They lie inside and all around the other phenomena we will study. They intermingle with body sensations and diffuse body states. Sometimes they are in the foreground and sometimes in the background. But everywhere we go they will be our companions and our guides and sometimes contribute greatly to our confusion. Nothing in depth therapy can match feelings in their fluidity of motion and in their ability to shift back and forth between themselves.
Feelings are the shape changers of the regressive world.
They also travel in two different kinds of opposing pairs. As if this weren't enough, they can be, and often are, invisible. In spite of this impressive list of chaotic achievements, once they are house-broken they are our best friends. When we are damaged in childhood, it is our feelings more than anything else which become dysfunctional. It is one of the great paradoxes of the mind that we shall turn to these dysfunctional elements and rely on them in the end to lead us home to health.