"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.
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 in the stolid, repressed races. Jew, Italian, French and Irish figure much more largely than English, Scotch or Norwegian in the statistics of neurasthenia and hysteria.
[1] Isador N. Coriat's book, "The Repression of Emotions" deals with the subject from psychoanalytic. point of view.
10. I have said but little on other emotions,--on admiration, surprise and awe. This group of affective states is of great importance. Surprise may be either agreeable or disagreeable and is our reaction to the unexpected. Its expression, facially and of body, is quite characteristic, with staring eyes and mouth slightly open, raised eyebrows, hands hanging with fingers tensely spread apart, so that a thing held therein is apt to drop. Surprise heightens the feeling of internal tension, and in all excitement it is an element, in that the novel brings excitement and surprise, whereas the accustomed gives little excitement or surprises. In all wit and humor surprise is part of the technique and constitutes part of the pleasure. Surprise usually heightens the succeeding feeling, whether of joy, sorrow, anger, fear, pleasure or pain, or in any form. But sometimes the effect of surprise is so benumbing that an incapacity to feel, to realize, is the most marked result and it is only afterward that the proper emotion or feeling becomes manifest.
