Tag: emotions

The Feeling of Authenticity…is not a feeling

Posted on by Gary Borjesson

by Gary Borjesson

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows. —Henry David Thoreau

What does being true to ourselves feel like? The question goes to the heart of authenticity. Rousseau viewed our innermost feelings—the feeling of our existence (“le sentiment de l’existence”)—as a guide to authenticity and contentment. Nowadays we’re familiar with the notion that to find our way in love and work, we need to get in touch with our true feelings. Authenticity has even been equated with feelings, as if our felt sense were the only trustworthy guide to our lives.

In fact, authenticity is not a feeling, but an active way of being defined by conscious attention to the fit between who we are and the situation(s) in which we find ourselves. (See my previous essays in 3QD, here and here, for more on the meaning and practice of authenticity as an ethical ideal.) That said, our feelings do crucially guide our (ongoing) discovery of what it means to be true to ourselves.

But in order to be good guides, we need to know a few things about them. Here’s a big one: feelings are not as much “our own” as we might think. Our brain and the rest of our body evolved for engaging with our surroundings, meaning that our feelings are shaped and prompted partly by external factors. We’ll see that we cannot even know where our feelings are coming from unless we examine them.

To do that, and to start exploring how feelings inform authenticity, let me ask you to notice what you’re feeling right now. What word or words best describe this feeling? I’ll come back to why I ask. Read more »



Monday, November 6, 2023

Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence

Posted on by Marie Snyder

by Marie Snyder

Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, was originally published in 1995 but more recently updated in a 25th anniversary edition in 2020. Well, he added a new introduction, but no study or concept in the book was updated despite huge changes in our lives since then and tons of new studies with updated technology. It’s kind of refreshing to read a book about the problem with kids today without a single mention of phones, but it feels a little sloppy. Goleman is a science journalist without a clinical practice in psychotherapy as far as I can tell. While his book is about how to be smart according to the front cover, it’s also being used in psychotherapy. It’s a fast, engaging read, but I have some concerns about the content and application.

The book outlines the need for emotional intelligence (EI) to be overtly taught to children, explains the psychoneurology of EI, argues for the primacy of emotional intelligence for success, adds in the need for emotional supports, and ends with a call for parents to be better educated as well. The principle underlying Goleman’s text is that there are four specific domains, adapted from Salovey & Mayer, that emerge from the activity of our brain circuits that have more of an impact on our general well being than does our intelligence: self-awareness, self-management (formerly motivation and self-regulation), empathy, and skilled relationships. Goleman explains that people will be better off emotionally, relationally, and vocationally if they develop their emotional intelligence to identify and understand their feelings as they happen, manage them effectively, understand other people’s feelings, and relate to others more positively. With a calm mind, people can make better decisions, which positively affects all other aspects of their life. Goldman has used these domains to help to develop educational programs to teach children Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in the schools through the CASEL organization. I feel like it goes without saying  that being able to manage our emotional experiences helps in other aspects in our lives, so I’m all in at this point. Read more »

Monday, September 24, 2018

How Wine Expresses Vitality

Posted on by Dwight Furrow

by Dwight Furrow

Although frequently lampooned as over-the-top, there is a history of describing wines as if they expressed personality traits or emotions, despite the fact that wine is not a psychological agent and could not literally have these characteristics—wines are described as aggressive, sensual, fierce, languorous, angry, dignified, brooding, joyful, bombastic, tense or calm, etc. Is there a foundation to these descriptions or are they just arbitrary flights of fancy?

Last month on this blog I argued that recent work in psychology that employs “vitality forms” helps us understand how music expresses emotion. Will vitality forms help us understand how wine could express feeling states or personality characteristics?

Vitality forms are “the flow pattern” of human experience, “the subjectively experienced shifts in the internal states” that characterize sensations, thoughts, actions, emotions, and other feeling states. Discovered by Daniel Stern and described in his 2010 book Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy, and Development, vitality forms constitute the temporal structure of experience, the duration, acceleration and intensity of an experience. Importantly, vitality forms are not tied to a specific sense modality. All five senses as well as thoughts and feelings exhibit vitality forms. “A thought can rush onto the mental stage and swell, or it can quietly just appear and then fade”, as Stern notes.  So can sounds, visual experiences, tactile impressions or emotions—anger can explode or emerge as a slow burn. In short, a vitality form is how any conscious experience emerges and changes over time. Read more »

Monday, September 11, 2017

Wines of Anger and Joy (Part 2)

Posted on by Dwight Furrow

by Dwight Furrow

Wine-bottle-supplier-300x273Wine language often suggests that wines express emotion or exhibit personality characteristics despite the fact that wine is not a psychological agent and could not literally possess these characteristics. There is a history, although somewhat in recession today, to refer to wines as aggressive, sensual, fierce, grand, angry, dignified, brooding, joyful, bombastic, tense or calm, etc. Is there a foundation to such talk or is it just arbitrary flights of fancy?

Last month I argued that it's perfectly intelligible to conceive of wine as expressive. Wine expresses the geography and climate of a region or vineyard, the vintage characteristics, and the winemaker's idea of those. More importantly, wine can sometimes express the winemaker's feelings about wine, especially the inspirational experiences that explain their love of wine that they wish to communicate to their patrons. But the aforementioned wine language suggests a broader notion of expression, one in which wine, perhaps like art, can express fundamental features of human experience.

In aesthetics, this question of how art can express feelings has typically been pursued using music as the prime example, because there is a broad consensus that music is deeply connected to human emotion. In trying to answer this question about wine, it makes sense to use these resources developed in the debate about music. So bear with me as I go on about music and the emotions for a bit; wine will get its due towards the end of the essay.

Read more »