Category Archives: personal psychology (Roger W. Smith observations re)

excessive consciousness

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Falstaff. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which delivered o’er to the voice, the which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. — Shakespeare, History of Henry IV, Part II; Act IV, Scene 3

Under [Oliver St John] Gogarty’s able tutelage, which he decided not to refuse, Joyce began to drink heavily. At first, to assert a fancied resemblance between himself and the buoyant Elizabethans, he called for sack. The news of his ‘fall’ got round, and the day after his first night of utter drunkenness, he was teased by some young men on the street. ‘Who are these people?’ he said haughtily and walked on. Gradually he shifted from sack to Guinness’s unpretentious and less expensive stout, ‘the wine of the country.’ His capacity for alcohol was small, and he was prone to drunken collapses. All releases from excessive consciousness attracted him. … [italics added] — Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1982), pg. 132

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I had quite a few discussions with my therapist, Dr. Ralph Colp Jr. — a scholar and reader as well as physician — about James Joyce. I was reading Richard Ellmann’s biography of Joyce during my employment at Columbia University (I could not put it down). Dr. Colp was greatly interested — the remark about Joyce and excessive consciousness struck him.

I believe that Dr. Colp saw this as an issue pertinent to me; to myself, to my mentality.

There is much more to be said — that I could say — on the subject. Such mental traits seemed intrinsic to my family and to have been manifested in my case beginning in early childhood.

It is not quite the same as raw intelligence.

A further random thought are some remarks of Dr. Colp, such as that on walks home from work he was in brown study (a British idiom that I myself once encountered in the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. meaning a state of deep, serious absorption in thought; or reverie). I once encountered Dr. Colp walking on Amsterdam Avenue when he seemed to totally lost in thought. He told me several times about how Charles Darwin tried hard to relax after mental exertion, and how Darwin was wary of sometimes thinking “too energetically.”

These were acute perceptions on Dr. Colp’s part.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

    July 2026

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See also:

drinking is one of life’s pleasures (Handel) … I second that

 

 

 

 

 

total focus

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My therapist, Dr. Ralph Colp, Jr.

My high school math teacher, Martin J. Badoian.

My mother.

Maria,the medical assistant to my primary care doctor,

All totally focused.

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I was thinking about my visit to the doctor last week and my interaction work Maria in particular. which brought this and the individuals mentioned above to mind.

She is completely focused on the task at hand,

And also, when I make conversation with her, totally focused and responsive: topics raised and observations made; on whatever passed between us.

In this particular case; topics like air travel, Portugal (where she comes from), relatives, etc.

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Mt. Badoian; totally devoted to his class — never the opposite.

And when we had the occasional conversation after school or when we once met later, totally into the topic of conversation: sorts, for example.

My mother: totally conscientious and donated to family and the task or matter at hand.

A great conversationalist.

Could switch on a dime from one to the other.

Parent and houseware. Carimg person.

Listening intently. Responding.

Never missing a thing. Rarely misspeaking.

Bringing insight and experience. to bear.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   June 2026

the head versus the heart

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Mr Casaubon and Dorthea’s letters

 

The Word document posted here (above) is an excerpt from Chapter V of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, in which there is an exchange of letters between Rev, Edward Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke. Mr. Casaubon has decided to propose to Dorothea.

Mr. Casaubon’s letter is a great example of over intellectualizing the emotions (such as I myself used to do sometimes in my youth; reading about the life of distant others can help one to better understand oneself), and of verbosity. So that would could be said plainly becomes encumbered in exposition.

Note how Dorothea does just the opposite in her response, saying what needs to be said in just three sentences.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   June 2024

“Probably I caught you young and over influenced you.”

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An invaluable (but it seems not widely recognized, probably because most people read superficially), occasional occurrence in reading is that one comes across observations that jostle the mind (suggest new ways of looking at things) and “surface” (which is to say bring to mind; elicit in one’s consciousness) “new” thoughts and formulations that one was not looking for, that come unexpectedly, that are “ancillary” to the subject or main topic of the book.

 

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From William H. McNeill’s biography of Arnold J. Toynbee:

On her twenty-first birthday Gilbert Murray wrote to [his daughter, Rosalind Murray] as follows: “It is very strange to think of you being a grown up woman, though in a way you have been like a grown up companion to me since you were about eleven.” That, indeed, was why establishing real independence of her father was so hard. Gilbert Murray had shared literary interests with Rosalind which he could not share with his wife; and when she began to show precocious skill he undoubtedly transferred some of his own disappointed literary aspirations to his daughter. (Murray was related both to Rudyard Kipling and to W. S. Gilbert; and he once confessed that as a young man he had been jealous of Kipling’s literary success.) … Gilbert Murray … both wished to see his daughter become independent and hated to have her do so. “We used to be rather specially close and intimate,” he wrote to her in 1912, “and agree in our interests and ideas. Probably I caught you young and over influenced you. And now you are thinking for yourself in all sorts of ways and differing from me, not so much in views as in general feelings. That is all right. Only the process of breaking asunder is a necessarily painful one: it has been so for me and I imagine that it probably has for you. And I know I have sometimes been sarcastic and unkind …. And, dear, I am very sorry and won’t do it any more.” … [Gilbert Murray letter to his daughter Rosalind, June 29, 1912]

“It may be that . . . I am no longer any good to you. … I think about you constantly, I admire your work, and I love you. I think, in trying to readjust our relations from parent and child to friend and friend, we have both made a lot of blunders. It is a difficult job and we were sure to do so. But it would be rather humiliating if you and I had not enough brains and sensitiveness to avoid the most ordinary pitfalls of life.” [Gilbert Murray letter to his daughter Rosalind, December 14, 1912]

Yet, even though the family pattern meant that they were often separated, by far the most important person in Rosalind’s childhood was [her father] Gilbert Murray. When she was only one and half years old, Murray set out ”to teach her to talk by making her give me orders–‘Run’, ‘Stop’, etc.” “It is a great help she is so intelligent,” he informed her grandmother in 1893. He cultivated her (undoubtedly precocious) literary skills, asking her to write him poems when she went away to school and offering delicate, lighthearted criticism of the childish verses she sent back.

— William H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life (Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 56, 58-59

 

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Probably I caught you young and over influenced you.

Over-influence. Parental over-influence. At an early age (their children’s). During their children’s development years.

Has this been studied and written about by psychologists?

It is certainly worth thinking about.

One usually reads about the dangers of parental neglect, and the benefits (taken as a given) of parental involvement in their children’s lives. To foster and nurture (the latter) growth and wellness and the development of positive attributes. But is it possible that some parents become over involved? That a certain distance should be maintained?

This is tricky. But I thought of my own parents, who seemed to do a good job in this respect. They could at times — often, in fact — be overly critical. But many of my pursuits, interests, and achievements — while fostered by them to an extent (for example, my mother had a lot to do with instilling in me a love of reading) — were carried on by me largely independent of them: my thoughts in private, my activities (such as hanging out with, playing with, and learning from friends) not that closely supervised by them.

This makes me reflect on my own parenting style, possible faults of mine in this respect, and how no one ever seems to think about this.

 

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Rosalind Murray (1890–1967) was a British-born writer and novelist known for The Happy Tree and The Leading Note. Her father, Gilbert Murray (1866-1957), was a famous classical scholar.

In 1913, Rosalind Murray married the Oxford don Arnold J. Toynbee, who became a world famous historian.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

    November 2020

reflections on dealing with lingering resentments

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Try to grow up for once and for all. … [Y]ou, who forever holds grudges even against childhood teachers and coaches, are totally unable to forgive or forget any perceived slights against you.

— email from a close relative, July 18, 2018

 

This essay is concerned with the need we all feel sometimes to overcome ill effects and resentments from long past experiences.

One example may serve to illustrate what I am thinking about: my lingering resentment and anger towards my high school Phys Ed teacher and baseball coach, Robert C. (Bob) Gibson.

Mr. Gibson was the chairman of the Physical Education Department at Canton High School in Canton, Massachusetts. He was a very popular teacher and coach, but I can’t forgive him for the way he treated me when I went out for baseball in my junior year. He didn’t want me on the team and let me know it. It was really unfair.

I think he thought I was a scholar who had no aptitude for baseball, and maybe the fact that I wore thick glasses had something to do with it. But at least one teammate, my classmate Warren Kelson, did wear glasses, and that didn’t seem to bother Mr. Gibson.

He kicked me off the varsity team. I was deeply hurt but was resolved not to show it.

I can never forgive or forget the way he treated me. I never got over it.

 

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My older brother (not the same person as the relative quoted above) has commented on this and similar resentments I have from the past. He feels that I should be able to leave them in the past and move beyond them.

I am of two minds about holding past grudges.

By remembering past slights, I believe, and refusing to forget out about them, by stubbornly holding on to them, one is, in a way, protecting oneself against the possibility of future hurt. I am convinced that my good memory, if I may compliment myself on having one, comes from a strong desire to not forget what has happened to me, both good and bad, so that I can defend myself in the future against further hurt and emotional pain.

On the other hand, there does seem to be validity to what some mental health experts seem to say about trauma, that you need to be able to overcome it and let go, put it in the past.

I have recently read two books: Getting Unstuck: Unraveling the Knot of Depression, Attention, and Trauma by Dr. Don Kerson; and Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being by Thom Hartmann.

Neither book is the sort that I would ordinarily take interest in. But I finished both.

Both authors make good points and also lapse, in parts of their books, into New Age psychobabble. But, some of the stuff they say seems to have validity. They talk about the need to be able to overcome the effects of trauma. Apparently, a lot of people don’t even know that it is something one has to learn to deal with.

Apparently, it’s a left brain-right brain sort of thing. You have to be able to call up the painful memories, get them out of your left brain, which is critical and unforgiving, and from there into your right brain — sort of upload and dump them there — which can deal with them emotionally, and then be able to let go, become whole and healed once again.

Something like that.

These things don’t exactly work for me, and I feel that I never want to let go of my anger at Coach Gibson. But I can see the validity of the point that these writers make: about getting over the ill effects of past mistreatment and saying, that was long ago, it’s time to move on, to move beyond them.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

  December 2016; updated August 2019

 

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Addendum:

I will probably — undoubtedly? — be accused of overstatement, but consider the cases of child abuse that surface years later. For example, the scandal of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. And similar case of abuse.

For years, I kind of buried any thoughts of Coach Gibson’s treatment of me. The memory was painful. My immediate reaction, such as it was — when it occurred during my adolescence — was embarrassment and feelings of inadequacy.

I never could understand why Mr. Gibson did not want me on the team. It certainly wasn’t because of any misbehavior or non-compliance with protocol or rules on my part. My best guess is that he thought I wasn’t an athlete or was a pointy-headed nerd not suited for the baseball team — I was usually thought of as the bookish, scholarly type. But I had been on sports teams throughout high school. I was not a good baseball player, but I had been on a Little League team and was always playing ball with my friends.

Regardless of such considerations, what he did was a clear injustice and sheer negligence on his part. A teacher, coach, or recreation or youth group leader is supposed to encourage participation in sports and diverse activities by young people. To encourage them to join and participate, and certainly not the opposite — and under no circumstances to denigrate them for incompetence. Not everyone can be a first stringer or starter (I wasn’t expecting that) or the lead in the school play. That goes without saying. I would have been happy to be able to practice with the team and to sit on the bench as an onlooker and vicarious participant in games.

We were encouraged in high school to participate in sports, because it would supposedly make us well rounded (and also, looked good on college applications). It was believed that sports contributed to psychological health and mental acuity. (Mens sana in corpore sano.)

My insensitive relatives can’t see that this supposedly petty grudge of mine arose from what was patently abusive behavior towards me by an authority figure who shouldn’t have been employed to work with adolescents, and that the problem lay with Coach Gibson, not me.

— Roger Smith, August 2019

 

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Addendum:

I was thinking today, for no particular reason, about this post, and I feel that I never should forget or forgive my coach’s treatment of me.

To others, the incident may seem negligible. To me, it wasn’t. Some hurts are shrugged off. Others, occurring at a particular time — say, in one’s youth, when one can be particularly vulnerable — can’t be. Persons lacking empathy (such as the relative quoted above) can’t see how a seemingly trivial thing can be a big deal, psychologically speaking.

And, of course, some major abuses or atrocities inflicted upon groups of people should not be forgotten and should be preserved in their collective consciousness.

— Roger W. Smith, August 3, 2017

 

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Addendum:

A distant relative of mine posted a comment about this post on Facebook. His comment and my response are below.

 

Sometimes the best way to leave resentment behind is to realize that the offender is dead and no one else remembers the incident(s).

 

Roger’s Smith’s reply:

Perhaps.

But, your “offender is dead” point seems beside the point.

Does this mean that all past offenses committed in human history and experienced in one’s personal life get wiped off the slate after — and by virtue of — the fact that the “offender” has died?

Secondly, you make the point that “no one else remembers”? The incident I wrote about would, naturally, be remembered by hardly anyone besides me. Again, this is beside the point. It was a minor incident in the grand scale of things, but I was deeply hurt by it.

I told almost no one, besides confiding it to my older brother years later. (I did so because he and I were talking about the coach, whom we both knew from high school.)

Have not you suffered hurts and indignities in your own life that have festered but which you may have rarely talked with others about, which you perhaps had a hard time dealing with, and which linger?

— Roger Smith, December 2016

“You are the politest person I ever met.”

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Those were the words of my late friend Bill Dalzell, spoken some fifty years ago not long after we had become friends. We met in New York City, where I had recently moved.

I remember many conversations I have had during the entire course of my life more or less verbatim. Not every word, of course, but many important, significant remarks I do remember verbatim.

“You are the politest person I ever met,” he said to me.

I recently wrote, in a eulogy for Bill I wrote last year for posting on this blog, that “He [was] …. in many respects totally unconventional. Was a nonconformist. Yet he was one of the kindest, politest, most civil persons you could hope to meet. He was a true gentleman.”

In writing this, I was not (at that moment) thinking of what Bill said about me.

 

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At the risk being called a purveyor of racial stereotypes, I think it is worth considering that Bill and I both came from similar ethnic/cultural backgrounds: English, Scotch. The civility and good manners of English people struck me on a couple of trips to England. Teaching true courtesy was something important to my parents when I was growing up. For example, the importance of saying please and thank you. Not just words, but showing gratitude and appreciation. Not making importunate or arrogant requests or demands.

Or, to give another example, politeness to strangers and people of all ages, older and younger. And, when greeted by someone you passed on the street, always returning the greeting. I still can’t comprehend why in New York some people don’t bother to do this or neglect to do so intentionally. In the New England of my childhood, one would invariably respond with a “Good morning. How are you today?”

I have close relatives who were brought up the same way. They have either forgotten these principles or can’t see them when manifested in others. They certainly don’t appreciate them.

I have news for them. I haven’t changed. They have. They have become mean, churlish, and uncharitable.

They can’t credit me as Bill once did. They say, incredibly, that I am an inconsiderate, self-centered, boorish person. What we seem to have in this case is an example of psychological projection, where people vent their own frustrations and failings by finding fault with others. They enjoy making me into a sort of Donald Trump caricature and, having built up this false picture in their minds — and, in their view, having “validated” it by sharing stories among themselves in which I am always doing something boorish or offensive (they delight in telling one another such “horror stories”) — they feel validated. It’s a perfect example of people trying to elevate themselves by denigrating others, using stereotypes that have no basis in reality.

Beware of the narrow minded, petty people who think and judge like this; who can’t see or appreciate people as individuals; who have no respect or appreciation for a person’s intrinsic qualities, for their true nature; and who instead try to tar and feather them by ascribing to the object of their hatred and scorn behaviors and opinions that they have made up.

 

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I am still the same polite, considerate person that I was fifty years ago. It’s unlikely that a person would change in such a fundamental matter of character.

 

— Roger W. Smith

June 2019

 

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Addendum:

My eulogy for Bill Dalzell

“William Sage Dalzell (1929-2018)”

is posted on this site at

William Sage Dalzell (1929-2018)

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Addendum: August 26, 2022:

I should have added that Bill should have known. Politeness was invariable with him.

In which the question is taken up: When is the desire to be admired not abnormal?

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It seems that you must have some insecurities about your writing if you feel compelled so often to exclaim how well done it always is.

You are often harping about how great your writing is and how unappreciated it is and how jealous people are of your writing. You seem to have some illusions of grandeur and seek to dazzle whatever readers you have with your continued brilliance.

Are you the only judge of your writing? Recently there have been a number of posts in which you highly praise your own writing and intellect. Shouldn’t this be something that other people (your readers generally) evaluate?

 

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Several relatives of mine have been critical of what they feel is my undue desire to be admired for my writing. (See comments above.)

Like many people who themselves do not engage in creative activity, they are quick to find fault with others who do.

I can not help thinking of my father. He lived a life in the arts. He was a musician.

He loved the life of a musician. He was proud of his skills, which he exhibited at an early age and then developed and honed throughout his lifetime. He was well trained and well educated in music. Along with natural gifts, he was completely dedicated to music and highly motivated. A natural interest and innate ability drew him to music, yet he could have, at some point in his life, given it up and chosen a different, perhaps more common or pedestrian occupation, which is what many who showed promise in, say, the arts or athletics in their youth often do. At some point, they give up study or pursuit leading to a professional career.

 

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My father loved being able to earn a living doing what he loved most: playing the piano. It was, in a sense, hard work for him. He worked long hours and odd hours, usually for low pay. He never became wealthy. I would observe intense concentration on his face, as if the rest of the world had been blocked out (which is not to say that he was oblivious to there being an audience), and, although he usually seemed at his happiest at the piano, I would sometimes see him grimace and scold himself if he hit a wrong key.

A key thing to understand about my father — and people like him — was that his identity was piano player, and piano player was his identity. Not solely. He was also a husband, a father, and a family man. If someone asked him who he was, I am certain, he would have said, I am the husband of … (my mother), the father of … (four children), and a pianist. (Or, perhaps, a pianist, a husband, and a father, in that order.)

His ego was coterminous, so to speak, with his music making. Take that away from him, and he wouldn’t have been the Alan Smith we and the admirers of his playing knew and loved.

 

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Being able to perform music for emotional satisfaction — knowing it gave others pleasure — and for profit gave me father a sense of being (to use a clumsy phrase) emotionally validated, of being affirmed.

Yet, he was not a narcissist. He had a quiet confidence in his abilities, a not bashful — but not boastful either — sense of them. Only occasionally did he speak to me, in confidence, of his own assessment of his skills. He quite realistically appraised them, once telling me, for example, about his ability to transpose music on demand and on the spot. And, on another occasion, saying, “You know, I never really mastered the organ. I can get by, but I never fully learned the organ, I never learned all the stops.” (Or words to that effect.)

 

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And yet. (Here’s where my writing comes to mind.)

My father loved to be admired for his playing He loved to give pleasure to listeners. To be told how much they enjoyed his music. He was motivated as a professional by the love of his craft, the love of music, and, also,  love of the attention and praise it brought him. By the ego gratification he got.

It’s the same with my writing. I have a quiet confidence, or self-assurance, in my ability as a writer. I feel that I am very good, but I can make realistic appraisals of my own work. I am a perfectionist and am probably my own best critic.

 

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Which leads me to my main point. There is difference in the desire for ego gratification and praise or admiration on the part of creative person and narcissism or self-promotion.

Speaking from a psychological perspective, I would aver that it is normal to desire to receive and enjoy praise and admiration when it has been earned and one knows that one deserves it.

This is not a sign of overweening, all-consuming egoism or vanity.

A soloist or actor performs. They enjoy the applause and plaudits. They have worked for it. They know when they have met their own demanding expectations and deserve credit.

There is nothing psychologically wrong, unhealthy, or abnormal about this. It fact, it would be abnormal to find a person in the arts who did not feel this way. It’s a healthy exercise of one’s selfhood, of exerting oneself, in which one seeks affirmation and validation of one’s industry and talents.

One does not create in a void or a vacuum. Affirmation is crucial. It’s like saying, one can’t love in a vacuum. There must be reciprocity. One seeks someone to love (a love object), and to be loved in return. One loves others reciprocally. Narcissism is something else.

Similarly, “public” acts of creativity are an act of unselfishness, a kind of selflessness, wherein the ego both asserts itself and gives or vouchsafes the productions of one’s self, an individual, to others, expecting to receive appreciation and admiration in return. When affirmation or recognition does not come, one must accept it; it can be frustrating, disappointing, depressing, and worse, the worst case being that of the creative artist who never gets recognition.

But lack of appreciation, or not getting enough or as much as one feels one should, does not mean one should give up. Because creative activity is a fundamentally good thing, like doing other types of productive work, engaging in sports, or being physically active. And wanting others to take pleasure in it is the opposite of selfishness.

 

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I am constantly trying to interest other people in my writing. I often get a response along the lines of how interested they would be reading it, and then, they never mention my writing again — in most cases, they probably never did get around to reading it.

I take this in stride.

But when I do get a reader, when someone tells me how much they thought of a piece and makes complimentary remarks about my writing, it is very gratifying.

I am slaving over a major piece of writing now. I have been working on it for months. I am certain it will be good when I finally finish it.

I can’t wait to make it public, in the hope and expectation that people will read and praise it. What in part motivates me is the desire and thought of wanting to make it good so that it and I will be praised.

If one didn’t feel this way, we would have a case of de facto solipsism.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   February 2019

 

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COMMENTS

posted on Facebook by Nancy Jordan Ables (a former piano student of my father)

February 8, 2019

I am thinking that a writer of any kind needs to have confidence in their abilities, especially when they publish it for all to see, and I see nothing wrong with saying “I think I did a good job.” Musicians, politicians, actors, or anyone who has their work available to the public make similar statements all the time.

 

a comment via email

Ewa Solonia

February 8, 2019

Thank you for your post. It was interesting. The comments you are getting are upsetting and unconscionable. I totally understand how you feel. I’ve also been doing all kinds of art throughout the years. Compliments are always appreciated because it’s art! It’s the highest form of communication with the world one can achieve. It’s not about the grandiose.

parental love

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Re the horrendous crime of separating the children of immigrants from their parents. (And it is a crime for which there are no moral or legal reasons, no justification, and no excuses. As the Archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, put it: “To steal children from their parents is a grave sin, immoral and evil.”)

I can’t help thinking about what parents must feel.

Becoming a parent is one of those human experiences that is the most important in a lifetime. That’s a clumsy way to put it, and it’s an understatement. But what else ranks with it? Birth? Death?

Shortly before my first child was born, my therapist asked me, “Do you feel ready to become a parent?”

I answered that I thought I was. “I’m as ready as I ever will be,” I said.

A friend of mine, a psychiatrist, and his wife, a clinical psychologist, had just had their first child. “Your life and your marriage will never be the same,” they told me. “Everything is different. You will never again have as much time for yourself or your spouse.”

A few days before our first child was born, my therapist said to me, in an admonitory fashion, “Do you realize that this new child will be a totally helpless creature? Totally dependent upon you for everything.”

I hadn’t really thought about it.

 

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When our son was born, I was a new person. The love was overwhelming and instantaneous. I was not the same person I had been the day before. I was a father. I was thrilled and terribly proud. But the outpouring of love I felt for our son was overwhelming. It was an emotion I had never experienced before. How could I have?

 

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A little while later, I had a conversation with a coworker of mine at The Wyatt Company. She was an attractive, personable woman.

She had just had her first child, a daughter. We were comparing notes about how it felt to be a first-time parent.

“You know,” I told her, “I never realized how powerful the emotion was and how immediate and total the feeling of parental love is. I thought that it was something that would develop or grow over time. Not that one wouldn’t be thrilled and proud to become a parent, but as you got to know the child your love would grow. I would sometimes hear stories about people losing a child in infancy or read about infant deaths in literature. I would always think it must have been hard, but at least the child was just an infant, so perhaps the parents didn’t know the child that well — perhaps it would make it easier to bear that.”

We both could see — and agree — that that was not at all the case. One’s love for a child is as strong and intense at the movement of birth as later, meaning at any stage of the child’s life. And, losing a child is the worst thing of all types of tragedies a parent can contemplate.

Not just losing, but having a child torn away from them without being told or knowing where they have been taken. Not being able to find them, or knowing if or when they will see their child again.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   June 2018

on happiness vis-à-vis sadness (and the other way around)

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“We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad. If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.”

— Rollo May, Paulus: Reminiscence of a Friendship (1973)

 

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These thoughts, this post, are occasioned by a film I saw about beleaguered people in a foreign country.

I was transfixed — totally engrossed in the people’s stories and the picture the film gave of their daily lives.

I shared my enthusiasm for the film with someone close to me and suggested that she see it with me.

She said no, she had no interest (despite my strong recommendation) in seeing the film.

“Why?” I asked.

She answered (perhaps she was looking for excuses), “I don’t want to see something that will make me sad.”

This struck me as patently ridiculous. Since when has it been imperative to avoid things — in life, in art — with the potential to make oneself sad?

 

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It should be obvious that true art mixes joy and beauty with pathos.

In his Poetics, Aristotle developed the theory of catharsis (from the Greek κάθαρσις, catharsis, meaning “purification” or “cleansing” — the purification and purgation of emotions — especially pity and fear — through art”; as explained on Wikipedia). Note that, as explained in the online encyclopedia article, catharsis represents an “extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration” (italics added).

The film which I saw was a documentary about North Korea entitled Under the Sun. More about this below.

 

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So much for theory. Let’s consider some examples. But first, a digression about happiness in PEOPLE.

To what extent is happiness a desideratum? Can we expect it? Is there even such a thing — is it real? How should we regard others who are, seem to be, or claim to be, happy?

My father, Alan W. Smith, thoroughly enjoyed life, on many levels: an interest in things (including the delight he took in little things, such as observing what happened once to dry ice when he threw a chunk of it over the side of a ship into the water; he wanted us to see it), including intellectual curiosity; a love of music (chiefly as a performer); a delight in people and their company; a delight in little amusements; pleasures such as eating, drinking, and the outdoors (experienced as an everyday citizen, not as a woodsman; e.g., raking leaves in the fall, a walk with his wife or the dog on the seashore, a blizzard). He had a keen appetite for life.

Unlike a lot of adults, he loved his work. He never begrudged, never complained about anything. Welcomed everything and anyone who came his way.

He could loosen and cheer up a group simply by being himself and by virtue of his presence. He didn’t mind looking ridiculous, making fun of himself (or being made fun of), or being regarded as extravagant or incautious.

Oftentimes, he would enter a parlor with people leaning forward in their chairs — tight lipped, looking uncomfortable.

“What’s everybody looking so glum for?” he would say. The complexion of the group would change just like that and people would begin talking and joking. In the words of Louisa May Alcott*, he “pervaded the rooms like a genial atmosphere, using the welcome of eye and hand which needs no language to interpret it, … making their [his guests’] enjoyment his own.”

He took the weather with equanimity, be it a blizzard, a hurricane, or an earthquake.

My father happened to be in the Bay Area, visiting my older brother in the late 1980’s, shortly before the former died, when an earthquake struck. “I’ve always wanted to be able to experience what an earthquake feels like,” he told me afterward. As my former therapist pointed out, such an attitude showed an appetite for life and an eagerness to experience it.

A hot summer’s day? A great excuse for setting off a few fireworks in our back yard, or for a lobster cookout (which both my parents loved) in the front yard of our rented summer house on Cape Cod.

I remember a blizzard in my home town of Canton, Massachusetts when I was in high school. Everything was shut down. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. An idea came to my father. Wouldn’t it be great to toast marshmallows and cook hot dogs in our living room fireplace? There was a problem, however — we didn’t have the ingredients. Such niggling problems never seemed to stand in the way of the fun planned by my father. Come to think of it, how about a walk? We walked, tramped about two miles each way through snowdrifts, found a store that was open, and bought marshmallows, hot dogs, and buns.

There was, of course, another side to him. He could be pensive and gloomy. He could be irascible and had a bad temper. His cheerfulness was only one side of the coin.

When something untoward happened to him — an argument with his second wife, for example — he would say to himself through gritted teeth (as she used to tell me), “I’m not going to let it ruin my day.”

*In Alcott’s novel Work: A Story of Experience (1873).

 

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Phony Cheerfulness

A truism: no one is happy all the time.

There was a nice looking, perky girl in the class a year ahead of me in college: Marie E______.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say this. It will sound petty and perhaps mean spirited. But Marie’s perpetual cheerfulness grated on me.

A friend of mine, who lacked emotional depth and (often) insight into human relationships, was eager to get to know Marie and had several tennis dates with her. The relationship went no further.

“The thing I like most about her,” he told me, “is that she’s always cheerful.” This comment seemed obtuse and fatuous. It nettled me. I would be willing to bet that Marie’s perpetual cheerfulness was her way of dealing with insecurities that she probably felt.

 

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Happiness in a person without an admixture of sadness seems to be inimical to the human condition. One wants to get to know both sides of a person — to hear about their highs and lows from him or herself.

What about my father? you might ask. Didn’t I just wax rhapsodic over his cheerfulness and capacity to enjoy life?

I noted that he had another side that, while it was less often seen, would suddenly be displayed in bursts of anger. And, my father knew profound grief from family tragedies for which he did not bear responsibility but in which he was the chief mourner and suffered the most.

A capacity for joy does not preclude an awareness of sadness, does not obviate sadness.

Who wrote the Ode to Joy? The same composer who in his late quartets, beautifully, incomparably, expresses pathos, sadness.

 

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The film mentioned above is Under the Sun (2015), a documentary about North Korea. It was directed by the Russian documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky.

It is beautifully done and tugs and pulls at the viewer emotionally on many levels. The central person in the film, who is unforgettable, is an adorable eight-year-old North Korean girl named Zin-mi. The plot is ostensibly about Zin-mi going through steps, including school, as she prepares to join the Korean Children’s Union. At the film’s conclusion, she breaks down and cries upon being admitted to the children’s union. She is perhaps crying from relief that the stress of achieving the goal is over and, it seems, from what one would call joy mixed with sadness.

As I noted in a previous post:

re “Under the Sun” (a film about North Korea)

https://rogersgleanings.com/2016/08/25/re-under-the-sun-a-film-about-north-korea/

The compelling thing about the film is that you come away caring about the people and touched by the film’s PATHOS — despite the fact that one is aware that the people live incredibly hard, regimented lives in a totalitarian state where they have been effectively brainwashed and reduced almost to automatons (or so it often seems).

The film features beautiful, elegiac music composed by a Latvian composer, Karlis Auzans. It captures the pathos musically, for example, in a scene where you see North Koreans having family photos taken in a sort of assembly line fashion. A couple stands proudly in front of an automatic camera with their children. The photo is taken and another couple poses. And so on. As they stare into the camera, one sees expressions of pride but also feels a great sadness. The music rises to an emotional pitch and captures this. One feels empathy with the people posing, with the North Koreans! One feels that they are people, just like us. That, despite very hard lives, they experience feelings like ours. One feels like crying oneself, but one, at the same time, experiences a kind of joy in contemplating the miracle of human existence, and how this elemental reality links us all, regardless of circumstances.

 

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This got me thinking about pathos in literature and music. About the comment “I don’t want to see something that will make me sad.”

Anna Karenina ends sadly. Does that make one any less desirous of reading it? It seems that in most operas the plot involves a tragic love affair, often with someone committing suicide, dying of grief. Art (in the broad sense of the word) is full of grief, so to speak, as well as happiness — as depicted by the artist drawing upon a profound knowledge of human life. Would one wish all art to be reduced to the level of a situation comedy?

What about music? Ever hear stirrings of pathos? In Beethoven’s late quartets, in Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony, and so forth?

Case closed.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  February 2018; updated May 2018

hatred that feeds a psychological need

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It has a life of its own.

Feeds on itself.

I have seen it, depressingly, in my own life. Where the hatred is or was directed at me.

It is a fire which smolders and then rages, out of control. It is fueled of and by itself, from an inner demon or demons in the hater. (“The jealous are possessed by a mad devil and a dull spirit at the same time,” says Lavater.)

Nothing can seem to bring it under control. It can only be dimly foreseen and will take you by surprise by its ferocity. The only thing the object of the hatred can do is to try and stay away from the fire. No remonstrances will do any good.

Rational thought is not applicable here. Thee, O Victim, should not feel and should not think for a moment that you deserve it. It has nothing to do with you — it is all manufactured in their petty, jealous minds — and there is no basis for it. You will be called all sorts of names and subject to the wildest unfounded allegations. Try to ignore them, hurtful as they may be. It’s not about you. It’s about them. Their frustrations, regrets, jealousy, all projected upon you.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   April 2018