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Disaster Relief 35

behavioral change, in treatment and other walks of life. Discrete emotion
theorists would not be surprised by the idea that the most powerful aspect
of a therapeutic engagement can be an emotional experience that is never
verbalized or even formulated.
Since I believe unformulated emotions are often primary in every
human interchange (that is, shaping cognition more than the reverse), I
trust them to do much of my work.
Emotion theory gives us a way of understanding how unformulated inter-
personal emotional experience can facilitate change by having an impact on
the person’s overall balance of emotions. The emotional sources of the capac-
ity to effect change are the same for the clinician as they are for the teacher,
theologian, or political leader. In thinking about this, I am guided by my own
experience and my faith in the motivating power of human emotions. But, I
think I do not differ from many others in my belief that to be transformed in
any meaningful way, we need to be inspired by an emotional experience.

Good Mourning

I turn from general beliefs about human emotions to my more personal
and specific ideas about how human beings bear great pain. Sometimes, as
a clinician and as a human being, I hope to help myself and other people
cut our losses. Loss is cut down to size if, firstly, it is just sad. Sadness is a
perfectly appropriate response to loss. I would suggest that when human
beings feel mainly sad, in response to loss, they can generally bear it. But
other intense emotions, such as regret, can make sadness unbearable.
Elsewhere, I have dealt at greater length with the place of regret in our
lives (Buechler, 2008). Here I want to point out how frequently I think
it complicates loss. So I have trained myself to question the role regret is
playing, as I listen to sadness.
This viewpoint supports the need for collaboration in relief work. My
training in psychology and psychoanalysis prepares me to address some of
grief’s complications. I can sometimes sort out what feelings are running
alongside sorrow. I may be able to discern the regret in the sadness, much
as a musician can discern the themes in a complicated composition. To
the trained artist, the roles of color, composition, and shadow stand out
in a painting. To the analyst, the roles of sadness, regret, guilt, shame, and
other feelings may similarly form strands. This is not to say that naming
the strands eradicates the feelings (as might Dr. Volkan, quoted earlier in
this chapter). But, it can be a first step in recognizing the whole experience