Growing Up: an emotional education & I interview my therapist

There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance - Alain de Botton

Hey guys,

Since the podcast I'm sharing this week is an interview with my therapist, I thought I might share something from Stutz, the Jonah Hill Netflix doc where he interviews his psychiatrist.

"In candid conversations with actor Jonah Hill, leading psychiatrist Phil Stutz explores his early life experiences and unique, visual model of therapy."

As you can guess, I loved the film. I had a quick look to see if anything shareable had been written about it and this is the first article I stumbled across (from Forbes, Jan 2023):

There are plenty of points to debate about Jonah Hill's new Netflix documentary, Stutz, about his therapist, Phil Stutz. Is it professional for a therapist to air his relationship with a patient in the global media? Is it appropriate for therapists to take positions on their patients' lives, rather than playing the neutral mirror, asking only, "And how does that make you feel?" And what was Jonah Hill's motivation for making the film, and might it be to become rich(er) or (more) famous off his privilege amid the mental health crisis?

Safe to say I stopped reading there...

I've decided to share something from Alain de Botton instead, on emotional education from the introduction of:

The School of Life: An Emotional Education, introduced by Alain de Botton

(Not sure who's winning out of newsletter references, Malcolm Gladwell or Alain de Botton... clearly I'll have to figure out how to meet them both one day...)

EDUCATION

Modern societies are collectively deeply committed to education, and have in place the mechanisms needed to teach every conceivable profession and to cover every topic of enquiry. We reliably educate pilots and neurosurgeons, actuaries and dental hygienists; we offer lessons in the irregularities of the French pluperfect and textbooks on the conductive properties of metal alloys. We are not individually much cleverer than the average animal, a heron or a mole, but the knack of our species lies in our capacity to transmit our accumulated knowledge down the generations. The slowest among us can, in a few hours, pick up ideas that it took a few rare geniuses a lifetime to acquire.

Yet what is distinctive is just how selective we are about the topics we deem it possible to educate ourselves in. Our energies are overwhelmingly directed towards material, scientific and technical subjects - and away from psychological and emotional ones. Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at maths; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness. We devote inordinate hours to learning about tectonic plates and cloud formations, and relatively few fathoming shame and rage.

The assumption is that emotional insight might be either unnecessary or in essence unteachable, lying beyond reason or method, an unreproducible phenomenon best abandoned to individual instinct and intuition. We are left to find our own path around our unfeasibly complicated minds - a move as striking (and as wise) as suggesting that each generation should rediscover the laws of physics by themselves.

....
We are as clever with our machines and technologies as we are simple-minded in the management of our emotions. We are, in terms of wisdom, little more advanced than the ancient Sumerians or the Picts. We have the technology of an advanced civilization balancing precariously on an emotional base that has not developed much since we dwelt in caves. We have the appetites and destructive furies of primitive primates who have come into possession of thermonuclear warheads.

(I saw Oppenheimer last week... great reminder about that last point.)

But what is emotional intelligence you ask?

When we speak of emotional intelligence, we are alluding - in a humanistic rather than scientific way to whether someone understands key components of emotional functioning. We are referring to their ability to introspect and communicate, to read the moods of others, to relate with patience, charity and imagination to the less edifying moments of those around them. The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humour, sexual understanding and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm.

Sustained shortfalls in emotional intelligence are, sadly, no minor matter. There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance.

And then he goes on to say a lot of other interesting things e.g:

On secularisation:

For most of human history, emotional intelligence was - broadly - in the hands of religions. It was they that talked with greatest authority about ethics, meaning, community and purpose. It was they that offered to instruct us in how to live, love and die well. Religions were natural points of reference at times of personal crisis; in agony, one generally called first for the priest.

On self-help:

It is notable that, within the upper echelons of culture, there is no genre more maligned or discredited than self-help. The entire self-help category has become synonymous with sentimentality, idiocy and hucksterism.

To go by many of its examples, this caustic verdict is not especially unfair. The book covers are frequently garish and the promises overblown. But to dismiss the idea that underpins self- help that one might at points stand in urgent need of solace and emotional education seems an austerely perverse prejudice. Ancient Greek and Roman culture recognised and honoured our needs with greater dignity. The noblest minds - Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius - all turned their hands to what were unmistakably works of self-help...

and I better stop there or I'll end up sharing the entire book.

For some more emotional education pls see below...

This week on Growing Up with Delia Burgess
Ep. 66 - Caroline Silvestre: a conversation with my therapist

We discuss CBT (and its shortfalls), IFS (parts therapy), hypnosis, Jungian psychology etc...

Caroline Silvestre BSc, MSc, GMBPsS is based in London and works with Parts therapy (IFS informed) and Eugene Gendlin's Focussing. She also provides evidence-based Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy.

There is a lot more to talk about, I feel like we barely scratch the surface...

Enjoy.

xx Delia

P.S. As always, feel free to share

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Hi! I'm Delia Burgess

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