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Pasion y razon / Passion and Reason: La comprension de nuestras emociones/ Making Sense of Our Emotions (Contextos/ Contexts)
Cuando Richard Lazarus publicó en 1991 Emotion and Adaptation, considerado el mejor libro sobre la psicología de las emociones editado hasta la fecha, la revista Contemporary Psychology lo recibió como «una refulgente estrella en el firmamento de los libros sobre el tema». Ahora, con Pasión y razón, Lazarus se basa en cuatro décadas de investigaciones personales para ofrecer a los lectores el primer libro que va más allá tanto de la jerga clínica como del lenguaje típico de la autoayuda con el fin de explicar de verdad, en un estilo llano y accesible, cómo surgen las emociones, cómo se pueden controlar y cómo dan forma a nuestra opinión sobre nosotros mismos y el mundo que nos rodea. Lazarus, experto en estrés, se dedica a describir la manera en que los lectores pueden interpretar lo que hay detrás de sus emociones y las de sus familiares, amigos y colegas. Y no sólo explora quince de esas emociones en profundidad, del amor a los celos, sino que con ello también explica el significado personal que damos a los acontecimientos y las condiciones de nuestra vida, siempre estrechamente relacionado con emociones tales como el enojo, la ansiedad, la culpa y el orgullo. Así, demuestra estar convencido de que, contrariamente a lo que suele creerse, las emociones no son irracionales, están inextricablemente relacionadas con nuestros procesos de pensamiento analítico. A la vez profundo y ameno, se trata de un libro, en fin, que fascinará a todos aquellos que sientan algún interés por la vida emocional del hombre y la mujer modernos.
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First published January 1, 1994
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April 2, 2014
This is not an easy book to read. It’s tedious and frustrating. The authors discuss fifteen emotions without defining emotion or indicating why they take these emotions and not another fifteen emotions. They observe that some emotions are nasty (anger, envy, jealousy), others are existential (anxiety-freight, guilt, shame), still others are provoked by unfavorable circumstances (relief, hope, sadness, depressions) or by favorable life conditions (happiness, hope, sadness and depression), and they close with empathetic emotions (gratitude, compassion, and those aroused by aesthetic experiences”). There's a lot buried in this way of categorizing emotions.
It's not until halfway into the book that the semblance of an underlying theory of emotion emerges. Taking some liberty perhaps, the authors' theory seems to run along the following lines: (1) emotions are triggered by some benefit or harm; (2) benefit and harm are defined as those that provide benefit or harm to the Ego/Self; (3) the Ego/Self (cognitively) appraises the outside world in two ways – that which is good or bad regarding the goals for the Ego/Self, and a cognitive program that designs a solution; (4) the Ego/Self sits there and waits for a provocation that arouses an emotion; and then (5) the Ego/Self reacts with “an action tendency,” which is to say, it reacts to the provocation with an emotion.
What is missing from this portrait of the Ego/Self is an active being. The authors do not see the Self as the sort of being that goes out into the world and creates its livelihood and contributes to its own survival that way. The self is an active seeker as well as an active defender and to be active, the self must be motivated by need (what it wants) and anti-need (what it doesn't want). This is what is missing in the authors' theory. They see emotions as reactions, but this begs the question: Why does the self get angry, why does it envy, or get jealous, feel guilty and shame, etc. As reactions, in the authors' view, emotions are created by the outside environment (e.g., we are angry because we're insecure; we are shy because feel “personally inadequate” due to our upbringing), and this leads them to look at the underlying family history that created some of the problems for the self. No doubt, there are strong impacts this way, but this also misses the underlying, drivers about why we emote as we do. The authors also cast a negative tinge on anger as a nasty emotion, and state that it might be because someone offended the Self. But why was the self offended? Because the Ego demands it, the authors say, but why does the Ego care? When the self is seen as needing to be a valued member of the group, and that this need has biological origins per Darwin, the reason for feeling angry begins to make sense. Anger is not just a problem for the recipient, but it's also a vehicle for the Self to defend itself. It is a positive emotion, in other words. Each of the emotions that the authors list has this deeper “need” component that is strikingly missing from their theory.
As the reader moves through this book, the authors begin to qualify their definition of emotion as those that are acute (as in “acute emotions”). This explains spurts of fright, anger, jealousy, a sense of relief and a momentary impulse of hope, a pang of pride, a moment of gratitude or feeling of compassion. But this parses emotions into overly constrained categories, leading the authors to make distinctions that strain the mind. Happiness is an acute emotion of feeling happy whereas a general happiness state is “subjective well-being.” So, we don't feel happy, they say, but we do feel well-being. Love is an acute emotion – particular as to source and time – but this is distinguished from a more generalized love, which the authors call a “sentiment.” We don't love our parents, but feel the sentiment of love toward them (an indication of how intellectual this gets is when the authors write that “there's probably something quite biological in the tendency to want to care for a baby”). The authors run into another problem with acute emotions. It is hard to envisage an acute “existential” emotion, when the threat is vague and uncertain. The authors talk about the “many faces” of emotion, as any provoking event seems to pull in all or many of their fifteen emotions. But their “many faces” might also include all their various terminologies: acute emotions, well-being state, mood, sentiment, and statements such as stating that something that is emotional is not an emotion.
The authors' discussion of the relationship between cognition and emotion is good, to a point. For them, the “emotional process” is all about personal meaning and that comes from an appraisal (stage 1) and then figuring out how to deal with something (stage 2). This puts most of the emotional processing into the conscious mind whereas it's more probably the case that most of the appraising happens non-consciously. The body has a mind of its own, so to say. When that gets dug out and placed into consciousness via therapy, it becomes “objectified” and then can be, perhaps, dealt with effectively if there's a problem.
In the end, the authors seem to be discussing a subset of emotions – those that have an acute element. They are missing the “need or don't need" motivational component that explains why we care one way or another and care enough to emote. They are missing the types of emotional states – so we not only have a moment of happiness, but we also have a more generalized happy state when we have a slew of happiness moments. The authors continually use anger and anxiety as examples of how we react to the world because these are so obviously reactive, defensive emotions. But these don't cover the outward-oriented, inner-impulse emotions like love, and compassion and the various social emotions (per Darwin, the need for pride, the need to not be excluded from the group, hence guilt and shame, the need for a sexual mate) that we actively express and seek. The authors do not make a distinction between success at seeking to fulfill our goals (a happiness state that is the end of action) and the lack of success of seeking or defending (a sadness state), from the active and reactive actions that contribute to success (happiness) and failure (sadness). These components, along with non-cognitive appraisal, seem to be essential part of our emotional make up. “Need and don't need” make us move in the world – emote via action or reaction. Success or failure, happiness and sadness, is the end result of action and reaction.
For the most part in our pre-consciousness stage, emotions have served our survival and reproduction goals well enough. Consciousness adds to all of this and gives us a more refined and sophisticated capacity to survive in the world. When we instinctively jump at the shadow of a snake, consciousness comes in a fraction of a second later and tells us it's a shadow, not a snake (a la LeDoux), and this might be how we are more human than animal.
It's not until halfway into the book that the semblance of an underlying theory of emotion emerges. Taking some liberty perhaps, the authors' theory seems to run along the following lines: (1) emotions are triggered by some benefit or harm; (2) benefit and harm are defined as those that provide benefit or harm to the Ego/Self; (3) the Ego/Self (cognitively) appraises the outside world in two ways – that which is good or bad regarding the goals for the Ego/Self, and a cognitive program that designs a solution; (4) the Ego/Self sits there and waits for a provocation that arouses an emotion; and then (5) the Ego/Self reacts with “an action tendency,” which is to say, it reacts to the provocation with an emotion.
What is missing from this portrait of the Ego/Self is an active being. The authors do not see the Self as the sort of being that goes out into the world and creates its livelihood and contributes to its own survival that way. The self is an active seeker as well as an active defender and to be active, the self must be motivated by need (what it wants) and anti-need (what it doesn't want). This is what is missing in the authors' theory. They see emotions as reactions, but this begs the question: Why does the self get angry, why does it envy, or get jealous, feel guilty and shame, etc. As reactions, in the authors' view, emotions are created by the outside environment (e.g., we are angry because we're insecure; we are shy because feel “personally inadequate” due to our upbringing), and this leads them to look at the underlying family history that created some of the problems for the self. No doubt, there are strong impacts this way, but this also misses the underlying, drivers about why we emote as we do. The authors also cast a negative tinge on anger as a nasty emotion, and state that it might be because someone offended the Self. But why was the self offended? Because the Ego demands it, the authors say, but why does the Ego care? When the self is seen as needing to be a valued member of the group, and that this need has biological origins per Darwin, the reason for feeling angry begins to make sense. Anger is not just a problem for the recipient, but it's also a vehicle for the Self to defend itself. It is a positive emotion, in other words. Each of the emotions that the authors list has this deeper “need” component that is strikingly missing from their theory.
As the reader moves through this book, the authors begin to qualify their definition of emotion as those that are acute (as in “acute emotions”). This explains spurts of fright, anger, jealousy, a sense of relief and a momentary impulse of hope, a pang of pride, a moment of gratitude or feeling of compassion. But this parses emotions into overly constrained categories, leading the authors to make distinctions that strain the mind. Happiness is an acute emotion of feeling happy whereas a general happiness state is “subjective well-being.” So, we don't feel happy, they say, but we do feel well-being. Love is an acute emotion – particular as to source and time – but this is distinguished from a more generalized love, which the authors call a “sentiment.” We don't love our parents, but feel the sentiment of love toward them (an indication of how intellectual this gets is when the authors write that “there's probably something quite biological in the tendency to want to care for a baby”). The authors run into another problem with acute emotions. It is hard to envisage an acute “existential” emotion, when the threat is vague and uncertain. The authors talk about the “many faces” of emotion, as any provoking event seems to pull in all or many of their fifteen emotions. But their “many faces” might also include all their various terminologies: acute emotions, well-being state, mood, sentiment, and statements such as stating that something that is emotional is not an emotion.
The authors' discussion of the relationship between cognition and emotion is good, to a point. For them, the “emotional process” is all about personal meaning and that comes from an appraisal (stage 1) and then figuring out how to deal with something (stage 2). This puts most of the emotional processing into the conscious mind whereas it's more probably the case that most of the appraising happens non-consciously. The body has a mind of its own, so to say. When that gets dug out and placed into consciousness via therapy, it becomes “objectified” and then can be, perhaps, dealt with effectively if there's a problem.
In the end, the authors seem to be discussing a subset of emotions – those that have an acute element. They are missing the “need or don't need" motivational component that explains why we care one way or another and care enough to emote. They are missing the types of emotional states – so we not only have a moment of happiness, but we also have a more generalized happy state when we have a slew of happiness moments. The authors continually use anger and anxiety as examples of how we react to the world because these are so obviously reactive, defensive emotions. But these don't cover the outward-oriented, inner-impulse emotions like love, and compassion and the various social emotions (per Darwin, the need for pride, the need to not be excluded from the group, hence guilt and shame, the need for a sexual mate) that we actively express and seek. The authors do not make a distinction between success at seeking to fulfill our goals (a happiness state that is the end of action) and the lack of success of seeking or defending (a sadness state), from the active and reactive actions that contribute to success (happiness) and failure (sadness). These components, along with non-cognitive appraisal, seem to be essential part of our emotional make up. “Need and don't need” make us move in the world – emote via action or reaction. Success or failure, happiness and sadness, is the end result of action and reaction.
For the most part in our pre-consciousness stage, emotions have served our survival and reproduction goals well enough. Consciousness adds to all of this and gives us a more refined and sophisticated capacity to survive in the world. When we instinctively jump at the shadow of a snake, consciousness comes in a fraction of a second later and tells us it's a shadow, not a snake (a la LeDoux), and this might be how we are more human than animal.
February 23, 2022
This was a required reading book for one of my college classes--I don't recall which one now, but definitely a psych class. Because of what I've learned through the Life Coach School about thoughts and feelings, this book seems a little obsolete. We know that thoughts create emotions and that emotions don't just appear from out of nowhere, even though sometimes they seem to. It's what we're thinking about our circumstances that creates our feelings, not our circumstances themselves that create our feelings. The idea that emotions have "plots" to them is a little convoluted.
“Many myths exist about emotions, and we will try to dispel them in this book. One is that emotions are irrational and do not depend on thinking and reasoning. Actually, emotions and intelligence go hand in hand, which is why humans, highly intelligent beings, are such emotional animals.” pg. 3
“Two interrelated themes echo in the pages that follow. The first is that the emotions are products of personal meaning, which depends on what is important to us and the things we believe about ourselves and the world. It is the meaning we give to the events and conditions of our lives that makes us feel angry, anxious, guilty, happy, proud, loving, and so forth. To understand our own or another’s emotions is to understand the ways people interpret the significance of daily events in their lives, and how these events affect their personal well-being.” pg. 5 [The second theme is that each emotion has a distinctive dramatic plot we all can readily recognize. The plot defines what we believe is happening to us and its significance for our individual well-being.]
“Envy is usually regarded as akin to jealousy and discussed along with it, probably because our language is ambiguous about the important difference between them. In the English language, jealousy can denote either jealousy or envy, while envy is used only in the sense of wanting something another person possesses. Because their meanings are often confused, but readily distinguished, we discuss envy and jealousy separately.
It is a frequent but incorrect usage to say ‘I am jealous of you’ for having this or that. Envy is a two-person emotion. Jealousy, in contrast, is a three-way triangle in which someone threatens or has taken what we consider ours, most often the affection of a third party. . . We envy the person who has a good job but are jealous of the person who got the good job to which we aspired.” pg. 31
“Remember that especially in people who display the character trait of envy, the things desired are not just material; envious people do not feel accepted or positively valued by others as a person. This lack or need, which the person may not clearly recognize, potentiates envy of all sorts of things that symbolize this lack of acceptance and regard. We envy others most who are highly thought of, admired, influential, and successful in their life roles, especially when we ourselves have major doubts about our value as persons.” pg. 34
“In a zero sum game, which means that if someone else is loved, hired, promoted, or given a prize, there is no room left for you to win, someone else’s gain is your loss. In envy, you want what you do not have or never had; in jealousy, you have lost, or are threatened with the loss, of what you once possessed or thought you possessed.” pg. 38
“It is worth adding that people who are recurrently anxious may have serious doubts about their own adequacy. Even if these doubts are suppressed, they lead such people to feel threatened when demands are made on them that exceed their resources. When coping efforts fail, things go from bad to worse.” pg. 45
“To sum up the plot for anxiety, the provocation is some upcoming event whose concrete manifestations are characterized as uncertain threat, such as the out come of an illness, a performance to be evaluated, a social interaction with the potential for criticism or social disapproval, and so forth. The underlying personal meaning of the threat is existential in that it deals with who we are in the world, our future well-being, and life and death. This meaning is constructed by people out of the situation they are facing and the personal goals and beliefs about themselves and the world that are acquired over a lifetime. We cope with the concrete threat by trying to prepare for what might happen, by not thinking about it, or by constructing new threat-reducing meanings to manage it. However, coping with an anxiety-producing threat is difficult because of its vague, existential underpinnings, which make us uncertain what will happen, when it will happen, and what can be done about it.” pg. 51
“The difficult problem in shame is to dissociate what has happened from the way one defines one’s character. We can feel shame for some given act that goes against one’s personal ideals and exposes us to the scorn of others, but still manage not to include this in our self-definition.” pg. 62
“Synonyms for shame include humiliation, embarrassment, mortification, chagrin, and feeling ridiculous, each with its own connotation. For example, humiliation and mortification convey very strong reactions; embarrassment conveys a much milder reaction. Although some writers treat shyness as a form of shame, we think it is better treated as a type of social anxiety, though akin to shame in the sense that it also involves the threat of personal exposure.
The personal ideals relevant to shame consist of the ways we wish to be known as individuals. They may have little or nothing to do with morality, and can be conveyed by diverse adjectives, such as courageous, clever, decent, tough-minded, a bold warrior, street smart. . . and so forth.” pg. 63
“Our subjective experiences and the behaviors we display when we experience guilt and shame are also different. Although there is inner pain in both, the kind of pain is not the same. In guilt we want publicly to atone for our sins, but we hide our shame from others.” pg. 63-64
“According to the psychoanalyst Helen Lewis, who has done the most work with shame, the threat underlying the development of shame is criticism, rejection, or abandonment, which is the punishment the child imagines for not living up to expectations.” pg. 64
“Relief always begins with the frustration of a goal, resulting temporarily in several distressing emotions, usually anger, anxiety, guilt, shame, envy, or jealousy. But when the frustrating condition has changed for the better or gone away, we experience the dramatic plot of relief. Although the troubled life condition may have lasted for some time, perhaps years, the change that precipitated our relief dispels the previous and distressing emotional state in what seems like an instant.” pg. 68
“We should also address the idea of false hope—that is, hope that goes against all realistic odds—in which case it is viewed as an undesirable method of coping with potential disaster. In the introduction to his wife’s book, Seymour Epstein, Alice’s husband, successfully dispels this negative view of hope.
‘Some physicians object to a psychological approach because they fear it will produce “false hope.” I have never quite understood what false hope is. All hope is “false” in the sense that what is hoped for many not materialize. At the time of hoping one cannot know the outcome. If the hope serves to improve one’s quality of life and does not cause one to avoid taking adaptive action when it is possible, nor be resentful when the hoped-for outcome does not materialize, then it is obviously desirable.’” pg. 71
“We are apt to be in a sad or depressed mood when our life in general seems misshapen, when people appear ugly to us, when life is disorderly and has no meaning, when the fates are against us, when we experience holiday blues when everyone else seems happy. With this dour outlook, we feel sad, depressed, and bad about our life.
The same uncertainty can also be expressed about feeling happy. We are apt to be in a happy mood when we sense that our lives are proceeding favorably, that we are wonderful or masterful, loved and appreciated, when we believe that people are good, that life is meaningful, orderly, just, and that the fates are with us. With this upbeat outlook, we feel happy, lighthearted, cheerful, good.” pg. 85
“This scenario describes one of the oldest and most interesting philosophical dilemmas about happiness and well-being. It is that we cannot successfully seek to feel happy as a goal of life; the feeling is a by-product of using our natural capacities well and striving for something other than our own positive well-being. Unfortunately, many people hope ‘just to be happy,’ and make that their goal. From what we know of human nature, however, they are bound to be disappointed. Anticipation of some event or goal is apt to be better than gaining the outcome we seek.” pg. 93-94
“But love is not necessarily the same experience for the two people experiencing it. Put differently, the personal meaning of love differs from person to person. Thus, one partner may view love negatively as a sacrifice of independence and autonomy, while the other remains smitten. Some partners connect love strongly with sex, but others do not. For them, the wish of one partner may be to share private thoughts, goals, and experiences, while the other may have little interest in or capacity for such sharing. Intensity of feeling and demonstrativeness may also differ for the partners. For one, there may be a strong commitment to the relationship, while for the other commitment is weak.” pg. 107
“We need to distinguish love as an acute emotion from love as a sentiment. We speak of the sentiment of love when we describe the love of one (or both) partner for the other; the emotion of love is only aroused from time to time, which is quite normal. We couldn’t stand experiencing any strong emotion for long, much less constantly—it would consume us.
The acute emotion of love comes and goes in a loving relationship. It is provoked by the sight of the other, a particular interchange, a favorable opportunity, a romantic atmosphere, seeing or hearing the other, and perhaps something more physical like a surge of sex hormones.” pg. 108-109
“The dramatic plot of romantic love is clear to most of us: desiring or participating in affection and physical intimacy, usually but not necessarily reciprocated. The problematic nature of reciprocity recognizes that one may love without being loved in return, what we referred to earlier as unrequited love. In this case, love is a consequence of the wish to love and be loved, not necessarily the reality of being loved in return.” pg. 109
“Loss of love in an ongoing relationship carries similar dangers of producing hurt and damage to the ego; the response might be dangerous levels of anger, or even depression and grieving over the loss. There is probably no human relationship in our society that is more socially complex and sensitive, and contains more emotional hazards, than seeking and maintaining love.” pg. 111
“Commitment has little directly to do with love as an emotion, though it may be a condition of falling in love for some people. Love me, but not just for my body, might be the message directly or indirectly communicated to the uncommitted. Commitment declares that one has a stable concern about the well-being of the partner, which is how society usually defines real love. Commitment is an intention to ignore the inevitable periods in a relationship when the emotion of love is not experienced, or has faded completely.” pg. 111
“Idealizing romantic love—and linking it to commitment—naturally complicates the expectations we develop about love and its stability. This is one of the most serious mistakes people make as they approach love relationships. Many a marital disappointment has stemmed from romanticized and unrealistic notions about love as a constant state of mind in which the partners never falter in their mutual idolatry.
The problem with love as an emotion is that passion waxes and wanes and cannot be sustained moment by moment over the long haul. Long-term relationships are not conducive to constant passion or the acute emotion of love, but the meanings required for active loving feelings surface from time to time, mainly under favorable conditions, when other considerations in the relationship take a back seat.” pg. 112
“Needing help is, for many people, a psychological problem, especially in our individualistic society. Not being able to take care of oneself or being a burden to others is painful and damaging to the ego. We admire people who get along on their own and fulfill useful roles in society, and there is a special stigma that attaches to anyone who must take from others.” pg. 119-120
“Although it is not an emotion, empathy is a very important human capacity on which compassion is based. It begins to display itself in childhood and requires the ability to identify with others and sense their plight. Only if we can put ourselves in another’s shoes can we relate to them fully and display our humanity toward them. When we watch the happiness or suffering of people in a play or a movie, we imagine ourselves in their situation and experience some measure of what they feel. This uniquely human tendency is one of the primary mechanisms for understanding others and being able to appreciate their experience.
Unlike empathy, in which we relate to another’s emotion, compassion is a single emotional state, which we ourselves generate and experience. Although we can feel compassion, because we are capable of identifying and empathizing, feeling compassion is our own state of mind, not merely a copy of the emotion of another person.” pg. 125
“The playwright draws on our fears, wishes, and vulnerabilities. If the playwright is skillful, we get to know each of the characters intimately, their desires, frustrations, troubled history, and the tragic mistakes and flaws that have gotten them into the trouble they are in. We understand them. We all have our favorite plots, which reflect particular features of our own personalities and life experiences.” pg. 131
“We have seen how personal meaning, which is constructed by us, shapes the emotion we will experience. Far from being irrational, we have seen how the emotions follow from the thought processes of intelligent beings. What is no doubt now apparent is that emotion and thought are inseparable in humans.” pg. 139
“Two motivational factors are necessary to arouse an emotion. First, an event must transform a routine encounter into one that involves personal harm of benefit. In other words, an emotional encounter touches on something that we want or don’t want to happen. We are keen to attain a goal and the other person in an encounter either facilitates, threatens, or frustrates the attainment. The more important the goal—that is, the more we want something to happen or not to happen—the stronger the emotion will be. Without a significant goal at stake, an encounter with another person or the physical environment will not be emotional.
Second, the way we judge the fate of the goal, whether actual or potential, determines whether the emotion will be positive (for a benefit) or negative (for a harm).” pg. 140
“Another emotion-centered way to cope with shame is to abandon some of the unreasonably high standards of personal conduct we have internalized from our parents early in life. This undermines the tendency to be shame-ridden, but is easier said than done. Related to changing our standards is the step of coming to realize, emotionally as well as intellectually, that we don’t have to be perfect to be acceptable and even loved. We can learn that our standards are unreasonable, and that life can be happier and more fulfilling if we accept ourselves as we are.” pg. 162
“This raises the question of whether people who regularly distance themselves are really dispassionate in their relationships with others or are merely displaying a detached manner that is skin deep. Most of us are capable of achieving emotional distance on occasion as a means of coping with stress and emotion. If, however, distancing becomes habitual, it may lead to a constantly overcontrolled, detached style of relating to others. The complete flattening of the emotional life as a result may be too much of a price to pay for a temporary surcease from distress. So much for distancing.” pg. 166
“In fact, in comparing the brain structures of different animals, neuroscientists find that humans and animals share numerous portions of brain anatomy. These portions have control over many of the physiological changes that take place in an emotional reaction. Indeed, we still think of the bodily changes in emotions as primitive reactions, which are not under voluntary control.
For example, we cannot directly influence our heart rate or blood pressure; these bodily processes work automatically and are controlled deep inside the brain—in an organ known as the hypothalamus. We can only influence these vital functions indirectly by mobilizing physical effort, seeking a less stressful environment, thinking calm thoughts, and making efforts at relaxation. But even animal emotions, as well as those of people, involve evaluations of the significance of what is happening for well-being.” pg. 177
“Emotion, for example, is said to be governed by primitive brain centers that were originally found in less advanced animals. The new parts of the brain that evolved in humans are where reason—not emotion—is said to be governed.” pg. 178
“The cerebral cortex is the area of the brain where abstract thought mainly occurs, which makes possible foresight, planning, and the complex strategies that help us cope with the stresses of living. We are now confident that the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex play a major role in the emotions, and that emotion and reason are interdependent—in effect, that there is extensive networking between the older, primitive brain and the newer, advanced brain.” pg. 179
“Nowadays psychologists concerned with emotion are beginning to think that this view is quite false—that, in fact, emotions always depend substantially on reason. The purpose of this chapter is to suggest that there is no emotion without thought or reason, and that our emotions are really products of the way we personally construe what is happening in our lives, which is expressed in the idea. . . that emotion depends on an appraisal of personal meaning. Without meaning, without appraisal, there is no emotion.” pg. 199
“Many myths exist about emotions, and we will try to dispel them in this book. One is that emotions are irrational and do not depend on thinking and reasoning. Actually, emotions and intelligence go hand in hand, which is why humans, highly intelligent beings, are such emotional animals.” pg. 3
“Two interrelated themes echo in the pages that follow. The first is that the emotions are products of personal meaning, which depends on what is important to us and the things we believe about ourselves and the world. It is the meaning we give to the events and conditions of our lives that makes us feel angry, anxious, guilty, happy, proud, loving, and so forth. To understand our own or another’s emotions is to understand the ways people interpret the significance of daily events in their lives, and how these events affect their personal well-being.” pg. 5 [The second theme is that each emotion has a distinctive dramatic plot we all can readily recognize. The plot defines what we believe is happening to us and its significance for our individual well-being.]
“Envy is usually regarded as akin to jealousy and discussed along with it, probably because our language is ambiguous about the important difference between them. In the English language, jealousy can denote either jealousy or envy, while envy is used only in the sense of wanting something another person possesses. Because their meanings are often confused, but readily distinguished, we discuss envy and jealousy separately.
It is a frequent but incorrect usage to say ‘I am jealous of you’ for having this or that. Envy is a two-person emotion. Jealousy, in contrast, is a three-way triangle in which someone threatens or has taken what we consider ours, most often the affection of a third party. . . We envy the person who has a good job but are jealous of the person who got the good job to which we aspired.” pg. 31
“Remember that especially in people who display the character trait of envy, the things desired are not just material; envious people do not feel accepted or positively valued by others as a person. This lack or need, which the person may not clearly recognize, potentiates envy of all sorts of things that symbolize this lack of acceptance and regard. We envy others most who are highly thought of, admired, influential, and successful in their life roles, especially when we ourselves have major doubts about our value as persons.” pg. 34
“In a zero sum game, which means that if someone else is loved, hired, promoted, or given a prize, there is no room left for you to win, someone else’s gain is your loss. In envy, you want what you do not have or never had; in jealousy, you have lost, or are threatened with the loss, of what you once possessed or thought you possessed.” pg. 38
“It is worth adding that people who are recurrently anxious may have serious doubts about their own adequacy. Even if these doubts are suppressed, they lead such people to feel threatened when demands are made on them that exceed their resources. When coping efforts fail, things go from bad to worse.” pg. 45
“To sum up the plot for anxiety, the provocation is some upcoming event whose concrete manifestations are characterized as uncertain threat, such as the out come of an illness, a performance to be evaluated, a social interaction with the potential for criticism or social disapproval, and so forth. The underlying personal meaning of the threat is existential in that it deals with who we are in the world, our future well-being, and life and death. This meaning is constructed by people out of the situation they are facing and the personal goals and beliefs about themselves and the world that are acquired over a lifetime. We cope with the concrete threat by trying to prepare for what might happen, by not thinking about it, or by constructing new threat-reducing meanings to manage it. However, coping with an anxiety-producing threat is difficult because of its vague, existential underpinnings, which make us uncertain what will happen, when it will happen, and what can be done about it.” pg. 51
“The difficult problem in shame is to dissociate what has happened from the way one defines one’s character. We can feel shame for some given act that goes against one’s personal ideals and exposes us to the scorn of others, but still manage not to include this in our self-definition.” pg. 62
“Synonyms for shame include humiliation, embarrassment, mortification, chagrin, and feeling ridiculous, each with its own connotation. For example, humiliation and mortification convey very strong reactions; embarrassment conveys a much milder reaction. Although some writers treat shyness as a form of shame, we think it is better treated as a type of social anxiety, though akin to shame in the sense that it also involves the threat of personal exposure.
The personal ideals relevant to shame consist of the ways we wish to be known as individuals. They may have little or nothing to do with morality, and can be conveyed by diverse adjectives, such as courageous, clever, decent, tough-minded, a bold warrior, street smart. . . and so forth.” pg. 63
“Our subjective experiences and the behaviors we display when we experience guilt and shame are also different. Although there is inner pain in both, the kind of pain is not the same. In guilt we want publicly to atone for our sins, but we hide our shame from others.” pg. 63-64
“According to the psychoanalyst Helen Lewis, who has done the most work with shame, the threat underlying the development of shame is criticism, rejection, or abandonment, which is the punishment the child imagines for not living up to expectations.” pg. 64
“Relief always begins with the frustration of a goal, resulting temporarily in several distressing emotions, usually anger, anxiety, guilt, shame, envy, or jealousy. But when the frustrating condition has changed for the better or gone away, we experience the dramatic plot of relief. Although the troubled life condition may have lasted for some time, perhaps years, the change that precipitated our relief dispels the previous and distressing emotional state in what seems like an instant.” pg. 68
“We should also address the idea of false hope—that is, hope that goes against all realistic odds—in which case it is viewed as an undesirable method of coping with potential disaster. In the introduction to his wife’s book, Seymour Epstein, Alice’s husband, successfully dispels this negative view of hope.
‘Some physicians object to a psychological approach because they fear it will produce “false hope.” I have never quite understood what false hope is. All hope is “false” in the sense that what is hoped for many not materialize. At the time of hoping one cannot know the outcome. If the hope serves to improve one’s quality of life and does not cause one to avoid taking adaptive action when it is possible, nor be resentful when the hoped-for outcome does not materialize, then it is obviously desirable.’” pg. 71
“We are apt to be in a sad or depressed mood when our life in general seems misshapen, when people appear ugly to us, when life is disorderly and has no meaning, when the fates are against us, when we experience holiday blues when everyone else seems happy. With this dour outlook, we feel sad, depressed, and bad about our life.
The same uncertainty can also be expressed about feeling happy. We are apt to be in a happy mood when we sense that our lives are proceeding favorably, that we are wonderful or masterful, loved and appreciated, when we believe that people are good, that life is meaningful, orderly, just, and that the fates are with us. With this upbeat outlook, we feel happy, lighthearted, cheerful, good.” pg. 85
“This scenario describes one of the oldest and most interesting philosophical dilemmas about happiness and well-being. It is that we cannot successfully seek to feel happy as a goal of life; the feeling is a by-product of using our natural capacities well and striving for something other than our own positive well-being. Unfortunately, many people hope ‘just to be happy,’ and make that their goal. From what we know of human nature, however, they are bound to be disappointed. Anticipation of some event or goal is apt to be better than gaining the outcome we seek.” pg. 93-94
“But love is not necessarily the same experience for the two people experiencing it. Put differently, the personal meaning of love differs from person to person. Thus, one partner may view love negatively as a sacrifice of independence and autonomy, while the other remains smitten. Some partners connect love strongly with sex, but others do not. For them, the wish of one partner may be to share private thoughts, goals, and experiences, while the other may have little interest in or capacity for such sharing. Intensity of feeling and demonstrativeness may also differ for the partners. For one, there may be a strong commitment to the relationship, while for the other commitment is weak.” pg. 107
“We need to distinguish love as an acute emotion from love as a sentiment. We speak of the sentiment of love when we describe the love of one (or both) partner for the other; the emotion of love is only aroused from time to time, which is quite normal. We couldn’t stand experiencing any strong emotion for long, much less constantly—it would consume us.
The acute emotion of love comes and goes in a loving relationship. It is provoked by the sight of the other, a particular interchange, a favorable opportunity, a romantic atmosphere, seeing or hearing the other, and perhaps something more physical like a surge of sex hormones.” pg. 108-109
“The dramatic plot of romantic love is clear to most of us: desiring or participating in affection and physical intimacy, usually but not necessarily reciprocated. The problematic nature of reciprocity recognizes that one may love without being loved in return, what we referred to earlier as unrequited love. In this case, love is a consequence of the wish to love and be loved, not necessarily the reality of being loved in return.” pg. 109
“Loss of love in an ongoing relationship carries similar dangers of producing hurt and damage to the ego; the response might be dangerous levels of anger, or even depression and grieving over the loss. There is probably no human relationship in our society that is more socially complex and sensitive, and contains more emotional hazards, than seeking and maintaining love.” pg. 111
“Commitment has little directly to do with love as an emotion, though it may be a condition of falling in love for some people. Love me, but not just for my body, might be the message directly or indirectly communicated to the uncommitted. Commitment declares that one has a stable concern about the well-being of the partner, which is how society usually defines real love. Commitment is an intention to ignore the inevitable periods in a relationship when the emotion of love is not experienced, or has faded completely.” pg. 111
“Idealizing romantic love—and linking it to commitment—naturally complicates the expectations we develop about love and its stability. This is one of the most serious mistakes people make as they approach love relationships. Many a marital disappointment has stemmed from romanticized and unrealistic notions about love as a constant state of mind in which the partners never falter in their mutual idolatry.
The problem with love as an emotion is that passion waxes and wanes and cannot be sustained moment by moment over the long haul. Long-term relationships are not conducive to constant passion or the acute emotion of love, but the meanings required for active loving feelings surface from time to time, mainly under favorable conditions, when other considerations in the relationship take a back seat.” pg. 112
“Needing help is, for many people, a psychological problem, especially in our individualistic society. Not being able to take care of oneself or being a burden to others is painful and damaging to the ego. We admire people who get along on their own and fulfill useful roles in society, and there is a special stigma that attaches to anyone who must take from others.” pg. 119-120
“Although it is not an emotion, empathy is a very important human capacity on which compassion is based. It begins to display itself in childhood and requires the ability to identify with others and sense their plight. Only if we can put ourselves in another’s shoes can we relate to them fully and display our humanity toward them. When we watch the happiness or suffering of people in a play or a movie, we imagine ourselves in their situation and experience some measure of what they feel. This uniquely human tendency is one of the primary mechanisms for understanding others and being able to appreciate their experience.
Unlike empathy, in which we relate to another’s emotion, compassion is a single emotional state, which we ourselves generate and experience. Although we can feel compassion, because we are capable of identifying and empathizing, feeling compassion is our own state of mind, not merely a copy of the emotion of another person.” pg. 125
“The playwright draws on our fears, wishes, and vulnerabilities. If the playwright is skillful, we get to know each of the characters intimately, their desires, frustrations, troubled history, and the tragic mistakes and flaws that have gotten them into the trouble they are in. We understand them. We all have our favorite plots, which reflect particular features of our own personalities and life experiences.” pg. 131
“We have seen how personal meaning, which is constructed by us, shapes the emotion we will experience. Far from being irrational, we have seen how the emotions follow from the thought processes of intelligent beings. What is no doubt now apparent is that emotion and thought are inseparable in humans.” pg. 139
“Two motivational factors are necessary to arouse an emotion. First, an event must transform a routine encounter into one that involves personal harm of benefit. In other words, an emotional encounter touches on something that we want or don’t want to happen. We are keen to attain a goal and the other person in an encounter either facilitates, threatens, or frustrates the attainment. The more important the goal—that is, the more we want something to happen or not to happen—the stronger the emotion will be. Without a significant goal at stake, an encounter with another person or the physical environment will not be emotional.
Second, the way we judge the fate of the goal, whether actual or potential, determines whether the emotion will be positive (for a benefit) or negative (for a harm).” pg. 140
“Another emotion-centered way to cope with shame is to abandon some of the unreasonably high standards of personal conduct we have internalized from our parents early in life. This undermines the tendency to be shame-ridden, but is easier said than done. Related to changing our standards is the step of coming to realize, emotionally as well as intellectually, that we don’t have to be perfect to be acceptable and even loved. We can learn that our standards are unreasonable, and that life can be happier and more fulfilling if we accept ourselves as we are.” pg. 162
“This raises the question of whether people who regularly distance themselves are really dispassionate in their relationships with others or are merely displaying a detached manner that is skin deep. Most of us are capable of achieving emotional distance on occasion as a means of coping with stress and emotion. If, however, distancing becomes habitual, it may lead to a constantly overcontrolled, detached style of relating to others. The complete flattening of the emotional life as a result may be too much of a price to pay for a temporary surcease from distress. So much for distancing.” pg. 166
“In fact, in comparing the brain structures of different animals, neuroscientists find that humans and animals share numerous portions of brain anatomy. These portions have control over many of the physiological changes that take place in an emotional reaction. Indeed, we still think of the bodily changes in emotions as primitive reactions, which are not under voluntary control.
For example, we cannot directly influence our heart rate or blood pressure; these bodily processes work automatically and are controlled deep inside the brain—in an organ known as the hypothalamus. We can only influence these vital functions indirectly by mobilizing physical effort, seeking a less stressful environment, thinking calm thoughts, and making efforts at relaxation. But even animal emotions, as well as those of people, involve evaluations of the significance of what is happening for well-being.” pg. 177
“Emotion, for example, is said to be governed by primitive brain centers that were originally found in less advanced animals. The new parts of the brain that evolved in humans are where reason—not emotion—is said to be governed.” pg. 178
“The cerebral cortex is the area of the brain where abstract thought mainly occurs, which makes possible foresight, planning, and the complex strategies that help us cope with the stresses of living. We are now confident that the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex play a major role in the emotions, and that emotion and reason are interdependent—in effect, that there is extensive networking between the older, primitive brain and the newer, advanced brain.” pg. 179
“Nowadays psychologists concerned with emotion are beginning to think that this view is quite false—that, in fact, emotions always depend substantially on reason. The purpose of this chapter is to suggest that there is no emotion without thought or reason, and that our emotions are really products of the way we personally construe what is happening in our lives, which is expressed in the idea. . . that emotion depends on an appraisal of personal meaning. Without meaning, without appraisal, there is no emotion.” pg. 199
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 18, 2007
I read this is college in Psych 101. Very good read.
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