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.
Is there a harm in the repression of emotion?[1] Is emotion a
heaped-up tension which, unless it is discharged, causes damage?
Shall man inhibit his anger, fear, joy, sorrow, disgust, at least
in some measure, or shall he express them in gesture, speech and
act? The answer is obvious: he must control them, and in that
term control we mean, not inhibition, not expression in its naive
sense, but that combination of inhibition, expression and
intelligent act we call adjustment. To express fear in the face
of danger or anger at an offense might thwart the whole life's
purpose, might bring disaster and ruin. The emotions are poor
adjustments in their most violent form, their natural form, and
invite disaster by clouding the intelligence and obscuring
permanent purposes. Therefore, they must be controlled. To
establish this control is a primary function of training and
intelligence and does no harm unless carried to excess. True,
there is a relief in emotional expression, a wiping out of sorrow
by tears, an increase of the pleasure of joy in freely laughing,
a discharge of anger in the blow or the hot word, even the
profane word. There is a time and a place for these things, and
to get so "controlled" that one rarely laughs or shows sadness or
anger is to atrophy, to dry up. But the emotional expression
makes it easy to become an habitual weeper or stormer, makes it
easy to become the over-emotional type, whose reaction to life is
futile, undignified and a bodily injury. For emotion is in large
part a display of energy, and the overemotional rarely escape the
depleted neurasthenic state. In fact, hysteria and neurasthenia
are much more common in the races freely expressing emotion than
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