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From: rbg@cbosgd.UUCP (Richard Goldschmidt)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Control of emotions
Message-ID: <1353@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 09:52:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.1353
Posted: Wed Jul 31 09:52:23 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Aug-85 20:36:01 EDT
References: <5557@cbscc.UUCP> <ihlpg.816> <591@unc.UUCP> <854@ihlpg.UUCP> <386@azure.UUCP>
Organization: Columbus Bell Labs, Silver Lining
Lines: 74

I'd like to take a somewhat more obscure tack towards this issue: a sort of
biological - prehistorical one if you will.

In article <2483@ut-sally.UUCP> pooh@ut-sally.UUCP (Pooh @ the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen) writes:
>
>But you are still claiming, when all is said and done, that
>people can choose whatever they are feeling.  I say this
>is a crock of manure.  Even you have experienced emotions recently
>that I know you would not have chosen willingly.

In article <386@azure.UUCP>, chrisa@azure.UUCP (Chris Andersen) writes:
| ...  The word is "can" which means that people have the ability to do so, 
| it does not guarantee that they will always be succesful.  I believe that 
| emotions DO originate in ourselves.  The spark that sets them off however 
| is external and basically beyond our control.  But once the emotion is 
| sparked (a purely reflex action which no human can totally over-ride) from
| then on it is TOTALLY and COMPLETELY up to the individual to decide how much
| that emotion will affect them.
...
| I seem to be arguing from the viewpoint that one can control what one does 
| with ones emotions (which is far different then saying one CAN CONTROL those
| emotions).  I totally agree that we do not have complete control over our
| emotions.  However, I cannot agree that we are JUST creatures who react
| to stimuli.  We do react, but how we react is up to us ...

Let me start with an attempt at definition.  Emotions are feelings, subjective
and unknowable by others.  I would argue that emotions have a dual origin
in the dim mists of the past.  They serve to prepare an organism for a
behavior which may be vital to survival, like fight or flight, in response
to some external stimulus.  They also serve as an indicator of the intensity
of basic motivations like hunger or reproduction, and thus bias the likelihood
of the occurrance of the different motivated behaviors.  Please note that I
have tried to maintain a dictinction here between subjective feeling and
objective behavior.  

This distinction becomes more fuzzy when dealing with more complicated
organisms, especially those adapted to living in groups.  This is beacuse
communication of emotional states is an important part of that adaptation.
This is well illustrated by the sometimes subtle (sometimes not) manuvering
associated with establishment and maintenance of dominance hierarchies 
(status).  The biological nature of emotional communication is suggested
by the extent to which this information can cross species boundaries.

So, people, as a most complicated organism, react to events both physical
and social, with emotions which take their patterns from hundreds of
millions of years of evolutionary history.  However, being the adaptable
creatures we are, we can learn to regulate our behavior to conform to
social rules.  We can hide what we are feeling or fail to act out our
anger.  We have many modes of choice about behavior, but that does not
mean we have a similar degree of freedom about how to choose what we
feel.  If someone hits you in the face, you can't choose not to feel
pain.  The sight of a beautiful, scantily clad woman rarely fails to
arouse feelings of lust in most men, although whether they alter their
behavior because of those feelings is a question of choice.  The stimuli
which trigger emotions are often biologically defined, and sometimes
associations between "important" (cultural) events and emotions are learned.

Now that I've provided a circumspect definition, it is probably pretty
clear where I stand.  You don't choose your emotions, you choose your 
behaviors.  However, the situation gets a little more complicated when
the stimulus is removed in time, that is when you carry it around inside
your head.  It requires an active thought process to relive events, and
reinvoke old stimuli.  To the extent that this process is conscious and
not controlled by unconscious motivations, it is under your control.
Which is to say that people do have some limited control of what they are
feeling in some circumstances.  It is possible to learn techniques for 
enhancing the effectiveness of this control over your thought processes.
I would argue (as others have) that it is possible to excercise so much 
control that you are no longer in touch with (conscious of) your feelings,
and that this can be just as unhealthy as carrying around loads of negative
emotional baggage unnecessarily.

Rich Goldschmidt     {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax,allegra,seismo} !cbosgd!rbg
AT&T Bell Labs	     ARPA:  cbosgd!rbg@seismo or cbosgd!rbg@ucbvax