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Chuck’s Place: Cruelty Is The Reaction Formation Of Unrequited Love

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When cruelty shows up, find your way to love within…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

The dominant feature of those who hold power in the world at this time is cruelty. The rhetoric and behavior of those warring entities is both disdain and indifference toward the suffering of adversaries and a polarized philosophy that can only see solution in the destruction and elimination of opposition. Understanding the energetics of cruelty can truly lead us to a path of peace.

As we enter the autumn of our seasonal cycle, we must acknowledge Nature’s Law of Destruction as the necessary precursor to new life.  We are indeed in the cosmic season of Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Degeneration. World leaders are under the spell of such energy, channelling it with gusto. If we suspend all judgment, we see the necessity of this breakdown and can turn our attention to the process of preparing for renewed life.

Beyond the destruction of autumn lies the barren season of winter, where life moves inward to the darkness of the soul in the shadowland of Self. Winter offers a peek into the Dark Night of the Soul, where we are invited to face and resolve our inner mysteries. It is here, if we are ready, that we discover the covert defenses we have utilized to avoid our deepest feelings and needs. One such defense is that of reaction formation.    

Sigmund Freud introduced reaction formation as an ego defense that “transforms an unacceptable or anxiety-provoking impulse or feeling into its opposite” (from Brutus AI). For instance, instead of consciously acknowledging an unacceptable desire or emotion, we act outwardly with just the opposite of how we truly feel. Thus, we might act affectionately toward someone whom we actually feel hostility toward.

A more nuanced appreciation of the dynamic of reaction formation is the energetic exchange that occurs when something is transformed into its opposite. For example, the intensity of affection one might feel for a person, that is then followed by a felt sense of rejection by that person, might result in a corresponding emotionally intense feeling of hatred toward them.

This compensatory emotional reaction assuages and redirects the original energy of affection, while it also protects the ego from the feeling of rejection. Such is often the motive in stalking behavior, where one can be said to be in love with hatred.

Cruelty might issue from disappointments at the primal-need level of human development when one is most vulnerable, sensitive and needing of attention. The British psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein, went so far as to suggest that a frustrated infant would assign one of its mother’s breasts to be the ‘good breast’ and the other the ‘bad breast’ to energetically balance its joys and sorrows and preserve a lifesaving connection to its ‘flawed’ human mother.

Cruelty, however, permits no such defensive option. Cruelty bespeaks such a deep experience of felt rejection at one’s core, the shame of which is reactively transformed into the pleasure of rejecting others and bathing in their extreme suffering. The scapegoating of others creates a playing field where the ego is justified in its fixation of hatred, with an intensity that nullifies its deep sense of inner rejection and abandonment.

When we are able to acknowledge and feel the truth of our deepest disappointments, we are freed from defensive illusions and entitlements that fuel cruel thoughts and actions. These actions allow us to experience love for ourselves, at the deepest level, and love for all who  have taken on the challenge of loving in human form.

Planet Earth is the planet for the accelerated experience of refining love. Taking the Night Sea Journey of Recapitulation allows us to gather, from all our disappointments, a loving acceptance of everything. Immortal souls we may be, but in the context of a mortal life love is challenged to grow amidst its greatest adversary, death itself.

To move beyond the defense of reactive formation to true loving acceptance of all that is, is the foundation upon which new life will grow  in the New Age, beyond the Kali Yuga of now.

Those of us now present in human form are privileged to contribute to this energetic emergence, most especially through the practice and acceptance of all that is, within and without.

It’s all about love,
Chuck  

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: How Are You Living Your Wholeness?

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What’s the balance in your wholeness?
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

We are always whole. The question is not whether or not we are whole, but rather, how are we currently living our wholeness? Our lives might currently reflect balance or chaos. Each alternative generates its own configuration of our same inherent ingredients of wholeness. Whether in balance or chaos, we are always whole.

If I long for something that I don’t currently have, the suffering I feel, whether as sadness or anxiety, holds the emotional place for the wholeness I seek.  A depression might hold the place for a missing or lost relationship.

The law of compensation is nature’s law of wholeness. Elsewhere known as karma, compensation insists that we fulfill our wholeness by living the natural consequences of our actions. If, for instance, we attempt to keep a trauma at bay through repression or willful suppression, the compensation may express itself in physical symptoms or triggers, which now serve the function of holding space for the unprocessed experience.

Many communication issues in relationships reflect this imperative for wholeness. If one partner presents their interpretation of reality the other partner might automatically see and feel compelled to express the other side of the argument. Wholeness insists upon both sides being represented.

Of course, often couples, or friends who share one’s point of view, will need to project the opposite point of view upon a person or group, outside their personal circle, whom they fervently dislike. In some form, wholeness insists that a one-sided point of view be compensated for by its opposite, which is then lived and owned inwardly, through emotional attachment to one’s projected antagonist.

Hate is a powerful expression of emotional attachment. It’s often very hard to not be obsessed with thinking about someone one hates. Once we can accept that these projections actually reflect aspects of our own wholeness, we can take the first step in shifting the volatile state of balance that our wholeness is in.

Wholeness includes everything. We are riddled with pairs of opposites that comprise our wholeness. Once we outwardly withdraw and take ownership for a hated projection, we can begin the process of reconciling the oppositions that comprise that opposition within our wholeness.

First we must bear the tension of holding this opposition within. Once contained, we can appreciate the value of our formerly hated other. Perhaps, for instance, this hated other reflects our own disdain for the limitations authority figures have imposed upon our lives.

By acknowledging this part of our wholeness, our heavily rational prefrontal cortex can come to appreciate its aggressive limbic  counterpart, and those two parts might come to accept their complementary roles and find acceptance and room for each other. This is how we shift the balance in our wholeness.

Accepting and finding room for all that we are allows for a more fulfilling wholeness. When the Rainmaker went into his hut to restore the Tao in the village riddled with drought (see last week’s blogpost), his effort reflected a rebalancing of the oppositions within himself, which then triggered greater balance in the outer world.

Wholeness is the same wholeness, whether it be in drought or rainstorm; the difference is in how we do our wholeness. Finding a compatible relationship between the opposites within ourselves is the key to balance.

The difference in personalities among us is simply that which is emphasized within our wholeness that then results in the state of balance we live with. That which is not emphasized is still part of our wholeness and must still be lived in some form.

If I am a true introvert my wholeness requires that I include extraversion  somewhere in my life, even if it is only fulfilled by obsessively hating what I judge to be shallow extraversion in others.

Our journey in infinity, beyond this life, may comprise many lives, where different aspects of wholeness are emphasized. This allows for an ever-deepening knowing of wholeness by exploration of it from many different perspectives. In fact, this is how we truly change the past, which completely shifts the balance of our present and future selves.

Trauma freezes our perspective in the past. Beyond the release of previously frozen emotions in processing trauma is the greater perspective of the present self that frees long-held limiting beliefs and definitions of self. Our wholeness then has the opportunity to come into new balance, which allows for greater exploration and expression of our innate potential in the present.

Ultimately we are all part of the same wholeness. The separateness we experience in this life is all a journey to truly know the self and advance our personal and collective evolution through the achievement of a broader perspective, which can’t help but result in the attainment of refined love, for all.

In wholeness,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Trickster To Trickster

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At a certain level of reality, I and We become One. Growth might be defined as an ever-expanding realization of our essential Oneness. In the meantime, we grapple with the discovery, ownership, and coordination of our many parts.

Who is really in charge here? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Who is really in charge here?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Within the self of every “individual” are many parts: some known, many unknown, and still others disowned. Psychology has coined the terms conscious and unconscious to differentiate between those parts that we know about from those that we don’t know about but also are.

At the center of the known self—the seat of consciousness—is the ego. The ego has many “parts,” including the “face” it shows the world, called the persona, as well as a younger child state, and an adult state. Each of these parts has its own ambitions, needs, and motives. Being conscious “parts” allows each of these centers to have relative accessibility to awareness. That is, we are basically familiar with these states of being. They may, and often do, squabble among themselves.

For instance, the persona—the actor that we present to the world—often sees itself as the true self. The fact that I am a psychotherapist is indeed a real part of me, however, it is not the whole of who I am.

In another example, the adult ego, with its capacity to plan, organize, and make things happen, may trump the needs and desires of its child part, who wants to play.

The permutation of struggles at the ego level alone are staggering, particularly when the parts become tricksters in their maneuvering.

Trickster is a character who has an ulterior motive, a secret ambition or intention that powers its behavior. Trickster has little interest in fairness, cooperation, or consciousness. It’s goal is to get what it wants.

Trickster may be intelligent and cunning, or foolish and obvious, but trickster definitely does not play by the rules. Nonetheless, if we are willing to slow down the action and reflect, the trickster in all our conscious parts can be identified and a resolution to contradictory motives becomes possible.

However, when we approach the depths of the unconscious mind the plot thickens, as trickster can allude all but a very determined introspection.

The unconscious mind, all that we don’t know of who we are, is composed of countless layers. The uppermost region houses all that once was conscious but for a myriad of reasons has been erased from conscious awareness. Here we find many traumatic experiences, as well as parts of the ego-potential deemed unworthy of development.

Traumatic parts have a life of their own and often function as tricksters bent on being discovered by the conscious mind. For instance, a news item on TV might trigger an intense emotional overreaction, brought on by a traumatic memory insisting on being consciously redeemed.

Similarly, rejected ego parts—forming what Jung called the shadow—may function as tricksters by projecting a compelling but distorted perception onto the motives  of a friend or foe that actually reflects the true feelings of the rejected inner part but completely distorts outer reality.

As we go deeper into the unconscious mind we encounter what Jung called the anima/animus parts, the contrasexual components of the psyche, unrealized at a conscious level. These parts have their trickster ability to project themselves in powerful attractions to people in the world that distort completely who they really are. These trickster entrapments form the core of many troubled relationships.

At the center of the unconscious mind is the Self, the CEO of the entire psyche. The role of the Self is to establish balance in the entire psyche—conscious and unconscious. The Self is the higher power of the psyche. Ideally, the ego center of the conscious personality will subordinate itself to the dictates of the Self, which has the interests of the greater whole in mind.

Unfortunately, the ego often takes on its own trickster side, subverting the true needs of the Self, using all its power for decision and free will to accomplish its own aims.

If the imbalance thereby generated is too extreme, the Self counters with its own trickster side and generates symptoms of fear in the ego, such as an agoraphobia, where the ego can’t leave the house. To rein the ego in, the Self can also create psychosomatic symptoms, such as panic attacks or physical illness, to interfere with the ego’s willfulness.

The Self might also generate dreams that preempt the ego’s control through a terrifying nightmare that restores the waking ego to humility.

Yup, that says it all! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Yup, that says it all!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The difference between Self as trickster and all the other personality parts as trickster is its selfless intentions. The Self seeks unity and balance as its aim. When the other parts of the personality employ the trickster, it generally reflects a power play to meet individual needs, often at the expense of the greater needs of the overall Self.

The Self is only forced to become the trickster when the ego refuses to listen to its guidance. When the ego, like a good General, looks to the Self as Ruler, the Self responds with supportive guidance, energy, and freedom from symptoms.

So, trickster to trickster, stay in alignment with the Self, a much smoother ride to wholeness!

Bumping along,

Chuck