Realization

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Between Us

  They listed a great many words that, even if they were related to “emotions,” did not refer to emotions proper (by which I meant at the time that these words failed to describe a phenomenon which happens “on the inside” of the person). Surinamese and Turkish respondents listed “laughing” (lafu/gülmek) more often than “happiness/joy” (breti, presiri/mutluluk), and “crying” (kre/ağlamak) more often than “sadness” (sari/üzüntü). Many of my Turkish respondents came up with “yelling” (bağırmak) and “helping” (yardım) as emotion words. I considered these words emotional behaviors, but not really emotions, and being the diligent researcher I was, I disregarded the words that did not refer to “real” emotions in the remainder of my research. Interestingly, even my Dutch- majority respondents occasionally had trouble understanding what emotions “really were.” Many of them mentioned gezellig (the unique Dutch word that describes a social setting and a feeling at the same time) and aggressief (“aggressive”). And did I justify not including the emotional behaviors (e.g., crying, laughing) that my respondents in all cultural groups considered important emotions? No, not really. In retrospect, I realize that I was blindfolded by my own culturally informed ideas of what emotions were, and by a scientific consensus that originated in that same culture. I decided that my focus would be on emotions as phenomena which happen “inside” the person, and in doing so, I focused on emotion categories that coincided, to a large extent, with scholarly definitions of emotions as they exist in Western (mostly U.S.) science. In retrospect, I could have learned much more, had I been more aware of my own cultural assumptions. There was more that I missed. Many of the Turkish participants in my word-listing study did list emotions proper—the phenomena that happen inside the person—but the emotions that were high up in their list barely overlapped with the basic emotions as psychology knew them. The emotions listed by most of the Turkish respondents were “love” (sevgi/sevmek) and “hate” (nefret); also prevalent were, in descending order of frequency, “pitying” (acımak), “desire/longing” (hasret), “sexual love” (aşk), and “sadness” (üzüntü). The most frequent emotion words looked nothing like the list of emotions that were recognized in the face: anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness. They showed only slightly more overlap (i.e., love) with the emotion concepts found to be basic by research on emotion concepts.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I didn’t know I needed someone to dig into my heart and figure out why on some days I wanted to play, and why on others I craved solitude. I didn’t even like it when he did it. It’s a painful thing to look inside yourself and see the whys and the hows of your clockwork. You are a lot uglier than you think, plenty more selfish than you are ever likely to admit. So, you ignore what’s inside of you. Thinking if you don’t acknowledge it, it’s not really there. Until someone unlikely comes along and cracks you. They see every dark corner, and they get it. And they tell you it’s okay to have dark corners, instead of making you feel ashamed of them. Isaac wasn’t afraid of my ugly. He rolled through the highs and lows with me. There was no judgment in his love. And all of a sudden there were fewer lows and more highs. Nick loved me enough to leave me alone. Isaac knew me better than I knew me. I said I wanted to be left alone, he knew better. I said I wanted white, he knew better. He brightened me. He enlightened me. Because Isaac was my soulmate. Not Nick. Nick was just some great love. Isaac knew how to heal my soul. “We were good together,” I say to Nick. “But I’m not her anymore.” “I don’t understand,” he says. “You’re not who?” “Exactly.” “Brenna, you’re not making sense.” “Do I ever?” He pauses. I shake my head. “I don’t make sense to you. That’s why you left me.” “I’ll try harder.” “I have cancer. You can try as hard as you want, but I have cancer and I’m not going to be here in a year.” His face is a cocktail of woebegone and shock. “But … I thought … I thought you had the surgery.” I never told Nick about the surgery I had to remove my breasts, but my agent and publicist knew. Things get around in the writing world. I was staining Nick’s perfect, white idealism. Cancer happened, sure. But in Nick’s world you beat it. Then you lived happily ever after. “I have it again. It came back. Stage four.” He starts fumbling with sentences that he never finishes. I hear the words “treatment” and “chemotherapy” and “fight” and my heart grows tired. “Shut up,” I say. Nick’s glow is an ephemeral phenomenon. He’s already looking like the same dumb fuck who thought I was too dark for his white room. “It’s too late for that. The cancer metastasized. While I was there. It came back. It’s in my bones.” “There has to be something…” He looks so terribly forlorn. “You’re trying to save me. But I’m not staying alive to be your muse.” “Why are you being so cruel?” I laugh. A good belly laugh, too. “Charm is clothed in narcissism, you know that? Get out of my house.” “Brenna…”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  More pleasant. I got to speak to someone who didn’t really care about me. She wasn’t trying to save me, or love me to better health; she was paid (a hundred dollars an hour) to take an unbiased look into my soul and help me find the crickets. That’s what she called them: crickets. The little chirping noises that were either alarms, or echoes, or the unspoken words that needed to be spoken. Or that’s what I thought anyway. Turns out Saphira cared above and beyond her pay grade. She entered God’s pay grade. Toying with fate and lives and sanity. But that last time, the last time I saw her, she’d said something that in hindsight should have been my clue in to her insanity. I’d told her I was writing a new book. One about Nick. She’d become flustered at that. Not in the extreme outward way a normal person becomes flustered. I don’t even know if I can pinpoint how I knew it upset her. Maybe her bracelets tinkled a little extra that day as she jotted notes down on her yellow pad. Or maybe her ruby lips pulled a little tighter. But I knew. I’d confessed to her that I’d messed everything up, but I wasn’t sure how. When we ended our session she’d grabbed my hand. “Senna,” she’d said, “do you want another chance at the truth?” “The truth?” I’d repeated, not sure of what she was getting at. “The truth that can set you free...” Her eyes had been two hot coals. I’d been close enough to smell her perfume; it smelled exotic like myrrh and burning wood. “Nothing can set me free, Saphira,” I’d said in turn. “That’s why I write.” I’d turned to leave. I was halfway out the door when she’d called my name. “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” I’d half smiled, and gone home and forgotten what she’d said. I’d written my book in the month after that meeting. I only needed thirty days to write a book. Thirty days in which I didn’t eat or sleep or do anything at all but clack away at my keyboard. And after the book was finished and catharsis was complete, I’d never made another appointment to see her. Her office called and left messages on my phone. She eventually called and left a message. But I was finished. “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” I say it out loud, the memory aching in my brain. Is that where she had the idea? To put me in this place where for a time both the sun and the moon were hidden? Where like slow, seeping molasses I would discover the crickets of truth in my heart? My zookeeper thought it kind to be my savior. And now what? I would starve and freeze here alone?

• From Between Us

  As it turned out, talking about our emotions as internal experiences is quite exceptional in the world. People in many cultures talk about emotions as more “public, social, and relational” than people do in contemporary Western cultural contexts. In cultures remote from our own in time or place, emotions are often seen as acts in the social and moral world. Take the emotions of a group of Egyptian Bedouins, as described in the late 1980s by the anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian-American anthropologist. Emotions among those Bedouins are the moral and social instruments of their culture of honor. Honor Bedouin-style is closely tied to “being strong”; therefore, any appearance of weakness is a vulnerability. And there are many situations in Bedouin life that render one vulnerable, such as the mere encounter of people higher in the hierarchy. Since men are considered higher up in the hierarchy than women, any time a woman meets a man, her (relative) weakness is highlighted and she becomes vulnerable to humiliation. Hasham, an all-important emotion, is tied to the Bedouin honor code: it occurs upon “the realization of vulnerability to humiliation,” and consists of the modesty behaviors prompted in such situation. The emotion hasham is defined by its function in the social and moral order, not by its subjective feeling. Naturally, hasham may come with inner feelings (e.g., uncomfortable, shy, and ashamed), but inner feeling is not what defines it most. I read many similar ethnographies in the late ’80s, and I certainly picked up that people talked about emotions differently across cultures. I summarized the work of many ethnographies of emotion, such as the one by Abu-Lughod about hasham, in a review article on culture and emotion that I co-authored with my advisor Nico Frijda. Catherine Lutz, one of the main anthropologists studying emotion at the time, complimented me once on these summaries, saying they presented a fair description. And yet, it was not until later that I came to subscribe to the main implication of cultural differences in talk: that talking about emotions matters for how you do them. I still own some hard copies from the ’80s and ’90s with my own incredulous notes scribbled in the margin, notes such as “This is emotion talk, not emotions themselves” or “The fact that they do not talk about this emotion does not mean that these emotions do not exist.” They bear witness to my early disbelief that the way people from these cultures far from my own talked about their emotions constituted a truth—their truth. I believed that, deep down, all people would turn out to have emotions just like mine. I no longer do. Some ten years after I had first read anthropological accounts on emotions, a collaboration with fellow psychologist Mayumi Karasawa brought them to life.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Therese," he resumed after a minute's silence, "Therese, it is hardly appropriate for you to play the virgin with me; I have, so it would seem to me, some right to your complaisance; but, however, it makes little difference: keep your silver but don't leave me. I am highly pleased to have a well-behaved girl in my house, the conduct of these others I have about me being far from impeccable... Since you show yourself so virtuous in this instance, you will be equally so, I trust, in every other. My interests would benefit therefrom; my daughter is fond of you, just a short while ago she came and begged me to persuade you not to go; and so rest with us, if you will, I invite you to remain." "Monsieur," I replied, "I should not be happy here; the two women who serve you aspire to all the affection you are able to give them; they will not behold me without jealousy, and sooner or later I will be forced to leave you." "Be not apprehensive," Rodin answered, "fear none of the effects of these women's envy, I shall be quite capable of keeping them in their place by maintaining you in yours, and you alone will possess my confidence without any resultant danger to yourself. But in order to continue to deserve it, I believe it would be well for you to know that the first quality, the foremost, I require in you, Therese, is an unassailable discretion. Many things take place here, many which do not sort with your virtuous principles; you must be able to witness everything, hear all and never speak a syllable of it.... Ah, Therese, remain with me, stay here, Therese, my child, it will be a joy to have you; in the midst of the many vices to which I am driven by a fiery temper, an unrestrainable imagination and a much rotted heart, at least I will have the comfort of a virtuous being dwelling close by, and upon whose breast I shall be able to cast myself as at the feet of a God when, glutted by my debauches, I..." "Oh Heaven!" I did think at this moment, "then Virtue is necessary, it is then indispensable to man, since even the vicious one is obliged to find reassurance in it and make use of it as of a shelter." And then, recollecting Rosalie's requests that I not leave her, and thinking to discern some good principles in Rodin, I resolved to stay with him.

• From Between Us

  Though never ostracized myself, my own experiences of emotional misfit have helped me to see that my emotions are not the default, no more logical or authentic than the emotions I observe in other cultures. Abandoning the assumption that my own emotions are the universal default has been a first step to better appreciate how others’ emotions are different. It helps me keep an open mind. My Scientific Journey My quest to understand cultural differences in emotions began in the late 1980s. I was a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and my advisor was the internationally renowned emotion psychologist Nico H. Frijda. We wondered at the time: Would emotions in different cultures be different in any way at all? At that time, psychological research had been geared towards finding a small set of emotions that were “hard-wired.” The thinking was that these emotions were the result of evolution, as they had improved the chances for survival for our ancestors, and might still be beneficial. Anger might have evolved because it serves individuals to defend themselves against competitors; fear because it helped our ancestors, or may still help us to escape from danger; and happiness because it helped us to seek out, and stay or move close to what seems good for us—the source of happiness. And so, in psychology, the search was on for these universal emotions. No part of this search for universality has sparked the imagination as much as did studies on the face. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen popularized this research in their 1975 book Unmasking the Face. They proposed that six emotions—anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness—could be read from the face (see figure 1.1). “When people look at someone’s face and think that person is afraid, are they wrong or right?” Ekman and Friesen wondered. And their answer was that, on average, people are right about the emotion: they can read emotions from the face. To be sure, the face was thought to be merely a signal of an emotion, not the emotion itself. [image file=image_rsrc2M2.jpg] Figure 1.1 Ekman’s facial expressions (Image courtesy of Paul Ekman Group, LLC)

• From Going Clear (2013)

  She was a successful actress with a recurring role in the long-running television series Dallas—as J. R. Ewing’s loyal but always unattainable secretary. Deborah Rennard and Milton Katselas in Silver Lake, California, 1985 Paul was still going through his epic divorce. Early in his relationship with Deborah, Paul admitted that he was having a spiritual crisis. He said he’d raced up to the top of the Bridge on faith, but he hadn’t gotten what he expected. “I don’t believe I’m a spiritual being. I actually am what you see,” Paul told her. Deborah advised him to get more auditing. Personally, she was having breakthroughs that led her to discover past lives. Images floated through her mind, and she realized, “That’s not here. I’m not in my body, I’m in another place.” She might be confronting what the church calls a “contra-survival action”—“like the time I clobbered Paul or threw something at him.” She would look for an “earlier similar” in her life. Suddenly she would see herself in England in the nineteenth century. “It was a fleeting glimpse at what I was doing then. Clobbering husbands.” When she examined these kindred moments in her current existence and past ones, the emotional charge would dissipate. Paul would say, “Don’t you think you’re making this up?” At first, she thought he might be right. But then she wondered if that really mattered. She felt she was getting better, so who cared whether they were memories or fantasies? As an actor she went through an analogous process when working on a scene; she would grab hold of a feeling from who knows where. It felt real. It helped her get into the role. As long as the process worked, why quibble? Deborah made sure Paul showed up at the annual gala and became involved in Scientology charitable organizations. Over the years, Haggis spent about $100,000 on courses and auditing and an equal amount on various Scientology initiatives. This figure doesn’t include the money that Diane gave to the church while she was married to Paul. Haggis also gave $250,000 to the International Association of Scientologists, a fund set up to protect and promote the church. Deborah spent about $150,000 on coursework of her own. Paul and Deborah held a fund- raiser in their home that raised $200,000 for a new Scientology building in Nashville, and they contributed an additional $10,000 from their own pocket. The demands for money—“regging,” it’s called in Scientology, because the calls come from the Registrar’s Office—never stopped. Paul gave them money just to keep them from calling.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  More pleasant. I got to speak to someone who didn’t really care about me. She wasn’t trying to save me, or love me to better health; she was paid (a hundred dollars an hour) to take an unbiased look into my soul and help me find the crickets. That’s what she called them: crickets. The little chirping noises that were either alarms, or echoes, or the unspoken words that needed to be spoken. Or that’s what I thought anyway. Turns out Saphira cared above and beyond her pay grade. She entered God’s pay grade. Toying with fate and lives and sanity. But that last time, the last time I saw her, she’d said something that in hindsight should have been my clue in to her insanity. I’d told her I was writing a new book. One about Nick. She’d become flustered at that. Not in the extreme outward way a normal person becomes flustered. I don’t even know if I can pinpoint how I knew it upset her. Maybe her bracelets tinkled a little extra that day as she jotted notes down on her yellow pad. Or maybe her ruby lips pulled a little tighter. But I knew. I’d confessed to her that I’d messed everything up, but I wasn’t sure how. When we ended our session she’d grabbed my hand. “Senna,” she’d said, “do you want another chance at the truth?” “The truth?” I’d repeated, not sure of what she was getting at. “The truth that can set you free...” Her eyes had been two hot coals. I’d been close enough to smell her perfume; it smelled exotic like myrrh and burning wood. “Nothing can set me free, Saphira,” I’d said in turn. “That’s why I write.” I’d turned to leave. I was halfway out the door when she’d called my name. “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” I’d half smiled, and gone home and forgotten what she’d said. I’d written my book in the month after that meeting. I only needed thirty days to write a book. Thirty days in which I didn’t eat or sleep or do anything at all but clack away at my keyboard. And after the book was finished and catharsis was complete, I’d never made another appointment to see her. Her office called and left messages on my phone. She eventually called and left a message. But I was finished. “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” I say it out loud, the memory aching in my brain. Is that where she had the idea? To put me in this place where for a time both the sun and the moon were hidden? Where like slow, seeping molasses I would discover the crickets of truth in my heart? My zookeeper thought it kind to be my savior. And now what? I would starve and freeze here alone?

• From Between Us

  I read many similar ethnographies in the late ’80s, and I certainly picked up that people talked about emotions differently across cultures. I summarized the work of many ethnographies of emotion, such as the one by Abu-Lughod about hasham, in a review article on culture and emotion that I co-authored with my advisor Nico Frijda. Catherine Lutz, one of the main anthropologists studying emotion at the time, complimented me once on these summaries, saying they presented a fair description. And yet, it was not until later that I came to subscribe to the main implication of cultural differences in talk: that talking about emotions matters for how you do them. I still own some hard copies from the ’80s and ’90s with my own incredulous notes scribbled in the margin, notes such as “This is emotion talk, not emotions themselves” or “The fact that they do not talk about this emotion does not mean that these emotions do not exist.” They bear witness to my early disbelief that the way people from these cultures far from my own talked about their emotions constituted a truth—their truth. I believed that, deep down, all people would turn out to have emotions just like mine. I no longer do. Some ten years after I had first read anthropological accounts on emotions, a collaboration with fellow psychologist Mayumi Karasawa brought them to life. By that time, I lived in the United States, and psychology had started to discover the power of culture. Driven by opportunity mostly, many psychological studies had started to test if “fundamental” psychological processes could be replicated in East Asian cultures; most studies were done in Japan, but some comparative research looked towards China and Korea. The opportunity was created by East Asian researchers trained in the United States, who together with their American colleagues and advisors, started to challenge the textbook psychology in which they did not recognize themselves. Karasawa was not one of them: she was trained in Japan. We met at a conference, and started to collaborate. She was an assistant professor in Japan at the time, and I was an assistant professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Her questions were often uncomfortable because they challenged my training as an emotion scientist. How could I reconcile her questions with what we “clearly knew” as emotion psychologists?

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  One second, two seconds, three seconds… “No.” “I don’t get you,” I say. “You don’t get you,” he shoots back. We have resumed our eye transmissions. I’m glaring, but his stare is more candid. After a minute he steps over to the box and opens it. I try not to lean forward. I try not to hold my breath, but there is a white box with the words For MV stenciled on the lid in blood. I am aching to know what’s inside. Isaac reaches down. I hear the gentle whisper of paper. When his hand comes up he’s holding a loose page that looks as if it’s been torn from a book. The corners have soaked up some blood. For MV Blood soaked pages, for MV… Who knew that Nick called me that, besides Nick himself? Isaac starts to read. “The punishment for her peace was upon him, and he gave her rest.” I hold out my hand. I want to see the page, know who wrote it. It wasn’t Nick; I know his style. It wasn’t me. I take the blood-stained page, careful to keep my fingers away from the red parts. I read silently what Isaac read out loud. The page is numbered 212. There is no title or author name. I read through the rest of it, but I have the feeling that those are the words I was meant to see first. Isaac hands me another page, this one with a spot of blood the size of my fist blooming out from the middle of the page like a flower. The font is different, as is the size of the page. I rub it between my fingers. I know this feel; it’s Nick’s book. This is Knotted . Isaac pushes the box closer to where I’m sitting so that I’m able to reach inside. The pages are all pulled from their binding, lined in four rows. I lift another page. The style lines up with the first book, lyrical with an old-fashioned feel to the prose. There is something strange about the writing, something I know I should remember, and cannot. I start pulling out pages at random. Separating the pages of Nick’s book from the new one. I work quickly, my fingers lifting and piling, lifting and piling. Isaac watches me from where he leans against the wall, his arms folded, lips pursed. I know that underneath his lips his two front teeth slightly overlap. I don’t know why I have this thought, at this time, but as I sort pages my thoughts are on Isaac’s two front teeth. I am about halfway through the box when I realize that there is a third book. This one is mine.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  That in writing it I am returning us to a place of total intuition without insight. Adrienne: And yet, in that essay you’re talking about work and power, about two of the most political things that exist. Audre: Yes, but what they see is … and I address this at the very beginning: I try to say that the erotic has been used against us, even the word itself, so often, that we have been taught to suspect what is deepest in ourselves, and that is the way we learn to testify against ourselves, against our feelings. When we talk in terms of our lives and our survival as women, we can use our knowledge of the erotic creatively. The way you get people to testify against themselves is not to have police tactics and oppressive techniques. What you do is to build it in so people learn to distrust everything in themselves that has not been sanctioned, to reject what is most creative in themselves to begin with, so you don’t even need to stamp it out. A Black woman devaluating another Black woman’s work. The Black women buying that hot comb and putting it in my locker at the library. It wasn’t even Black men; it was Black women testifying against ourselves. This turning away from the erotic on the part of some of our best minds, our most creative and analytic women, is disturbing and destructive. Because we cannot fight old power in old power terms only. The only way we can do it is by creating another whole structure that touches every aspect of our existence, at the same time as we are resisting. Adrienne: And as you were saying about courses, Black studies, women’s studies: this is not just a question of being “allowed” to have our history or literature or theory in the old power framework. It is every minute of our lives, from our dreams to getting up and brushing our teeth to when we go to teach … Audre: There are different choices facing Black and white women in life, certain specifically different pitfalls surrounding us because of our experiences, our color. Not only are some of the problems that face us dissimilar, but some of the entrapments and the weapons used to neutralize us are not the same. Adrienne: I wish we could explore this more, about you and me, but also in general. I think it needs to be talked about, written about: the differences in alternatives or choices we are offered as Black and white women. There is a danger of seeing it in an all-or-nothing way. I think it is a very complex thing. White women are constantly offered choices or the appearance of choices.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It is made of bones. I am not fond of the truth; it’s why I lie for a living. But I am looking for someone to blame. “So, then this is a coincidence, just like I initially said.” I no longer believe that, but Isaac is withholding something from me. “No, Senna. Have you looked at the horses—I mean really looked at them?” I spin around to face him. “I’m looking at them right now!” Why am I shouting? Isaac jumps up and rounds on me. When I won’t look at him he grabs my shoulders and spins me ‘til I’m facing the black horse again. He holds me firmly. “Hush and look at it, Senna.” I flinch. I look just so he won’t say my name like that again. I see the black horse, but with new eyes: non-stubborn, just plain old Senna eyes. I see it all. I feel it all. The rain, the music, the horse whose pole had a crack in it. I can smell dirt and sardines … something else, too … cardamom and clove. I pull out of it, pull out of the memory so fast my breath stops. Isaac’s hands loosen on my shoulders. I’m disappointed; he was warm. I am free to run, but I curl my toes until I can feel them gripping carpet, and I stay. I came here to solve one of our problems. One of our many problems. These are the same horses. The very same. I trace the crack with my eyes. Yul says something about me repressing my memories. I laugh at him. Repressing my memories. That’s a Saphira Elgin thing to say. But he’s right, isn’t he? I’m in a fog and half the time I don’t even realize it. “The date that it happened,” I say softly. “That’s what will open the door.” The air prickles, then he runs. I hear him taking the stairs two at a time. I didn’t even have to remind him of the date. It’s cut into the fleshy part of our memories. I wait with my eyes closed; praying it works, praying it doesn’t. He comes back a minute later. Much slower this time. Plunk, plunk, plunk up the stairs. I feel him standing in the doorway looking at me. I can smell him too. I used to bury my head in his neck and breath in his smell. Oh God, I’m so cold. “ Senna,” he says, “want to come outside?” Yes. Sure. Why not? I woke up and stared at my ceiling. Something was wrong … something … but I couldn’t figure out what it was. A weight pressed down on my chest. The kind that comes when you feel dread, but you can’t quite place your finger on why. Five minutes, twenty minutes, two minutes, seven minutes, an hour.

• From Between Us

  In other words, I would have told you that these aspects of emotions themselves were natural or pre-cultural, but that my own language, which was English at that time, had a better way of expressing them than did Japanese. I would now disagree with my past self. The cultural differences go beyond semantics. Collaborating with Mayumi Karasawa gave me not only a perspective on Japanese culture, but also a perspective on emotions in the Western cultures in which I had lived and was brought up. It drove home to me that emotions need not even be constructed as inner feelings within people. It was at that point that I came to fully understand how much the psychology of emotions is a science of and for WEIRD cultures. It defines emotions as inner states: essences that cause behavior and cognition. The questions I tried to ask my Japanese respondents came from that Western idea of emotions. The language of “intensity” applies to inner states, as does the idea that inner feelings cause (other) thoughts and feelings to change. My collaboration with Karasawa—and her fine sensibilities—helped me make sense of the anthropological writings of the late ’80s that emotions may live “between” people rather than “within.” When emotions are between people, when they are primarily seen as systems of social interaction, questions about their intensity and their causing individual thoughts and feelings may be moot. I had wanted to ask my Japanese respondents to describe their emotions in terms that made sense in my culture’s conceptualization of emotions only. A Working Definition of Emotions I wrote this book to show how we can benefit from a careful consideration of cultural differences in emotions. Emotions are part and parcel of our social and cultural lives, and they are shaped by our cultures and communities. The differences in emotions go beyond merely superficial differences in manifestation—emotions do not only look different ; the differences pertain to the very constituent processes and the course of emotions itself. But wait. Is it possible that people across cultures have different emotions? Doesn’t the human body prepare us for emotions? It does and it doesn’t. Our brains and bodies do not come pre-wired for certain emotions, but they do prepare us each to have emotions that maximally serve us in our respective social and material lives—emotions that are adjusted to our communities and cultures. In the most up-to-date science, nature is no longer contrasted with nurture: it is equipped for nurture. Our brains are dynamically wired through our experiences in specific social and cultural contexts, and this brain plasticity allows us to live in particular communities. It is our nature to be social—to make meanings and act with others in our social world. The wiring of emotions happens through experience and learning.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Adrienne: And did you feel, there in the Harlem Writers’ Guild, the same kind of unwritten laws that you had to figure out in order to do right? Audre: Yes, I would bring poems to read at the meetings. And hoping, well, they’re gonna tell me actually what it is they want, but they never could, never did. Adrienne: Were there women in that group, older women? Audre: Rosa Guy was older than I, but she was still very young. I remember only one other woman, Gertrude McBride. But she came in and out of the workshop so quickly I never knew her. For the most part, the men were the core. My friend Jeannie and I were members but in a slightly different position; we were in high school. Adrienne: And so Tougaloo was an entirely different experience of working with other Black writers. Audre: When I went to Tougaloo, I didn’t know what to give or where it was going to come from. I knew I couldn’t give what regular teachers of poetry give, nor did I want to, because they’d never served me. I couldn’t give what English teachers give. The only thing I had to give was me. And I was so involved with these young people — I really loved them. I knew the emotional life of each of those students because we would have conferences, and that became inseparable from their poetry. I would talk to them in the group about their poetry in terms of what I knew about their lives, and that there was a real connection between the two that was inseparable no matter what they’d been taught to the contrary. I knew by the time I left Tougaloo that teaching was the work I needed to be doing, that library work — by this time I was head librarian at the Town School — was not enough. It had been very satisfying to me. And I had a kind of stature I hadn’t had before in terms of working. But from the time I went to Tougaloo and did that workshop, I knew: not only, yes, I am a poet, but also, this is the kind of work I’m going to do. Practically all the poems in Cables to Rage* I wrote in Tougaloo. I was there for six weeks. I came back knowing that my relationship with Ed was not enough: either we were going to change it or end it. I didn’t know how to end it because there had never been any endings for me. But I had met Frances at Tougaloo, and I knew she was going to be a permanent person in my life. However, I didn’t know how we were going to work it out. I’d left a piece of my heart in Tougaloo not just because of Frances but because of what my students there had taught me.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  After learning that Hubbard had signed a new will the day before his death, the coroner ordered an autopsy, but Cooley was able to produce a document signed by Hubbard stating that an autopsy would violate his religious beliefs. The lawyer did permit the coroner to take a blood sample and fingerprints to verify that the corpse was actually Hubbard. Many questions would be asked, since Hubbard hadn’t been seen in public for nearly six years. There was another problem that had to be dealt with quickly: how to explain Hubbard’s death to Scientologists. Broeker and Miscavige came up with a plan: Hubbard didn’t die, he had intentionally “dropped his body” in order to move on to a higher level of existence. Miscavige told one of the other executives he didn’t want to see “any grief bullshit.” Sinar Parman, Hubbard’s former chef, arrived that morning, to help with cooking and logistics. He found Annie Broeker sitting on the floor of the cabin, with Miscavige’s wife, Shelly. Annie had obviously been crying. Meanwhile, he noticed Miscavige and Broeker in another room. “They were joking,” he recalled. “They were ecstatic. They’d never been so happy.” That Sunday, Hubbard’s ashes were scattered in the Pacific. The next day, more than two thousand Scientologists gathered in the Hollywood Palladium for a special announcement. The news had been kept quiet until then. Miscavige stepped onto the stage. He was twenty- five years old, wearing his double-breasted Sea Org uniform with a black tie and a gold lanyard over his right shoulder. For most Scientologists, this was their first introduction to the man who would dominate the religion in the decades after the founder’s death. Short and trim, with brown hair and sharp features, Miscavige announced to the assembled Scientologists that for the past six years of exile, Hubbard had been investigating new, higher OT levels. “He has now moved on to the next level,” Miscavige said. “It’s beyond anything any of us has imagined. This level is, in fact, done in an exterior state. Meaning that it is done completely exterior from the body.” Someone in the audience whistled in amazement. “At this level of OT, the body is nothing more than an impediment, an encumbrance to any further gain as an OT.” The audience began to stir as the realization began to sink in. “Thus—,” Miscavige said, then paused and adjusted the microphone. “Thus, at two thousand hours, Friday, the twenty-fourth of January, A.D. 36 [that is, thirty-six years after the publication of Dianetics], L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body he had used in this lifetime for seventy-four years, ten months, and eleven days.”

• From Between Us

  Coming to America made me aware, for the first time, that my own emotions were not like those of people from this other culture. This would not have been remarkable, because it was the first time I had lived outside of the European continent—save for a small, but important detail: I had just spent the preceding six years studying cultural variations in emotions. Given that my research expertise was the role of culture in emotion, my failure to recognize my own emotions as cultured goes to show the difficulty of recognizing our own emotions as anything but natural. Even to me, as a cultural psychologist who studied emotions for a living, it was impossible to see my own emotions as products of culture, until I had a real stake in being part of another culture—until I became an immigrant to the United States. Many an ethnographer has similarly run “into painful reminders, of [her] failure to share emotional assumptions or commitments” of the people with whom they stayed. The late anthropologist Jean Briggs described in her now-famous ethnography Never in Anger how, only after she got ostracized, she fully grasped how different (and inappropriate) her own emotions must have been from the perspective of the Utku Inuit, who lived in the Canadian Northwest Territories. It was then that she realized that her own emotions were cultured, and unfit to the Utku social relationships.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Still in a trance I sat up, fumbled in my backpack for a pen and paper, and wrote the words “Cornerstones of Eroticism” without even thinking about it. I then scribbled this list: Longing and anticipation Violating prohibitions Searching for power Overcoming ambivalence I returned home feeling slightly dazed. But as weeks and months passed, the four cornerstones stayed with me, leading me to a deeper appreciation of the mysterious ways of the erotic mind. A few years later when I developed the Sexual Excitement Survey, one of my top goals was to look for explicit, clear references to the four cornerstones in the descriptions of peak sexual experiences. If the cornerstones are as central to the human experience as I believed, they should be particularly obvious during moments of peak excitement. As it turns out, unmistakable signs of at least one of the four cornerstones appears in more than three-quarters of The Group’s memorable encounters and fantasies. Because they are woven into the fabric of human existence, I consider the four cornerstones the existential sources of arousal-enhancing obstacles. No two lives follow exactly the same course, yet everyone has intimate knowledge of these four essential challenges. And because each cornerstone brings with it obstacles to be overcome, they are ripe for inclusion in our erotic patterns. I am not saying that the four cornerstones are required for enjoyable sex. But they add zest so effectively to memorable encounters and fantasies that without them, eroticism as we know it could not exist. I believe it is virtually impossible to appreciate your peak sexual experiences fully unless you understand the dynamics of the four cornerstones.1 Peak turn-ons provide unparalleled opportunities for you to observe the cornerstones in action. During peak moments all the key components of arousal are highlighted, making it easier to see how one or more of the cornerstones actively contributes to the memorability of a turn-on. Once you know what to look for, you can readily see them at work, usually more subtly, in everyday sexual experiences. As we discuss each cornerstone in detail, begin by noticing to what extent each one plays a part in your peak turn-ons. If you notice a cornerstone recurring in many of your peaks, it probably holds a special place in your eroticism. If so, there’s a good chance that you can uncover signs of it in your earliest sexual memories. To help you find out, contemplate two key questions: 1. Think back as far as your memory will take you, to the very first time you felt anything that now, in retrospect, seems even a little sexy or arousing. What do you remember about the circumstances surrounding this earliest experience of arousal? 2. How old were you when you first remember having any sexual fantasies or thoughts? What do you recall about them?

• From Between Us

  During my thirty years as an emotion researcher, and through my encounters with different cultures, I have come to realize that many of the answers about emotions are not to be found in our insides, but importantly, in our social contexts. I started my studies at the University of Amsterdam with Professor Nico H. Frijda, who, right around the time we met, was finishing his book The Emotions, for which he became world-renowned. The book was a milestone in the psychology of emotions, and covered everything from neuroscience to philosophy. However, it did not cover culture very well. My graduate work under his supervision, which started in 1987, was meant to fill this gap. I surveyed the psychological, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical research on culture and emotions, and in 1992 published a synthesis (coauthored with Nico Frijda) that was one of the turning points for the study of culture and emotion in psychology. It helped to shift psychological research from an almost exclusive focus on universality to one also including cultural differences. It launched me as a cultural psychologist of emotions: I became interested in how culture and emotion “make each other up.” My research turned my focus outward, but so did my personal experience as a sojourner and an immigrant. In the early ’90s, I left my comfort zone, and started living and working outside of the Netherlands. I lived in Italy for two years, worked as a psychological consultant for UNICEF in war-struck Bosnia for six months altogether, and ultimately moved to the United States. As a postdoctoral researcher, I joined the Culture and Cognition Program, a hub of the emerging interdisciplinary field of cultural psychology at the University of Michigan, and later I became an assistant professor at Wake Forest University, in North Carolina. Roughly twenty years later, in 2007, I returned to Belgium, which from across the Atlantic may seem close to the Netherlands, but is culturally different enough. Exchanging my familiar Amsterdam for other places brought home in a more personal way that emotions are tied to culture. Being out of sync with my environment made apparent, time and again, that my emotions were not the universal default, as I had (implicitly) assumed until then. My emotions were created by my culture. They were good currency for interactions in my native context, they were beneficial to the kinds of relationships valued there, and they positioned me well in my Dutch culture, but they weren’t as useful in these other environments. These experiences, too, turned my focus inside out: they led me to follow the trail from my emotions outward, to the values, goals, and practices of my social and cultural environment.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Your CET begins its long evolution during childhood and is first sketched out in fantasies and daydreams you probably don’t remember. Because these early images almost certainly grew out of impulses and interests considered inappropriate for children, they were veiled in secrecy. Even now you probably still keep certain ultra-personal turn-ons—those that spring from your CET—hidden from other people and quite possibly even from yourself.3 To whatever extent you feel comfortable, take the risk of exploring your CET. Its significance is so vast that even small discoveries about it can be highly revealing and useful. At the most fundamental level, your CET is an amazingly efficient shorthand encapsulating crucial lessons about which people, situations, and images tend to evoke your most forceful genital and psychic responses. The CET, however, is far more than a mere checklist of what and who turns you on. Its extraordinary power arises from the fact that it links today’s compelling turn-ons with crucial challenges and difficulties from your past. Hidden within your CET is a formula for transforming unfinished emotional business from childhood and adolescence into excitation and pleasure. The same peak turn-ons that have already yielded so much information about the inner workings of your eroticism are also rich with clues about your CET. As you ponder an exciting experience, looking beyond the captivating details and thrilling sensations, try to see why these experiences were so exciting. Look closely enough and you’ll undoubtedly find subtle reminders of one or more of your most vexatious problems. Although it may seem illogical that exciting sex should have anything to do with life’s unresolved struggles, one of the most important insights you can have about the erotic mind is that high states of arousal flow from the tension between persistent problems and triumphant solutions. You can enjoy sex without giving any thought to your CET. In most cases the scripts and themes that guide erotic life perform their functions subconsciously. In fact, some people have told me in no uncertain terms that they prefer not to know about the deeper meanings of their hottest turn-ons. I’ve noticed, however, that those who study their CETs consistently develop a new level of respect for their eroticism and a greater ability to understand and influence their sexual choices. This chapter is designed so you can choose the level of awareness that feels most comfortable. You may read it either as an examination of other people’s sexual quirks and eccentricities or as an opportunity to look more closely at your own. I suggest you do both. SEXUAL HEALINGEven though your eroticism subtly reflects the challenges you faced while growing up, when you’re caught up in the thrill of escalating arousal and orgasm you aren’t consciously thinking about these problems; your attention is riveted on the pleasures of the moment. The fact that you are excited shows that your CET is working. After all, the purpose of your CET is to use old wounds and conflicts as aphrodisiacs.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  This chapter is about the contrast between divine control and divine un-control, between the normalcy of imperial, or self-glorifying, divinity and the challenge of kenotic, or self-emptying, divinity. Caesar and Jesus were both destined for divine Sonship, but although Caesar accepted it as domination, Jesus accepted it as crucifixion. How then, the imprisoned Paul in Ephesus asks the enthroned Caesar in Rome, is your God my God and your people my people? There is, in the continuity from Augustus to Claudius and from Jesus to Paul, a fundamental clash of gospel, a basic divergence in what is good news for all the world. We begin with Rome’s careful control of religion both in a provincial capital and in the imperial capital itself. At Ephesus, for example, the Temple of Artemis-Diana was eventually integrated into the Roman religious establishment. In Rome, however, charismatic religion, especially with an Eastern accent, was authoritatively monitored and controlled at least by aristocratic contempt. Furthermore, imperial control was primarily by males, and the violence of martial conquest intertwined obscenely with that of sexual conquest. Male Nero grips female Britain in an image of conquest as rape. We turn next to Paul, imprisoned and facing possible execution at Ephesus and writing to the Philippians a letter extraordinary in both tone and theology. We first explain the most probable causes and conditions of his imprisonment, chained to a guard, allowed visits from friends, but under daily threat of execution. We also emphasize the mystical union between Paul and Jesus in their common sufferings under Roman power. Finally, and above all else, we look at the absolute normalcy of imperial divinity, that is, at how divinity is almost always understood by most people—in charge, in control, above, dominant, and on top. But, as Paul learned under capital charges in prison and hymned in Philippians 2:6–11, Christ received exaltation by crucifixion. How, then, did that change forever the nature of his exaltation? Even more important, what did that say about the very character of God if Jesus was, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:4, the very “image of God”? Ephesian Goddess and Roman God At Ephesus, the goddess Artemis was both claim to fame and reason for wealth. Twice in a story from Acts, Luke records the defiant, ritual chant, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians” (19:28, 34). The oracle of Apollo made Delos rich and famous and, when his twin sister, Artemis, moved to Asia Minor, she made the city of Ephesus wealthy and renowned. As one Ephesian inscription says, The deity over our city, Artemis, is honoured not only in her own city which she has made more famous than all other cities through her own divinity, but also by Greeks and foreigners; everywhere shrines and sanctuaries of her have been dedicated, temples founded and altars erected to her because of her vivid manifestations. (I. Ephesos 1a.24; Price 130–31)