In all my years as an academic, a published author and a professional psychoanalyst, I have never seen a single course offered on the primacy of human feeling. Not one. I have taken classes in “Human Subjectivity,” “Emotional Intelligence” and “Interpersonal Relations.” I have read books that promise “Authentic Selfhood,” the ability to “Attract What You Desire,” and I have attended countless seminars, lectures and workshops promoting “positive, permanent shifts” in my life. But I have never encountered a simple, cohesive program that emphasizes the essence of what it means to be human: our capacity to feel.
This glaring absence is surely not unique to me, but rather indicates the obvious: How can we teach what we yet know so little about? Indeed, that is the point. As our culture becomes more materialistic, more distracted, and more dependent on science to tell us what is “real,” human feeling becomes less important and more marginalized. I mean let’s face it, human feeling not only lacks the priority it deserves; it is often mocked and parodied in a way that reveals a general, cultural regard for feelings as optional, unnecessary, inconvenient and even threatening.
Consequently there is a loss of access to feeling that results in a kind of numbness; one that not only alienates us from what matters to us most as human beings, but also from the source of our greatest power. This is why I wrote The Feeling Life: in response to a world that seems to have forgotten how feelings - not things and achievements - determine our deepest strengths, while revealing the meaning, direction and purpose of every human life.
The Feeling Life is based on the simple premise that it is always feelings we are after. Even when we are chasing the next job, looking for the next partner, seeking the next possession or achievement it is always the feeling that matters. Because if we stop and ask the obvious question - Why do we want what we want? - the obvious answer emerges: it is not the job or the partner, not the possession or the achievement, but rather, it is how we imagine those things will make us feel once we acquire them.
This is why I emphasize feeling first : in the interest of understanding more deeply who we are and what we really want. Because when we do this, when we take responsibility for what we truly want in terms of feeling, we discover that our feeling life opens up to the vast, unlimited domain of Human Subjectivity itself; a realm of personal truth and power through which we can pursue greater meaning as we learn to embody more authentic forms of being with ourselves and living with others.
I encourage you to learn more about your own feeling life. Read my book, blog with us here, or send me an email with your thoughts, opinions and questions. Experience the Great Mystery and Power of Human Feeling, and realize the truth that your own feeling life can lead you to an ever-growing sense of emotional vitality and purpose!
Sincerely,
David Klugman