As well as a conscious mind, we also have a subconscious mind, which is the one that shows itself sometimes through our speech, manner and general behavior or reactions in the form of purely psychological effects.
These behaviour patterns, which are considered psychologically motivated, originating from our subconscious, are due to childhood experiences, sometimes of a traumatic nature or similar happenings – which we would rather forget.
The conscious mind refuses to remember – are “safely locked in or “stored away”; but in many ways make their “presence felt” through psychologically conditioned reflexes in behavior patterns and fanciful imaginings.
Such behaviour patterns, due to imaginary fears, can make themselves felt in the form of fear of water, venturing outdoors, fear of the unknown and similar phobias – being unreal and unjustified fears and therefore considered “purely psychological” in cause and origin, maybe due to some forgotten, but traumatic experience.
Another “purely psychological” reason can be for a young woman, choosing to marry a much older man! If the reason is other than for “his money” it can be due to a father complex ( the dad she missed – and maybe never had – in her childhood).
Also, a deprivation during early childhood can lead to selfishness, showing in overeating, secret consuming of niceties without sharing, and similar tendencies, in adult life. It also can show as collecting or amassing strange items, thus making up for a childhood defect – the reason once again, most likely, being “purely psychological.”
Even the phenomena of seeing a mirage of a water fountain by someone lost in the desert and dying of thirst falls into this category. The vision of the fountain being conditioned by the desperate need for water.
The feeling of claustrophobia in crowded rooms or enclosed spaces also classifies as psychological. So can the sudden feeling of nausea or the sensation of being unwell be purely “mental.”
If all these are nothing but the deep-seated causes, manifested and therefore fictions of one’s mind, surely one can cure most – if not all of them – by “facing” the feared memory.
Seeing them realistically, assessing them, and reasoning them out for a better understanding of their true nature and the absence of what causes the fears of the forgotten incident in the first place, and thus just neutralizing their adverse influences, perhaps bringing about a total cure as the fears lose their “terror.”
Psychologists usually bring treatments about by doing exactly that or through similar procedures.
Many people have “skeletons in the closet” in the form of unpleasant memories, but they need not – and should not – if faced and their true nature realistically assessed, become a “psychological nuisance” or, as in some cases, even a disturbance.
As long as they have no serious repercussions other than simple effects, who cares! We all have our idiosyncrasies in some way or another, most of which we spot in others, but fail to see in ourselves.
Y.A. Eden