From primary affects to the complexities of mature sentiments — a psychiatrist's working model of why we feel what we feel, and what our emotions are quietly telling us about what we value.
efelBasics is the distilled core of a fifteen-year inquiry: a short theoretical essay on emotions, three applied phenomenological exercises, and thirty-three "magic ideas" — written for doctors, therapists, and anyone learning to read their own inner weather.
An essay on how a nation's spirit and value structure can be altered. Its central lesson: manipulation requires a manufactured misunderstanding of emotions. People who understand their emotions are hard to manipulate.
A practical guide shaped by the Viennese existential school of psychotherapy — an attempt to map emotions to values. It helped a few, and still helps someone from time to time. The code remained uncracked.
With alexithymia constantly in mind, a third attempt: the nucleus of the theme, published by the 13th of April — the author's lucky number, and his first son's birthday — from Valencia, with love.
The model grows from two roots. The first is professional: a private psychiatric practice, where intuition sometimes ran ahead of phenomenology but every imminent conclusion was tested against a reflective pause — is it really so?
The second is personal: watching a child grow, and watching the watcher — the relational interplay between parent and researcher — as emotions emerged one by one in real life, not in a laboratory.
FROM VALENCIA, WITH LOVE · 13 APRIL 2025
"To love as much as you can in life — that is the most pragmatic way of living, and the most difficult one."
The first axiom: the initial value is good — and not good. From that single fork, the whole spectrum unfolds in three ascending tiers. Select any emotion to read what it reveals.
The five basic emotions and their kin. Each resonates with the body and, if it persists, hardens into a state: joy → joyful, fear → scared, pain → sad, bitterness → upset, void → bored.
Four pre-accords — willed acceptances made in advance of loss. They open the spiritual dimension of the human being.
Four fundamental freedoms, each a choice. They exist even when their premises are long gone — like walking on water.
A basic affect is a message. How we answer it opens one of four doors — from quiet persistence to the ferry across the Styx.
Less like basic affects, more akin to sentiments: acts of will and choices made in relation to values. Together they form the bridge toward human maturity — and open the spiritual dimension of the human being.
A willed acceptance, in advance, of the possibility of losing a value. It empowers you to face challenge head-on, embracing the risk that comes with pursuing or defending what you hold dear.
A willed acceptance of experiencing the loss of a value — of living through the pain that comes with it. Where humbleness is missing, loss becomes impossible to cope with.
A willed acceptance of giving up a value or reconciling a disagreement — restoring harmony among one's values despite evident conflict, like resolving dissonance in jazz.
A willed acceptance of not yet recognising a value — committing to a cause through determination, in the absence of immediate reward or a visible sense of purpose.
Appears as a blend of all four pre-accords held at once — courage, humbleness, forgiveness, and dedication working together.
Its mirror image: a compound of the four basic emotions of the non-good, unanswered and unresolved.
Unlike every other benchmark of our subjective existence, sentiments are understood without error. Each one involves a choice; behind each choice stands the freedom of the person.
Normal confidence rests on one's actual abilities — the liberation felt after overcoming fear. Mature confidence rests on something deeper: a decision to accept even the worst life can offer, and to face it with serenity.
Not to be confused with being in love, which is an affective state. Love cherishes the other precisely because of who they are — a mother's unconditioned acceptance of her newborn, despite exhaustion. It can die, and it can revive.
Being true to oneself and one's values, not merely to a partner. An inner agreement visible in outer action — a clear conscience, harmony among one's values, and the quiet absence of guilt.
Felt at the end of significant effort, not in fleeting moments of pleasure. The deep agreement of having perceived one's values correctly across time and space — the feeling of a meaningful life.
Sentiments are specific to the human being. One can live without some of them — but they enrich the human experience.
Landmarks for error-free dialogue — they transcend subjective variation.
Born through a "miracle," or learned through touch — a complex mimetic learning.
They transcend individuals, enduring across generations — bringing light or darkness to the human spirit.
They take time to flourish and time to vanish, lending continuity to the human spirit.
Developed over years of training work: two group exercises rooted in Romanian dance forms — the sârba and the hora — done in silence, eyes closed, hand in hand; and one guided journey across time toward meaning.
The whole model, compressed into aphorisms. Draw one at random — or browse the deck and let one choose you.
Press draw to pull an idea from the deck.
The Deck