Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Clearing up "responsibility for emotions" Message-ID: <1357@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 00:22:54 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1357 Posted: Mon Jul 29 00:22:54 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 01:37:09 EDT References: <5557@cbscc.UUCP> <591@unc.UUCP> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 67 >>Your right, Greg, it does sound cold. I will agree that a strong person has >>the ability to control her/his emotions, but I am not sure it is a wise per- >>son that does so. [BRUCK] > I need this book or this person who has told you that control of > emotions is not healthy. I've got 40+ books on the shelf behind me > right now that says it is healthy and 3+ psychologists at my disposal > that will agree. If you have source, PLEASE post/e-mail the title/name. > [HOFF] First, Julie, for every 40+ books/psychologists that offer a given opinion, it's easy to find 40+ that offer the opposite opinion, but that's irrelevant. Since I was one of those that provoked this argument in the first place, allow me to say a few brief things about how my position has been misrepresented (BY ME!!!) and how this discussion (which, though it is loud, has been extremely interesting) has influenced my beliefs in this area. 1. First, I stated that it was wrong to claim that people controlled their emotions. I have come to think that people DO have the ability to control their emotional responses to events DESPITE past conditioning and circum- stances. One's emotional responses are often founded on one's expectations and preconceptions of events. When one recognizes where one's responses are coming from (e.g., when we react to an event as "awful" and allow that to get us depressed, or when we devalue and judge ourselves because of our actions, both due to learned preconceptions), one can shirk the preconceived emotional reaction. The idea of controlling emotions is not to cage them ("Stay, anger, stay!"), or to eliminate them ("Like a vulcan [HMMM, FASCINATING], pon-farred for the very first time..." :-), but rather to make them work for you, to make them uncounterproductive to your real wants by avoiding such preconceptions. (UNcounterproductive??) In that sense, I think it's a good thing to "control one's emotions". I use Spock as a bad example, precisely because I think he has become a stereotypical ideal of "non-emotion" or "curbed emotion". Rational thinking involves working with and using one's emotions noncounterproductively (and just plain productively, too!) 2. However, I still take issue with the notion that anyone who doesn't employ this line of thinking is "responsible" for not doing so, or is doing so "by choice". Precisely because this technique of handling one's emotions is a LEARNED technique, and not one that is obvious to people who have been led to believe just the opposite about their emotions and their options. I got a bunch of "yes it is!" affirmations (and not much else) in response to the question "Does a person who has learned to behave in a certain negative way do so by choice?". Since such people (such as those who come1 from violent homes and react accordingly, compulsive drinkers/gamblers, etc.) may not be aware of the other option open to them, how can it be said that they react by "choice", that they are "responsible" for it? I felt I should put all this down on "paper" because in reading my own articles it seemed I was taking both sides. In a way, I am. I agree that it is possible to do what Julie and Greg and others have talked about, but I think they are wrong when they deny the fortuitousness of their own experience of having learned that way of thinking. Not everyone is "lucky" enough to have had that opportunity, and thus (in my opinion) cannot be held "responsible". (Part of this babble I've been spouting comes from a book that this discussion prompted me to re-read, Albert Ellis and Robert Harper's "A New Guide to Rational Living". This book lays out a lot of the types of things that have been talked about by everyone here. VERY good reading in any case. It details a lot of good stuff about how irrational ideas interfere with people's thinking and reacting inappropriately to experiences.) -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr