Emotions in “Freedom”

Robert Ceccarelli - The hit movie Inside Out 2 is a new “manifesto” of emotions. But these presuppose an anthropology that we need to reflect on. In the prologue of Master of the World, Mr. Templeton, reconstructing the historical course of events, says: “First we had pure and simple materialism ... that was until psychology was born ... it claims the whole realm of the spirit for itself and wants to explain naturally even aspirations to the supernatural. That is its claim!” We have not yet come to the full realization of Benson’s prophetic vision. But psychology, not as a mere therapeutic practice but as a pan-psychological ideology that tends to reduce the spiritual to the emotional and education to a technique of affective control of the younger generation, is now widespread even at the popular level.

One of the main disseminators of this thinking, along with social media and music, is ‌cinema. I think Inside Out 2 is a good example. The company that now almost always uses the name of the popular Pixar from the past makes movies like this.

Lisa Damour and Dacher Keltner are established and influential psychologists in the USA. They both worked for several years with Kelsey Mann and Meg Le Fauve, the director and screenwriter of Inside Out 2, respectively, to define the psychological content and every minute detail of the film (the characters’ facial expressions and movements, the tone of their voices in different situations, their looks, etc.). Damour is the one who most influenced the idea and story structure of the movie. So much so, Inside Out 2 is the movie version of her two best-selling books, Untangled and Under Pressure. These books are practical psychological manuals for parents and teachers of teenage girls. Boys are never mentioned; even in the movie, boys are almost not mentioned, just as sex isn’t mentioned..

The basic idea of the first book, Untangled, a key concept of the film itself, is that there is a predictable pattern to how individuals grow up, seven easily recognizable transitional “patterns” from childhood to adolescence to adulthood; they are like temporary emotional structures that form a provisional sense of self that describes a particular phase of life. The growth, or‌ evolution of the person occurs spontaneously as the emotional baggage grows and temporary stable balances form independently. Damour’s second manual, Under Pressure, without asking too many questions about why stress and anxiety increasingly characterize today’s young people, explains exactly how to recognize, deal with‌ and embrace the new emotions that, according to her, are typical of adolescence (above all, anxiety, which, not coincidentally, is the real protagonist of the film).

In this context, what is the role of adults? They must limit themselves to helping their daughters (or their students) recognize the pattern they are experiencing and the new emotions at play without interfering too much in the self-creation of the self. They must emphasize the benefits of all emotions and help their daughters accept and control them calmly. To do this, the author gives parents and schools detailed instructions on how to help young girls build their emotions.

All this certainly has interesting and useful aspects from a psychotherapeutic point of view, but behind every psychological approach, there’s always an anthropology. What is it in this case? Keltner founded the Greater Good Science Centre (GGSC), a psycho-anthropological think tank whose overarching goal is to “promote a kinder, more compassionate society” in the deep belief that “happiness...is a set of skills that can be taught and, with practice, developed over time.” It’s all based on an optimistic, almost Rousseauian anthropology, which says people are naturally kind and compassionate. But they must discover this and slowly accept it as a consciousness. The purpose of the GGSC is to promote this “new awareness of human nature” to support educational institutions in “promoting social-emotional development by educating a new generation better equipped to handle conflict, manage stress, and expand their horizons of kindness and compassion” (quoted from ggsc.com).

This is the anthropological reference model. Who am I, according to this idea? I am the transient result of the balance of the many emotions that populate my psyche and have been spontaneously configured into this present “I” over my life with the help of cherished memories. I don’t need an education, a teacher, a tradition‌ or a sense of belonging. I don’t need real friends either. "Friendships” are always selfishly related to myself, extensions of my emotions. This is a new version of the self-made man, for whom freedom and commitment to one’s mental health no longer matter. Instead, they only care about the Dionysians letting go of their emotions. No freedom - hence no good or evil, no exercise of reason sifting through possible alternatives of value, because there is nothing worth living for beyond my emotions.

In contrast to the bleak scenario I outlined, the ending of Inside Out 2 is bright and positive. Riley returns home happy because she’s regained a stable emotional balance and learned that even “negative” emotions and bad memories serve a purpose. The emotions have “understood” each other and joined to structure a new sense of self in Riley that is appropriate to the new issues and expectations of the world and society around her. All this with almost no outside adult intervention. And that may be the key to the movie’s success: it’s a reassuring story for adults and children. The latter may think that every problem will be fixed by changing their feelings to the next step in their emotional mess. The former may find a new palliative reason to withdraw from their educational responsibilities. Palliative effects are short-lived, however: the first crush, another bad grade in school, friends who don't get your way, fights at home‌ and everything goes to hell, as it should.

The movie is good because it makes everyone understand how important our emotions are and to care about them. Adults can help their children take their emotions seriously and not treat them like a simple idea. They can also listen to them and talk to them in a positive way. But then, for our children’s sake, psychology must give way to education, except in special cases. Emotions are too small a space for the human being. Emotions are important because they show something that can’t be fixed. They are like coffins that hold a valuable and important secret that must be found. They are the sign of a You that calls and that the ego must be fulfilled.

During the exercises of the CL students in 1992, in response to a young man who asked him what value to give to emotions in one’s life, Fr. Giussani said: “There can be an aspect of emotion that calls your intelligence and affectivity, and an aspect that does not. If you follow the first aspect, emotion becomes the way in which reality calls you to a vocation... If you want to save the truth of your emotion, you have to ‘register’ it, you have to master it, you have to possess it, that is, you have to use it for what it can lead you to, for that capacity of affective relationship that can be lived.” But immediately, Fr. Giussani added that “without accompaniment, all these things wouldn’t become active and mobilizing, educating factors of our person, and we would be like people walking in the middle of a virgin forest, without a road, without understanding where it is” (in Reality and Youth. The Challenge, pp. 81–82).

Translated and edited by the Editorial Team at Epochal Change from Giuseppe Reguzzoni’s Article published on ilsussidiario.net. The author hasn’t revised the translation and editing for educational use only. Download.