I find it a difficult read because he writes like some oldschool style ( hencetohath and everlonginglytoforehence ) and I gotta look up a lot of his bigboy and old-english words, and frequently re-read lines to figure out what he's beating the bush about. I couldn't read this as my main book.. I had to put it down and switch to something more engaging and made this my alt. But I will leave no page unturned, I will conquer this book and make it my little wiggerwhore slap-slut even if it's one chapter a week.
My interest in
Emotions of Normal People was from it being mentioned in Thomas Erikson's
Surrounded by Idiots as the basis of the so called "
DISC" system which much of Erikson's book and career is centered around.
Emotions of Normal People by William Moulton Marston ( Lecturer at Columbia University, and NYU ). Published in 1928
Seen above, is a squished up picture of Marston's head which is how I imagine him if you were to squeeze him for knowledge like a lemon. Also there's a picture of a reprint of his book, like most books it is made mainly out of paper and inks. Without further ado, I give me my notes;
Chapter 1 - NORMALCY AND EMOTIONdefine: adjudge - consider or declare to be true or the case
In this chapter I was told.... Many psychologists consider(ed?) fear and rage as normal emotions and also as 'major' emotions. Marston doesn't see someone as a normal person, emotionally speaking, when they are suffering from fear, rage, pain, shock, desire to deceive, or any other emotion state containing turmoil and conflict. He believes that normal emotional responses produce pleasantness and harmony.
He figures that to look at emotions the way other biological scientists examine things, "... we must expect to find normalcy synonymous with maximal efficiency of function." Then goes on to talk about how "survival-of-the-fittest requires resistance of the encroachments of environmental antagonists, continuing to function with the greatest internal harmony. "
Marston asks why we should see disharmonious emotions ( which he defines as " feelings that reveal a crushing of ourselves by environment" ) , and consider them normal? It is talked about how leaving a victory/battle with some scars or wounds... you wouldn't attribute your win/victory to those scars or wounds.
"Dominance and submission are the normal, strength-giving emotions, not rage or fear." A story is told about how as a child, another boy shot him up with a BB gun and when he told his mother about it she told him to man-up and walk up to that other boy and if the boy tries to pull some more shit then it is time to initiate fisticuffs. Well William did that, he walked up to the boy expressing no fear and the kid didn't do shit. Marston says while he had shown dominance to the other kid, he had at the same time submitted to his mother by following her directions to act brave and flex on the troublemaker.
Another thing that Willy figures is that to understand or measure complex CONFLICT-emotions ( fear, anger, deception ) you first have to know the fundamental NORMAL emotions.
define: psycho-neural - of or relating to the interrelationship of the nervous system and consciousness.
define: interrelationship - the way two or more things are related to the others
The existing definitions for conflict-emotions back in the day were too vague and unscientific, the way Willy saw things. These definitions were drawn from their previous literary uses which did not impress him one little bit.
define: vagus - each of the tenth pair of cranial nerves, supplying the heart, lungs, upper digestive tract, the other organs of the chest and abdomen
W.M.M figures we oughta give up trying to define conflict-emotions , and rather focus on the "biologically-efficient" behavior, and " discover the simple normal emotions that lie buried there" W.M.M has now set out to describe the emotions of normal people.. which he expands on by noting that " people are not normal when they are afraid, enraged, or deceptive.".
There is talk about the many different types of psychologists, and how different psychologists have differing opinions of what even constitutes psychology. They tend to get hung up and think only their school-of-thought is the righteous and worthwhile ones. Marston likens psychology in his day to " Europe in the Middle Ages, being fought over by feudal barons who have little in common save tacit acceptance of the rule that spoils shall be taken whenever and wherever possible."
define: tacit - understood or implied without being stated
define: plaintively - expressing sorrow or melancholy, mournful
Also in a way that was seemingly unimportant to the chapter and probably the book, I was introduced to the concept of the
Oedipus complex which is named after some greek dude that killed his dad and married his own mother I looked it up and found a nice article explaining it by Kendra Cherry:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-an-oedipal-complex-2795403Which sums it up as...
The Oedipal complex, also known as the Oedipus complex, is a term used by Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychosexual stages of development to describe a child's feelings of desire for his or her opposite-sex parent and jealousy and anger toward his or her same-sex parent.
Essentially, a boy feels that he is competing with his father for possession of his mother, while a girl feels that she is competing with her mother for her father's affections. According to Freud, children view their same-sex parent as a rival for the opposite-sex parent's attention and affections.
