Healing through the Dark Emotions

January 1, 2003
In this heartfelt therapeutic manifesto, psychotherapist Greenspan (A New Approach to Women and Therapy) argues that grief, fear and despair are not pathologies to be medicated away but emotions that help us grow psychologically and spiritually. The disavowal of these painful emotions (which she blames on Western culture's privileging of"masculine" reason over"feminine" emotion; lifelong lessons in suppressing emotional pain; and modern psychology's focus on"dispelling feelings, not learning from them") leads to depression, numbness and violence in both individuals and the world at large. But by"attending, befriending, and surrendering" to grief, fear and despair we can effect an"alchemical transformation" through which they become"gratitude, faith and joy." Greenspan's eclectic approach to healing invokes"depth psychology, Hasidic Judaism and Buddhist meditation"; her desire to make"meaning out of suffering" owes something to religious traditions that acknowledge the redemptive value of pain, as well as psychoanalysis's dedication to lighting up the mind's dark recesses, while her praxis includes New Age and recovery movement therapeutics such as visualization, breathing exercises,"chakra bodytalk" and prayer. Drawing on her clinical experience and her own painful recollections of the death of her infant son and her parents' travails during the Second World War, Greenspan writes intensely and compassionately. This is a committed, serious look at the emotions most of us would rather sweep under the rug.