Posted by pseudoname on October 28, 2005, at 10:59:38
In reply to Since you mention psychoanalysis » pseudoname, posted by Declan on October 28, 2005, at 3:45:54
Declan, thanks for your response.
> You're not talking about ambivalence are you?
No. More like...
When some people look into bright light, they sneeze. I look at some good development and start having very strong, foul feelings unrelated to any other ideas or attitudes I may have. It's a post-hoc thing.
In psychoanalytic ambivalence (as I understand it), two opposing inclinations or feelings about something come into conflict over some possible future action – a choice. I don't really have opposing feelings. I cognitively evaluate a situation as "good" and start having bad feelings.
Having mixed feelings is something else, too. I don't seem to have *mixed* feelings when the foulness starts. It comes out of nowhere and increases the more I see that I've succeeded or whatever.
This is why I think it's maybe a reward system dysregulation. As the brain detects some good event, it triggers certain neurons to release DA or endorphins or whatever. I think in *my* brain, instead of detecting that release as a normal thing, my brain says, "Whoa! Too much!" and reverses the reward action until I feel WORSE than before.
Such a dysregulated response could get mistaken for ambivalence or unconscious self-destructive motivation or cognitive filtering or some other hypothesized psychological construct, and I have often tried to explain it in such terms. But the physiological theory fits my experience much better.
I don't remember ever reading anything that described what I'm trying to talk about. I was hoping that this might ring a bell for someone out there in Babbleland. Surely, I'm not the only one who experiences this.
poster:pseudoname
thread:572130
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051024/msgs/572690.html