The Interplay between Emotion and Reason Essay -- Psychology Essays

The Interplay between Emotion and Reason "And this is of course the difficult job, is it not: to move the spirit from it's nowhere pedestal to a somewhere place, while preserving its dignity and importance." I cry. There is pressure behind my eyes, my skin turns blotchy and my lips tremble, and mucus clogs my airways, making it difficult to breath. I hate crying in front of others: not because I want to hide how upset I am, but because the second that most people perceive my emotional state as fragile, they assume my reasoning and mental functions are also not sound. The outward expression of an inward instability is something we save for those who we know and trust best. They do not view our emotionality as a weakness, they already know us to be strong. Crying is represented in our culture as a lack of control. When upset, the "ideal" is to keep a cool head (and a poker face), not allowing emotions to enter into the decision making process. However, I submit that without our emotional base, rationality would have no reason or foundation upon which to operate. A multitude of opinions are found on the subject: are emotions more a function of the heart or of the head? According to Antonio Damasio (1), emotions and feelings are an integral part of all thought; yet we as humans spend much of our time attempting to disregard and hide them. In the view of source (2), experience is the result of integration of cognition and feelings. In either view, it remains indisputable that emotions are not what we typically make them out to be: the unwanted step-sister of our cultural sweetheart reason. Reason in our culture denotes intelligence, cognition, and control. Emotions seems such a "scary" concept to our collective m... ...tenderness, and luster gone. Is this also reflective of some human insecurity? Not until we can bridge the illusioned gap between our emotions and our cognition can we understand fully the relationship between our brain and our behavior. References 1) A.R. Damasio, Descartes' Error, 1994 2) Thinking, Emotions, and the Brain http://www.drweitz.com/scientific/brain.htm 3) From Neurobiology to Psychopathology: Integrating Cognition and Emotion, on the NIMH website http://www.nimh.nih.gov/diva/neuropsych.cfm 4) Laughing out Loud to Good Health. http://library.thinkquest.org/25500/index2.htm?tqskip1=1&tqtime=0416 5) William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Oxford Shakespeare. 1914. , on the bartleby website. http://www.bartleby.com/70/2041.html 6 Theories of Emotion--Understanding our own Emotional Experience. http://www.bartleby.com/70/2041.html