Can Emotions Really be Repressed?

Form the article "Male Hysteria," I found the idea of repression and the ways it is accepted to be quite unusual. The acceptance of "shell-shock" between officer and soldier stands on opposing viewpoints. For example, in comparison to a soldier, "the officer, on the other hand, has a more 'complex and varied' mental life, the benefit of a public-school education, which has taught him successfully to repress, not only expressions of fear, but also the emotion itself''" (75). It is thought highly of the officers to repress thier emotions.

First of all, the anxiety and symptoms caused by "shell-shock" are different between the officer and the soldier. A soldier is described as experiencing "hysteria - paralysis, blindness, deafness, contracture of a limb, mutism, [and] limping," while the symptoms of an officer was percieved as "neurasthenic symptoms, such as nightmares, insomnia, heart palpitations, dizziness, depression, or disorientation" (74). Therefore, neurasthenia was seen as "selfless and noble" (75).

The idea that emotions should be repressed is regarded as the proper way to go about having these dreadful emotions. However, looking at the poems we have read in class from Owen and Sassoon, is the ability to repress one's emotions really possible? It is clear in the poems that no matter how hard the soldier tried to forget his past experiences and focus on the present, his mind would somehow revert back to his sights from the war. In these poems, the soldiers show compelling evidence that they are tormented by their experiences in the war. It seems likely that they would need to focus directly on what is bothering them as a way to resolve thier issues and make sense of what has happened before they can move on and live in the present. However, this crucial technique to bring soldiers back to health is pushed aside in "Male Hysteria" and repression is regarded as the best option. Repression seems to represent the ideology of the society at the time, since any expression of emotion was seen seen as week or as just an unacceptable form of behavior. The reason why neurasthenia was seen as noble could relate to its symptoms being portrayed more internally, while hysteria is seen more externally. For neurasthenia, one could hide thier depression from others, and nightmares and insomnia may only be presented to family members who live in the same house as the soldier experiencing these symptoms. In relation to hysteria, being blind, deaf, and limping are all sort of obvious to the general public. That is why Officers, who experience neurasthenia, are percieved in a better light than the soldiers, who experience "unacceptable" symptoms of hysteria.

Mentos in Soda Experiment

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/ShimadaK2007Sept09-MentosGeyser_DSC_3294%2B%2B.JPG

Just like the tension created when the mentos are mixed with the soda, the soldiers emotions are so tense and unbearable that they are unable to be contained and repressed. If they try to, they will end up expelling out thier emotions one way or another (paralysis, nightmares, etc).