CPS Week Six (Condensed)
The first source I looked at was Emotional Bodies: The Historical Performativity of Emotions edited by Dolores Martin-Moruno and Beatriz Pichel. I focused on Part II of the book, Performing Emotional Bodies. This part of the book focuses on the emotional development within children. The beginning of the part focuses on Charles Darwin’s studies on child development. Darwin evaluated the children’s distinct behaviors and reactions, even using his own sons emotional development to further his research. He believed that children lacked the adult human attribute of free will and acted closer to animals, acting purely on instinct.
“The art of screaming…from being service to infants, has become finely developed from the earliest days”
Charles Darwin. (Page 65 of Emotional Bodies: The Historical Performativity of Emotions)
Darwins connection between free will and emotions lead my to my second source “What You Think About Your Emotions Matters” written by Jill Suitte fot the Greater Good Magazine. Overall the article reached the conclusion that giving too much power to emotions, positive or negative, leads to a negative affect on mental health and wellbeing.
For my final source I watched a TED talk given by Susan David, “The gift and power of emotional courage”. The talk focused on emotional agility, the ideology that an individual should accept their emotions as they come. David conducted her own study and found a third of the 17,000 person study judge themselves for negative emotions or believe they should repress their emotions. This way of thinking is rigid and is not sustainable for living a healthy lifestyle.
“Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility”
Susan David
It is difficult to find an artist who is not inspired by emotions but I wanted to look at The Scream by Edvard Munch (1893) as it took the instinctive action of a scream and turned it into something engaging and impactful.
