By regarding Discharge as valuable, we are implicitly saying that emotions themselves are of fundamental concern. This focus on emotions leads to the questions: when people are experiencing emotion, what is going on? And why?
Emotions are not ethereal happenings, bodily sensations are part of emotional experience. However, emotions do not equate to bodily sensations. Imagine walking down a road, seeing a dog and saying "I'm scared of that nasty looking creature." The 'being scared' may include: judging the dog to be a threat; taking action by crossing the road; directly experiencing the situation as unpleasant; speeding up your heart beat and pouring blood to your muscles; directing your attention rather narrowly and obsessively onto the dog.
So when I say "I'm scared," I can only be truly understood, indeed only understand myself, when these words are regarded as a kind of shorthand for one or all of the following:- (#3)
Now to consider certain of these elements of emotion in more detail. People are able to be bodily aroused or completely quiet; they can vary their state of awareness in many ways--free to wander or tightly directed, divided or unitary; experiences can be rapidly labeled with the subjective flavours of nice/nasty, postive/negative. All these options, physiological as well as psychological, are of great potential value.
If you are woken from sleep by an unknown noise on the stairs, it is extremely practical to become bodily aroused, prepared for flight or fight; to be obsessively aware of every creak and groan, and often nothing else--the moonlight can be enjoyed another time. It will be practical for you to experience the situation as nasty--this gives you motivation to be wary and seek to neutralize any danger. Once having checked the staircase ... and found that the cat has got out of the kitchen again ... it is equally practical to be able to become bodily quiet; you need your sleep, to let attention drift, to experience the warm bed as a 'nice' place.
Not to be able to respond to life with emotion is a dangerous limitation. On the other hand, if emotions are aroused in ways unconnected with the current situation--if this afternoon a person is stuck with this morning's feelings--then this too is inappropriate behaviour, with its own limitations.
This view of emotion as a kind of motivational switchgear for survival is certainly not the whole story. Not least since emotional expression acts as an extremely powerful signal to other people. Tears often bring needed help from others, anger sends warnings. This present account however focuses on the intrapersonal significance of emotions, not the interpersonal. Which is not to say that personal growth, or therapy, lack interpersonal consequences!
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