精神科医师
说到情绪，大多数人常常都体会过相互矛盾的不自在感觉。一种做法是由它去：我们的感觉只是感觉，没必要为自己辩护，而试图压抑自己的情绪只会有损身体健康。“我不会生气，”伍迪•艾伦(Woody Allen)在电影《曼哈顿》(Manhattan)中说，“但我憋出了个肿瘤。”另一方面，每个人也都会察觉到一些不当或不妥的情绪：别人莫名其妙地冲自己发火的感受，或心怀不应有的嫉妒之情。
或许充分思考过后，大多数人会认同这样一种观点：情绪可能会犯错。然而，他们很可能也会认为，即便自己的情绪不合适，也是无法克制的，所以就这样吧。尽管流行的认知行为疗法可能在宣扬这样一个观点：思想和情绪是同一枚硬币的两面，改变一面可能会导致另一面也发生改变，但通常情况下，人们依然认为情绪是无法评估、也不可质疑的。
但我们不应把这看作一个非此即彼的选择：要么不加评判地接受自己的情绪，要么否认情绪、拒之千里。我们可以在注意到某种特定情绪、并接受自己正受到这种情绪影响的同时，充分意识到这种情绪是不恰当的，并知道我们应该尽量避免在这种情绪影响下行动。
比如说，如果你发现自己正在嫉妒同事的成功（这是不应该的），最好警醒的你既能认识到这种情绪的存在，也能认识到这是没道理的，以防愤怒的你酿成大错。问题关键在于，从本能、片面的评价转换为全面、理性的评价。
因此，我们的头脑要负起责任，实时监控和检查心灵的反应和波动。但头脑在这一过程中不应独断专行：一个好的“头脑”也需要明白何时应放手，让心灵自行其是。
哲人
人们常常将头脑和心灵描绘成永远在打架的两个器官。在柏拉图(Plato)的对话录《斐德罗篇》(Phaedrus)中，理性是车夫，一边驾驭着一匹代表高贵情感的良马，一边鞭打另一匹不听话的劣马，试图让它走正道。哲学家大卫•休谟(David Hume)可能会认为，这个车夫是个自欺欺人的傻瓜，因为事实上，决定马车方向的实际上是那两匹马。“理性是（也只可能是）情感的奴隶。”布莱兹•帕斯卡(Blaise Pascal)认为，两者之间的冲突与其说是力量的角逐，不如说更像一场相互刺探，因为“心灵有其自己的理智（道理），这是理智所不认识的”。
这三种观点都有些道理。但它们暗示头脑和心灵是相互冲突，这具有误导性。
实际上，除非两者协同工作，否则两者都不可被察觉。在通常情况下（甚至可能在所有情况下），我们的想法，决定了我们的感受。我们渴望得到自认为会带来愉悦感的事物，而如果我们发现它们无法带来愉悦感，我们的渴望会很快消退。类似的，如果我们认识到某人其实并没有冤枉自己，我们的怒火也会平息。或许柏拉图应该将理性塑造成马语者（而非车夫），与愤怒的劣马讲道理，让它平静下来，而不是鞭打它。
休谟所言最接近真理，因为他认识到：头脑需要心灵，甚于心灵需要头脑，因为纯粹的理性无法为我们提供任何动力。不设身处地地理解他人的福祉，道德说理也无从开展。没有情绪或感觉的注入，理性只是冰冷、机械的推断方法。它能够帮助我们推断出我们的行为可能产生哪些后果，但它无法告诉我们这些行为是否可取。
简而言之，理性本身不能为我们的任何行动提供理由。因此帕斯卡说的不全对。心灵和头脑各有其道理，但它们相互分享的跟相互隐瞒的一样多。
译者/吴蔚
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001040316
The Shrink
When it comes to emotions, most of us are used to experiencing uncomfortably clashing feelings. One response is to let it go: how we feel is just how we feel, there’s no need to justify ourselves, and trying to suppress our emotions will only lead to unfortunate consequences for our health. “I don’t get angry,” as Woody Allen says in Manhattan, “I grow a tumour instead.” On the other hand, everyone will also be aware of emotions that are inappropriate or ill-fitting: being at the receiving end of someone else’s unreasonable anger, or harbouring feelings of unwarranted jealousy.
Perhaps, on reflection, most people would agree that emotions can be mistaken. Chances are, however, they would also think that even if their feelings are inappropriate, you can’t help what you feel, and that’s that. While the popularity of cognitive behavioural therapies may be spreading the word that thoughts and emotions are two sides of the same coin, and that changing one can lead to changes in the other, emotions are still commonly considered beyond assessment and beyond challenge.
But we would be wrong to perceive this as an “either/or” situation: uncritically embracing our emotions or denying them and pushing them away. We can be mindful of a particular emotion and accept that we are feeling it while at the same time being fully aware that it is out of place, and that we should do what we can to avoid acting on it.
If you found yourself inappropriately resenting the success of a colleague, for instance, it would be good if a watchful part of you were able to recognise both the feeling and the fact it’s unreasonable before the wrathful part writes them a bad reference. It’s a question of switching from an instinctive, partial appraisal to a more rounded and rational one.
So our head needs to be in charge in the sense of regularly monitoring and checking the responses and leaps of our heart. But this doesn’t require a tyrannical rule: a good head also needs to know when to get out of the heart’s way.
The Sage
The head and the heart have often been portrayed as two organs in constant battle. In Plato’s dialogue “Phaedrus”, intellect is a charioteer, pulled by one horse of noble passion while trying to whip his unruly companion into line. The philosopher David Hume would have thought the charioteer a self-deluded fool, for, in reality, it’s the horses that decide on the chariot’s direction: “reason is and ought only to be the slave of passions.” For Blaise Pascal, the conflict between the two is more like espionage than a battle of strength, since “the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing”.
There is some truth in all three models. But where they mislead is in suggesting that the head and heart work against each other.
In fact, unless they work in tandem, both would be unrecognisable. Often, if not always, we would not feel the way we do unless we thought the way we do. We desire things that we believe will give us pleasure, and if we find out they don’t, our lust soon subsides. Similarly, anger is calmed if we come to believe that someone has not done us an injustice after all. Rather than a charioteer, perhaps Plato should have conjured up images of a horse whisperer, who calms an agitated steer by reasoning with it, not beating it.
Hume comes closest to the truth, recognising that the head needs the heart even more than the heart needs the head, since there is nothing in pure rationality that can provide us with any motivation. Nor can moral reasoning get off the ground without an empathetic understanding of the welfare of others. Without any input from emotion or feeling, reason is merely a cold, mechanical method of calculation. It can help us work out what the consequences of our actions might be, but it cannot tell us whether they are desirable.
In short, reason alone gives us no reason to do anything. Pascal was therefore only partly right. The heart and the head both have their reasons, but they share as many as they keep from each other.
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