We are missing the solution because we don't understand the problem.
If I break my leg the cure is obvious: don't do anything for a month. Conveniently, it will hurt when I move my leg, so I won't try to move. The cure is only obvious because what actually constitutes the ailment (a broken leg) is obvious.
Now transfer this to psychological disorders. We don't know what exactly is wrong. Imagine if that were the case with the person with the broken leg. Current practice would be that the person goes to a doctor complaining that he doesn't feel like moving (because his leg hurts). The patient doesn't understand why, the doctor prescribes pain killers and - lo and behold - the patient feels like moving again. It worked! Great. But as soon as the patient tries to get off the medication, he finds that the pain returns (because the root cause of his symptoms has not been solved at all, he's probably worse off than he was before). In this example the so-called disease (leg pain, lack of willingness to be active) is not a disease at all. It is actually a part of the solution to the disease.
We are trying to 'cure' a disease without knowing what it is. When we try to solve problems without understanding their cause, we are bound to fail.
Human beings have accumulated enormous amounts of pent up emotion, that we began accumulating when thought activity started to appear in us hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before thought, emotion was solely the body's response to its physical environment, or more precisely: the body's response to its five senses. The body's natural response to emotion - fear, anger - is action which seeks to eliminate the threat: escape, fight (respectively).
When thought activity starts creating emotions, this approach no longer works. The mind can neither be escaped from, nor can we fight it. Well, we can fight it with alcohol, which many people resort to, but this is obviously not a real solution.
We have been trying to escape all these emotions that have pent up over the many many generations that have passed since thought first appeared in us, but are still stumbling because we don't understand what is happening. In some people emotions simply break out because it needs to. The body can simply no longer hold back the massive amount of emotional energy that has amassed in us since the birth of thought. Many people become insane when this happens; they are simply not able to handle the power of the emotions being released. Some jump off a building, others turn to drugs and alcohol, and yet others discover what is actually happening. They find out that there is nothing wrong with them, what is happening is actually quite healthy. They discover that they don't need to do anything; they are not sick. The symptoms that might be perceived as a disease (the massive out-flux of emotion) is actually the cure.
Resisting this process is what causes insanity. Emotional energy held back energizes the mind instead (it can't be held back) and the hyperactive mind creates more emotion, thus creating a vicious cycle that ends in either death, self-medication or a realization of what is happening. There is nothing wrong with anger, sadness or fear.
Treating emotions as a disease is the actual disease.
The idea that emotions are a kind of gas that you build up and need to release has been debunked for quite a long time. In fact it has been shown to be actively harmful. If you think carefully about what emotions are, that is, a nervous response to stimulous- it is a thing that happens. Not a substance. Emotions aren't a physical thing you can collect in a canister. The idea is kind of silly and outdated.
My experience says otherwise :). But we can agree to disagree.
Regarding your bicycle metaphor: just as a balloon releases gas into its surroundings, a bicycle - when we stop adding to its kinetic energy - transfers energy from itself to its surroundings until it stops. I think it's largely irrelevant whether we use the release of a physical substance or energy as a metaphor, but whatever works for you.
I also realize that I missed an important point in my previous post, which is gaining the ability to stop thinking when thinking isn't needed. This is basically the development of an awareness of thought activity. Since, as you correctly say, thoughts create emotions and vice verse, releasing emotional energy will not work if you keep creating new emotional energy through unconscious thinking. But this is really an integrated part of the release of emotions; the two things happen simultaneously. Indeed, some emotions cannot even be released/experienced until you become conscious of the previously unconscious thought patterns that held them back.
> The correct analogy is not of a balloon releasing gas, but a bicycle slowing down.
I guess part of my point was that just as the bicycle wheel doesn't stop immediately after we stop propelling it, emotions don't disappear immediately either even if thought activity subsides completely. There is an inertia left that can make us experience emotions related to an incident long after it has happened (even with no thought present). Very much like the remaining momentum of the bicycle wheel in the analogy.
What I mean is that, "venting" the traditional process of "releasing" emotions, rather than releasing the gas in a balloon, is actually just pedalling the bicycle, adding more energy to it.
Of course emotions have a long lasting effect. Unless you are a psychopath, you probably know that. Have you never been disappointed and wrestled with that for a long time? Like being left from a girl-friend or whatever?
That may be no "building up" (ie 10 times being left from a girl-friend does maybe not build 10 times the emotion from being left once), but it is not just a fleeting response to stimulus either.
Thoughts cause emotions and emotions cause thoughts. The brain is an engine and a feedback loop, an organic computer that can program itself. The correct analogy is not of a balloon releasing gas, but a bicycle slowing down.
As ZenPsycho says, this idea has been debunked and is harmful.
Take, for example, anxiety. Therapists used to think that there was a root cause, some deep-seated trauma. They thought that to treat the anxiety you needed to find and uncover the trauma, and get the patient to deal with it, and only then would the patient be free to deal with their anxiety. They thought that treating the anxiety directly would not help; that the trauma would cause further problems.
People would spend a long time in treatment.
Then cognitive models began to be introduced. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy was developed, and researched, and found to be effective. There's now a lot of evidence to support CBT.
A course of CBT lasts between 8 to 14 weeks, with one hour guided work per week and some hours of "homework" per week.
I'm not discounting Cognitive Behaviour Therapy at all. I haven't tried it myself, but I can see why it would help, since it deals with thoughts, which can create new emotions. As I wrote in reply to ZenPsycho, I really missed an important point in my post above, which is that unconscious thought activity creating new emotions is definitely a part of the condition.
Another way to explain the process I outlined above is to say that as a person becomes aware of his own thoughts, unconscious thought patterns are broken up and dissolved, and the emotions that were held back by these thought patterns are released/experienced. This is another, just as valid, perspective on the same process. So you are completely right to say that emotional release isn't the chief cause of the relief of symptoms; it's simply a part of the process that unfolds as we become more conscious of our thoughts.
If I break my leg the cure is obvious: don't do anything for a month. Conveniently, it will hurt when I move my leg, so I won't try to move. The cure is only obvious because what actually constitutes the ailment (a broken leg) is obvious.
Now transfer this to psychological disorders. We don't know what exactly is wrong. Imagine if that were the case with the person with the broken leg. Current practice would be that the person goes to a doctor complaining that he doesn't feel like moving (because his leg hurts). The patient doesn't understand why, the doctor prescribes pain killers and - lo and behold - the patient feels like moving again. It worked! Great. But as soon as the patient tries to get off the medication, he finds that the pain returns (because the root cause of his symptoms has not been solved at all, he's probably worse off than he was before). In this example the so-called disease (leg pain, lack of willingness to be active) is not a disease at all. It is actually a part of the solution to the disease.
We are trying to 'cure' a disease without knowing what it is. When we try to solve problems without understanding their cause, we are bound to fail.
Human beings have accumulated enormous amounts of pent up emotion, that we began accumulating when thought activity started to appear in us hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before thought, emotion was solely the body's response to its physical environment, or more precisely: the body's response to its five senses. The body's natural response to emotion - fear, anger - is action which seeks to eliminate the threat: escape, fight (respectively). When thought activity starts creating emotions, this approach no longer works. The mind can neither be escaped from, nor can we fight it. Well, we can fight it with alcohol, which many people resort to, but this is obviously not a real solution.
We have been trying to escape all these emotions that have pent up over the many many generations that have passed since thought first appeared in us, but are still stumbling because we don't understand what is happening. In some people emotions simply break out because it needs to. The body can simply no longer hold back the massive amount of emotional energy that has amassed in us since the birth of thought. Many people become insane when this happens; they are simply not able to handle the power of the emotions being released. Some jump off a building, others turn to drugs and alcohol, and yet others discover what is actually happening. They find out that there is nothing wrong with them, what is happening is actually quite healthy. They discover that they don't need to do anything; they are not sick. The symptoms that might be perceived as a disease (the massive out-flux of emotion) is actually the cure.
Resisting this process is what causes insanity. Emotional energy held back energizes the mind instead (it can't be held back) and the hyperactive mind creates more emotion, thus creating a vicious cycle that ends in either death, self-medication or a realization of what is happening. There is nothing wrong with anger, sadness or fear. Treating emotions as a disease is the actual disease.