Psychic Energy and Its Movement: Flow and the Psychological Field

This occurs due to a phenomenon that in psychology is called “cathexis”.

This term was introduced by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), an Austrian psychologist and neurologist, and he used it to mean literally a “occupation with energy”.

In dynamic psychology, this word means “striving”, “strong interest”, “occupation”.

When a person becomes interested in something, they give away part of their energy. But not to the things themselves, rather to the projections of those things in their field. They “cultivate” a figure in their field, as Gestalt psychologists later called it.

My note: thing = object.

More on this: → Object and Subject

However, long before Freud, this phenomenon was already known and was described in a similar way by ancient occult thinkers.

For example, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) wrote:

“Democritus, Orpheus, and many Pythagoreans, who carefully investigated the properties of heavenly and lower bodies, said that everything is full of gods… The occultists called gods the divine properties distributed in bodies. These properties Zoroaster calls attractions, Synesius calls seductions, other authors call vital forces, and still others call souls, on which the properties of things depend, and which, according to their properties, spread in each body the matter of the one world soul. Thus, when a person knows a thing, they as if transfer part of their soul into this thing, and the thing, in turn, arises in their imagination. The occultists say in this case that a part of the soul, having left one being, enters another and enchants it, hindering its actions, just as a diamond prevents a magnet from attracting iron.”

My note:
In the terms of Carl Gustav Jung, a person who transfers part of their soul into an object is an extravert.
A person, on the other hand, who resists the “occupation” of their energy by an object is an introvert.

As Jung showed, in one and the same person there operate both a movement of energy “outward” (extraverted) and “inward” (introverted).
However, one direction always dominates and orients consciousness in relation to the object.

More on this: → Extraversion and Introversion

Everything that awakens interest in a person and attracts their attention possesses attractive (divine) properties in their field. This thing (or this person) activates in them a “current of the soul”, a flow of energy, as a result of which the person feels better and more “life” appears in them.

The term “energy” was first introduced by Aristotle (384–322 BC) in “Physics”, where he meant activity, movement.

Many psychologists, for example Alexei Leontiev (1903–1979) and Gordon Allport (1897–1967), were of the opinion that a person’s personality can be entirely reduced to their activity.

The English physicist Thomas Young (1773–1829) recalled the Aristotelian term and reintroduced it into physics.

And about 100 years later, the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) described human energy as an interest directed toward something.

Energy is “allocated” to a person by their own brain: it produces dopamine and other substances responsible for the increase of energy.

However, the brain does this only when something interests the person. The stronger and the longer the interest, the more energy is released. People who are passionate about something radiate energy. However, they may also become exhausted if at some point their brain detects the futility of their efforts.

Even at the neurochemical level, the production of dopamine, which is responsible for motivation, depends on endorphins, which are responsible for the feeling of satisfaction with the result.

In apathy, the brain releases very little energy. The person feels shapeless and indifferent to everything. In a state of emotional uplift, on the contrary, there is a lot of energy — this is familiar to anyone who has experienced at least once a surge of motivation, inspiration, or passion.

Ancient occultists spoke of the existence of subtle fields in which a parallel life of a person unfolds, influencing their physical existence. Such spaces, in the understanding of the ancients, were filled with various entities: gods, spirits, elementals, on which the fate of a person depended.

Such a level cannot be simply regarded as a level of imagination, although imagination plays a role in it. In addition to one’s own imagination, many different forces take part in the formation of this level.

Note: These forces, in my view, are psychological functions — namely one’s own psychological functions, and nothing else that would stand between the object and its image in the psyche.

Today this level is called the “psychological field”, and many of its laws have been described.

Note: The question is whether the “psychological field” is an independent reality — or merely a way of describing the activity of the psyche.

Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927), a Russian psychiatrist and physiologist, wrote that between the psyche as a function of the brain and the actual activity of the psyche (thinking, behavior) there lies a mysterious field in which various events unfold that influence the activity of the psyche. This is a separate reality that should not be confused with what happens in a person’s life, although a person’s life depends on this reality.

Note:

It is unclear why the assumption of a “psychological field” as an independent entity between the function of the brain and the activity of the psyche should be introduced.

The “psychological field” is filled with images of objects, where by “objects” things of the real world are meant.

The activity of the psyche itself is this “psychological field” that stands between the function of the brain and the objective world.

It consists in forming a world model.

According to Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), in this psychic activity four fundamental forms can be distinguished — four fundamental psychological functions.

Jung writes:

“By psychological function I understand a certain form of psychic activity that, under different circumstances, remains in principle the same.”

More on this: → World Model and Psychological Functions – How Consciousness Models the World

The various events that influence the activity of the psyche take place in the real world (and our body also belongs to the real world).