Energy Release and the Emotions : Part 6

The Foundations of Personality
by Abraham Myerson, M.D.

(Page 15 of 25)

Disgust, too, is extremely contagious, especially its manifestations. One of the most crude of all manifestations, to spit upon some one, is a symbol taken from disgust, though it has come to mean contempt, which is a mixture of hatred and disgust.

To raise the tastes and not raise the acquisitions is a sure way to bring about chronic disgust, which is really an angry dissatisfaction mixed with disgust. This type of reaction is very common as a factor in neurasthenia. In fact, my motto is "search for the disgust" in all cases of neurasthenia and "search for it in the intimate often secret desires and relationships. Seek for it in the husband-wife relationship, especially from the standpoint of the wife." Women, we say, are more refined in their feelings than men, which is another way of saying they are more easily disgusted and therefore more easily injured. For disgust is an injury, when chronic or too easily elicited, and is then a sign and symbol of weakness.

Thus disgust is a great reenforcer of social taboo and custom, as well as morality. Just as it fails to keep us from eating the wrong kind of foods, so it may fail to keep us from the wrong conduct. Like every emotion it is only in part adapted to our lives, and in those people where it becomes a prominent emotion it is a great mischief worker, subordinating life to finickiness and hindering the growth of generous feeling.

9. We come to two opposite emotions, very readily considered together. One of the linkings of opposites is in the connection of Joy and Sorrow. Whether these are primary emotions or outgrowths of Pleasure and Pain I leave to others. For Shand the fact that Joy tends to prolong a situation in which it occurs raises it into an active emotion.

Joy is perhaps the most energizing of the emotions for it tends to express itself in shouts, smiles and laughter, dancing and leaping. Sorrow ordinarily is quite the reverse and expresses itself by immobility, bowed head and hands that shut out from the view the sights of the world. There is, however, a quiet joy called relief, which is like sailing into a smooth, safe harbor after a tempestuous voyage; and there is an agitated grief, with lamentation, the wringing of hands and self-punishment of a frantic kind. Joy and triumph are closely associated, sorrow and defeat likewise. There are some whose rivalry-competitive feelings are so widespread that they cannot rejoice even at the triumph of a friend, and a little of that nature is in even the noblest of us. There are others who find sorrow in defeat of an enemy, so widespread is their sympathy. This is the generous victor. For the most of us youth is the most joyous period because youth finds in its pleasures a novelty and freshness that tend to disappear with experience. For the same reason the sorrow of youth, though evanescent, is unreasoning and intense.

Joy and sorrow are reactions and they are noble or the reverse, according to the nature of the person. Joy may be noble, sensuous, trivial or mean; many a "jolly" person is such because he has no real sympathy. At the present time not one of us could rejoice over anything could we SEE and sympathize deeply with the misery of Europe and China, to say nothing of that in our own country. Nay, any wrong to others would blast all our pleasure, could we really feel it. Fortunately only a few are so cursed with sympathy. When the capacity for joyous feeling is joined with fortitude or endurance, then we have the really cheerful, who spread their feeling everywhere, whom all men love. Where cheerfulness is due to lack of sympathy and understanding, we speak of a cheerful idiot; and well does that type merit the name. There is a modern cult whose followers sing "La, la, la" at all times and places, who minimize all misfortune, crime, suffering, who find "good in everything," - the "Pollyana" tribe. My objection to them is based on this, - that mankind must see clearly in order to rid itself of unnecessary suffering. Hiding one's head (and brains) in a desert of optimism merely perpetuates evil, even though one sufferer here and there is deluded into happiness.

Sorrow may enrich the nature or it may embitter and narrow it. Wisdom may spring from it; indeed, who can be wise who has not sorrowed? Says Goethe:

"Wer nie sein Brot in Thranen ass
Wer nie die kummervollen Nachte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass
Er weiss Euch nicht - himmelischen Machte."

The afflicted in their sorrow may turn from self-seeking to God and good deeds. But sorrow may come in a trivial nature from trivial causes; the soul may be plunged into despair because one has been denied a gift or a pleasure. The demonstrativeness of grief or sorrow is not at all in proportion to the emotion felt; it is more often based on the effort to get sympathy and help. For sorrow is "Help, help" in one form or another, even though one refuses to be comforted. All our emotions, because they are socially powerful, become somewhat theatrical; in some completely theatrical. We are so constituted that emotional display is not indifferent to us; it pleases, repels, annoys, angers, frightens, disgusts or awes us according to the kind of emotion displayed, the displayer and the circumstances.

The psychologists speak of sympathy as this susceptibility to the emotions of others, but there is an antipathy to their emotions, as well. If we feel that our emotions will be "well received," we do not fear to display them, and therein is one of the uses of the friend. If we feel that they will be poorly received, that they will annoy or anger or disgust, we strive to repress them. The expression of emotion, especially of fear and sorrow, has become synonymous with weakness, and a powerful self-feeling operates against their display, especially in adults, men and certain races. It is no accident that the greatest actors are from the Latin and Hebrew races, for there is a certain theatricality in fear and sorrow that those schooled to repression lose. We resent what we call insincerity in emotional expression because we fear being "fooled," and there are many whose experiences in being "fooled" chill sympathy with doubt. We resent insincere sympathy, on the other hand, because we regret showing weakness before those to whom that weakness is regarded as such and who perhaps rejoice at it as ridiculous. We like the emotional expression of children because we can always sympathize, through our tender feeling with them, and their very sincerity pleases as well.