Reason in an Irrational Era

The following is from my book Bad Therapy Good Therapy: And How to Tell the Difference:

 

To accept the view of man as a rational animal does not preclude the fact that emotions are a normal and potentially beautiful dimension of human experience. A rational philosophy does not sacrifice emotions to thought, although to an emotionalist it will seem that way.

A healthy individual listens to his emotions and isolates them without concluding prematurely that they are facts. “Maybe this confusing emotion rests upon a fact,” he says to himself, “or maybe it does not. Until I look at it logically, I can’t know for sure.”

Both rational and irrational individuals feel. The distinctive feature of a psychologically healthy person is his habitual use of introspection to examine the truth or falsehood of his automatic thoughts (his feelings).

Emotions are not worthless or beneath rationality, as long as one takes responsibility for examining the relationship between his or her emotions and the facts. Upon meeting those conditions, one is free to fully revel in the feeling. For example, if an individual has objective evidence of an injustice committed against her, then her anger is entirely justified. If a mother reunites with her kidnapped child, then her joy is entirely appropriate. In fact, one could question the rationality of these individuals if they failed to experience the appropriate emotions.

It is also not true that emotions must always be ignored. Listening to one’s feelings and immediately accepting those feelings as facts are not the same thing. Most individuals, for example, have at one time or another experienced a bad feeling about someone at an initial encounter. After meeting a new person, one might notice a feeling of suspiciousness. After the individual leaves, he might say to himself: “What was it that made me suspicious about this man? Could it be that he wore a black coat? That’s silly. But I also noticed that he would not make eye contact with me. This seems strange, but it could mean many things, including the possibility that he’s just shy and uncomfortable. I will note this incident, but not worry about it any more for now. The issue is shelved.”

This rational individual can listen to his feeling without drawing unwarranted conclusions from it. The emotionally repressed individual would have never given himself a chance to dismiss or even shelve the feeling about the man. The thought, “this man is suspicious” would have festered in his subconscious, unchallenged and unexamined.

The repressed individual considers rationality to be the same as the (supposed) absence of feelings, while failing to appreciate the inevitability of feelings. A rational person successfully integrates his thoughts and emotions, figures out the difference between the two, and makes certain that his thoughts and emotions correspond to reality. The psychological reward for this rational thinking is calmness, unconflicted emotions and a generally uninterrupted sense of peace and self-confidence. Repressors can never experience these benefits.

Just as they assume they cannot listen to their feelings, repressors tend to assume they cannot risk showing their feelings to others—even loved ones. Emotionalists love to point out that “rational” (they mean repressed) individuals are unable to cry or show their feelings. Some feminist psychotherapists conveniently turn this into a gender issue, insisting that men are, by nature, “too rational” and women are, by nature, “sensitive, compassionate and caring,” as if the latter qualities were the only ones desirable for either men or women.

These critics fail to recognize that one cannot choose between thoughts and feelings. They’re both there whether you like it or not. Yet emotionalists and repressors attempt to make that impossible choice anyway. The emotionalist chooses emotions over thought. The repressor chooses thought over emotions. Neither one can recognize that thoughts and feelings must be integrated, not separated. To integrate emotions means to allow oneself to feel the emotions, while at the same time relating them to the facts of the real world.

The truly rational (integrated) individual feels comfortable showing her emotions under the appropriate circumstances. She has already checked the basis for her emotions. She has ensured that her thoughts conform to reality. She welcomes a challenge to her thoughts if she thinks it might lead to new discoveries about herself, her loved ones or the world in which she lives. She allows herself to feel angry or distressed if what she cares about has been assaulted. She lets herself feel joyful and proud if what she cares about has been achieved. Because she introspects as a matter of habit, she’s unlikely to experience chronic problems with stressful, out-of-context emotions. If for some reason she does experience those emotions, she will benefit from the help of a good psychotherapist. And she won’t view the need for such help as a weakness or a character defect.

 

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