Understanding and Helping People with Hallucinations Based on the Theory of Negative Legacy Emotions

This article applies the new concept of negative legacy emotions to understanding and helping people suffering with psychosis and hallucinations. The theory of negative legacy emotions proposes that guilt, shame, and anxiety result from biological evolution, specifically to inhibit human self-assertion, willfulness, and aggression in personal and family relationships. Because human beings are so violent, the species would have destroyed itself if natural selection had not favored individual humans with inhibitory or restraining emotional reactions in personal relationships. Unfortunately, negative legacy emotions are crude responses that can worsen aggression and fail to provide adequate guidelines for ethical adult living. Hallucinations share many qualities with guilt, shame, and anxiety, including a seemingly involuntary hold over individuals, making them compliant with them. Painful or disabling hallucinations are driven by guilt, shame, or anxiety. Rather than viewing hallucinations as essentially pa...