed at the bridge because so many other people have a similar problem, to drive her over. Whether she could drive over the bridge, or whether she couldn’t, she knew wasn’t weather-related in origin. Instead, we now know it was directly related to the amount of unconscious entity she had on the day she had to cross Chesapeake Bay.
This woman was similar