Insight Editions · No. 472
Positive Uses of Psychic Energy
Attention, Interest and the Redirection of Inner Power
Manly P. Hall
Hall's essay on psychic energy: attention and interest, extravert and introvert, starving negative complexes, an inner leader, purpose, love and faith, and turning noble words into habit.
A study guide to Positive Uses of Psychic Energy by Manly P. Hall (Positive Uses of Psychic Energy, Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles; a single 32-page essay without chapters, divided here into four editorial parts). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Hall's short essay on psychic energy, the mental and emotional force that flows wherever attention goes and is fed by interest. Negative habits and complexes live on that energy, so the cure is to withdraw the supply and invest it in a clear, noble purpose. He tests every belief by conduct and closes with the gap between quoting ideals and energising them.
SCOPE
Energy on four levels; extravert and introvert; habits and complexes; why fighting faults feeds them; possessiveness and ambition; fatigue as alibi; Plato at the Academy; electing an inner leader; testing beliefs at home; avocations; living toward the future; boredom and renewal; Paderewski and dedication; mind and heart; faith; the gardener; mottoes and the Sermon on the Mount.
KEY FIGURES
Gautama Buddha; Plato; Academus; Ignace Paderewski; Francis Bacon; Jesus.
BEST FOR
Readers who want a short, practical Hall text on attention, habit and motivation, and anyone interested in how early twentieth-century esoteric teachers absorbed popular psychology.
The Book on One Page
One short essay with one law: energy follows attention. Starve what harms you, feed a worthy purpose, and test it all by how you live.
This is Hall the practical psychologist, writing a 32-page essay for students rather than a treatise on the occult. "Psychic" here means mental and emotional, not paranormal. The essay has no chapters, so this edition divides it into four editorial parts that follow Hall's own order.
Three ideas carry the book. First, energy follows attention: "We energize any subject or object toward which we direct attention." Second, starve, do not fight: complexes "depend, like all other forms of Nature, upon energy," and opposing them only feeds the conflict. Third, conduct is the test: "Any belief held by the mind must be subjected to the censorship of conduct."
"It is not possessions, but possessiveness, that must be renounced." The line shows the method in small: change the inner value, and the outer behaviour follows.
What this edition adds. Hall's examples in compressed form, tables and diagrams for his contrasts, and a critical lens in each part.
| Ch | Title | One-line payload |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Energy, Attention and the Two Directions | Four levels of energy; extravert and introvert; habits that end by owning the man. |
| 2 | Starving the Negative Patterns | Withdraw the supply; possessiveness and ambition; fatigue as alibi; Plato in the swamp. |
| 3 | Electing a Leader Within | An inner sovereign, beliefs tested at home, avocations, living toward the future. |
| 4 | Love, Faith and the Habit of Godliness | Dedication, mind and heart, faith in principles, and the house of mottoes. |
Read it as an early self-help essay on attention and habit. Its practical core (redirect instead of suppress, choose a purpose, test ideas in daily life, keep an avocation) is close to modern advice. Its asides on introverts, fatigue and faith are opinion, and the lenses mark them.
Energy, Attention and the Two Directions
Energy takes a different form on each level of human life. Attention steers it, interest feeds it, and its direction, outward or inward, shapes the whole temperament.
Four levels, one force. "All human accomplishment requires an expenditure of energy." On the spiritual level it appears as will, on the mental as attention, on the emotional as interest, and on the physical as bodily strength. Hall's subject is psychic energy, the mental and emotional pair. It is useful only "to the degree that it is applied to its legitimate ends," and knowing those ends depends on inner integrity.
Attention energises its object. "We energize any subject or object toward which we direct attention, and attention, in turn, is stimulated and strengthened by interest." A wandering attention gives "little, if any, penetration," which is what we call superficial. Love and hate run on "an identical energy" but lead to entirely different results.
Neither is better. "It is not necessarily bad to be an introvert, any more than it is inevitably good to be an extravert." Everything depends on integration. "The extravert interprets himself in terms of his world, and the introvert interprets the world in terms of himself. It remains for the truly integrated person to understand the world as it is." It takes real integration "to live deeply without being narrow and to live broadly without being shallow."
"First a man has a habit, and later the habit has the man." Habits are easy to break early. Fully grown, they become complexes with the force of obsessions. Hall adds that much of modern economic life is compensation: the "captains of industry" and "tycoons of finance" are often "unhappy human beings attempting to conceal inferiority complexes."
When the Buddha entered Nirvana, every creature came to watch except the cat, which saw a mouse "at the psychological moment" and gave chase. The parable shows that "the moment interest departs from its essential purpose, the direction of energy is changed."
The extravert and introvert types come from Carl Jung (1921), whom Hall does not name. Modern research treats them as a continuum, one of the more stable personality traits, not two camps. His sketch of the introvert as often unhappy, poorly adjusted and at risk of imbalance is harsher than the evidence. Introversion is not linked to mental illness in the way he suggests, though high neuroticism is. The claim about tycoons is a guess about motive, offered as fact.
Starving the Negative Patterns
Complexes live on attention. Fighting them feeds them; the cure is to withdraw their supply and invest it in a clear purpose.
Self-interest cuts both ways. Most people are "interested primarily in themselves," so energy flows readily to personal goals. If self-interest drives self-improvement, it is a powerful tool. If it is morbid, it becomes self-pity or "a persecution complex," and "thinking about himself" usually means "reliving unfortunate incidents." The neurotic "defeats the purpose of the lesson": he excuses his faults, forgets his effect on others, and when challenged decides he is misunderstood.
No one can make another happy. We can protect, provide and invite, but happiness "depends upon a psychic integration." A person ruled by negative habits "may even become more miserable when reminded that he could be happy."
"The only way to effectively cure negative attitudes is to withdraw their supply of psychic energy." Throwing one charged attitude against another "only increases the conflict." Zen and Vedanta teach control of energy at its source. "It is not possessions, but possessiveness, that must be renounced," and that is possible only once a higher value is accepted. Buddhists say ambition must turn into aspiration: "Ambition causes a man to conquer a nation, but aspiration inspires him to improve his own character."
| Negative pattern | How it grows | Hall's correction |
|---|---|---|
| Complexes and neuroses | Like "malignant psychical growths" spreading through healthy tissue | Face them honestly and stop feeding them |
| Purposelessness | "As a neglected field is overrun with weeds" | Hold a clear, useful purpose with emotional conviction |
| Psychic fatigue | Proving "that we are tired" and why | Make the demand clear; energy comes "upon demand" |
| Worry about pollution and food | Talking of it "continuously ... compound[s] a disaster" | Act to protect health, without resentment |
| "I can't help it" | Repeated until weakness seems inborn | Remember it costs more to live with negation than to overcome it |
Fatigue as alibi. "Many persons work very hard trying to prove to themselves and others that they are too tired to work." Yet "there is always energy available for activities which are enjoyable." Most exhaustion "results from frustration and futility rather than overwork."
Plato's friends raised a ransom after he was sold into slavery and used it to buy cheap, swampy land owned by Academus. When Plato caught a dangerous fever there, friends urged him to move. He replied that as he was the one who was ill, he would decide, restored his health philosophically, and stayed for the rest of his life. "A change of mind is more solutional than a change of place."
"Withdraw the supply" matches modern findings that suppressing a thought often strengthens it, and that redirecting attention works better. Hall's account of fatigue as mostly psychological is too broad: depression, anaemia, thyroid disease and chronic fatigue syndrome are real, and telling such people they are making excuses can cause harm. Comparing complexes to cancer is vivid but only a metaphor, and his advice not to dwell on pollution reads oddly now that food and air quality are measurable public-health problems.
Electing a Leader Within
A divided nature needs a sovereign. Test beliefs by conduct, widen the frame of reference, balance work with play, and keep moving forward instead of living in the past.
The hundred men. If a hundred uncertain men meet to plan an enterprise, they "mill about in confusion" until they elect officers. So with a person: senses, moods and habits will not co-operate by themselves, so Nature lets man "elect a sovereign power within himself." Attention, once positive, acts as that leader and "lifts the entire internal life to a new level." Optimism alone is not enough; we need "a vision of that which is proper and right."
Prove it at home first. Ideas that cannot be applied should be held "in suspension." People keep beliefs private often because they "instinctively know they will not work." The Chinese taught that a would-be reformer should first ennoble "the life in his home." When we fail on the physical plane, we escape by deciding we have "a larger mission."
A larger frame. A code that only limits "should be revised," and clinging to an outgrown one "is not loyalty, but mere stubbornness." Hall wants religion and philosophy cultivated together, so that "faith is sustained by judgment, and reason is enriched by mystical apperception."
- Keep two interests. Attention cannot hold two objects at once, so give it a dominant and a sub-dominant. "The individual who never plays reaches the condition in which he can no longer work."
- Do not live in the past. An elderly woman proud never to have used a car, film or radio had "no sympathy" for anyone around her. "We either advance or regress; and we are here to advance."
- Never go back. Revisiting childhood scenes disappoints because we have changed; "always travel forward into the unknown."
- Be a person of vision. "It is not good to be a visionary, but it is very good to be a person of vision."
A wealthy, apologetic businessman began collecting art behind a curator, then founded a public gallery. Over ten years he became more expert than the curator, and his family and friends found him better company. Paralysed in old age, he ran business and gallery from a wheelchair. "He had poured energy into an idea and, when emergency came, the idea sustained him."
Boredom kills. "More persons die of boredom than almost any other ailment." When a person can no longer change his pattern, Nature breaks it, often by death. Yet "death occurs every time man has a new idea." Attention moves energy from old to new, and the person "like the fabled phoenix, is resurrected from the ashes of his own dead past."
The case for an avocation and for testing beliefs by practice is sound and echoes research on recovery from work and on purpose in later life, which is linked to better health and longer survival. "Boredom kills more than almost any ailment" is overstated, though loneliness and lack of purpose are real risk factors.
Love, Faith and the Habit of Godliness
Whole-hearted dedication, love, faith in principles, and beauty in the soul turn noble words into living conduct. Mottoes on the wall do not.
Ninety per cent perspiration. We envy success and forget that art is "ten per cent inspiration and ninety per cent perspiration." Paderewski said that if he missed practice one day he knew it, two days his friends knew it, three days the world knew it. Half-hearted interest means "only parts of the ... resources of the personality are available." One of the great releasers of energy is love, which brings "a kind of self-forgetfulness which is a purifier." The Greek code: "worship the One, love the Beautiful, and serve the Good."
The mind tends to centralise and accumulate; the emotions tend to distribute. "As bodies of water which have no outlet are inclined to stagnate, so the closed mind soon breeds corruption." Hence: "We learn in order that we may serve; we think in order that we may guide." The mind keeps the emotions from wasting themselves on trivia, "but the mind must never frustrate the benevolent inclination of the heart."
Virtues agree; vices fight. Art and music support philosophy and religion, since all draw on the same patterns of harmony. "Virtues support each other, but vices have no common denominator." Negative patterns attack each other until the person must change, so "negative patterns can never triumph over positive ones."
| Faith directed to | Result |
|---|---|
| Principles, not personalities | Survives changing circumstances |
| Ideals, not external objects | Gives conviction force in emergencies |
| The good, truth and Providence | Clarifies the final aim, "identity with Deity" |
| Nothing (materialism) | Loses what Bacon called "the colors of the soul"; "unbelief is a kind of luxury" for prosperous years |
The gardener. The light of the soul ripens weeds as well as crops, so thought and emotion must guard the harvest. Children left to grow "like flowers in the field" become "wild flowers" who cannot control themselves; "a neglected soul becomes a burden upon the body which it inhabits."
Christians agree the Sermon on the Mount is inspired and might die for their faith, yet few practise "Blessed are the Peacemakers." They are "not deficient in knowledge"; they "have failed to energize their convictions." Hall was once called to a home hung with embroidered mottoes, including "May the Spirit of Peace Abide in This House," which was "a battleground of selfishness, hatefulness, and intolerance." The motto did not bring peace, and neither can "a well-turned phrase stored in the memory."
Want it like a new car. People cheerfully take on debt for a new automobile, then neglect it once owned. "When we want internal security as sincerely as we want a new automobile, we will make any sacrifice necessary." "Where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also." When tired, "turn the faculty of attention to some nobler dream ... and experience rest and refreshment." We are exhausted "because we try to live well and fully without maturing the graces of the soul."
The gap between belief and practice is real and well studied as the intention-behaviour gap; Hall's remedy, repeated attention plus emotional investment, fits what is known about habit formation. Less secure are his claims that faith is "a necessity to the survival of the person" and that materialists lack resources in crisis: many non-religious people cope well, and studies of religion and resilience show mixed results. His rejection of permissive parenting fits later research favouring warm but firm authoritative parenting, though not the harsher control some readers might take from it.
What the Book Adds Up To
A single law applied four ways: attention is the steering wheel of inner energy, and character is what we have steered it toward.
Read as a whole, the essay is an economics of attention. Energy is limited in the body though not in the universe, so where it goes matters. Feed fixations and they grow; feed a purpose and it carries you through emergencies, as the gallery carried the paralysed businessman. Hall's most useful move is to treat faults as starved, not slain: no heroic battle, just a quiet shift of interest to something better.
The essay also carries a critique of words without practice: revered sermons not practised, mottoes about peace in quarrelling homes. Ideas must be energised into habit.
Master Takeaways
- Energy follows attention. Whatever we attend to grows stronger.
- Interest feeds attention. We attend to what is partly known and wanted.
- Integration matters more than type. Extravert or introvert, balance is the goal.
- Habits become masters. Break them early.
- Starve, do not fight. Withdraw energy from complexes instead of opposing them.
- Renounce possessiveness. Possessions are not the problem.
- Turn ambition into aspiration. Aim to become better, not bigger.
- Purpose prevents weeds. A clear purpose leaves little room for negative patterns.
- Fatigue is often an alibi. There is always energy for what we enjoy.
- Change your mind, not your place. Misery travels with us.
- Elect an inner leader. One sovereign aim unites the faculties.
- Test beliefs by conduct. Start at home.
- Keep an avocation. Alternating interests prevent exhaustion.
- Live toward the future. Do not go back.
- Energise ideals. Mottoes and memorised phrases change nothing alone.
- Want inner security like a new car. Then the sacrifice will seem small.
Frameworks
| Framework | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Four levels of energy | Part 1 | Will, attention, interest and bodily strength |
| Extravert and introvert | Part 1 | Direction of energy and its strengths and risks |
| Withdraw the supply | Part 2 | Cures negative attitudes by starving them |
| Ambition into aspiration | Part 2 | Redirects drive from outer gain to character |
| The elected sovereign | Part 3 | Unites faculties under one purpose |
| Mind gathers, heart distributes | Part 4 | Learning must flow into service |
| The Greek code | Part 4 | Worship the One, love the Beautiful, serve the Good |
The essay's core holds up. Modern psychology agrees that attention shapes experience, that suppression often backfires, that habits form by repetition and cue, and that purpose predicts health. Hall's "energy" is a metaphor, though; nothing in neuroscience measures a fixed store of psychic energy, and the popular idea that willpower runs out like fuel has failed several large replication attempts. He also treats fatigue and unhappiness as attitude problems, which can wrong people with depression or illness. Take the method, and leave the moralising.
Who's who
| Person | Role in the book |
|---|---|
| Gautama Buddha | The parable of the cat that missed the Nirvana |
| Plato | Stayed at the swampy Academy and restored his health |
| Ignace Paderewski | Model of whole-hearted practice |
| Francis Bacon | Quoted on "the colors of the soul" lost to materialism |
| Jesus | The Sermon on the Mount as a code believed but not practised |
Connect it
- AI and attention. Hall's law that energy follows attention is the business model of feeds and notifications; responsible AI design should help users direct attention to chosen goals rather than capture it.
- Enterprise architecture. "Starve, do not fight" fits legacy decommissioning: stop new investment in a failing platform and route work to the target state rather than fighting the old system head-on.
- Banking and change. The house of mottoes is every values poster in a branch; conduct, not slogans, is what supervisors and customers judge.