Posted: Dec 20, 2018 7:34 am
It's probably something to do with the fact that I teach people to do it. However, if you're sceptical because I appear certain, that would also be a reason to be sceptical of your own comment.
You can certainly control some emotion by rationalising it but this is not true for all emotion
What is your basis for this statement?
It depends on the emotion in question and the degree to which rationalisation may be effective
Oh right, so the degree to which rationalisation may be effective depends on the degree to which rationalisation may be effective.
In some situations it is entirely useless so it is shades of grey rather than the extremes of black and white
I was responding to your own statement which you made in black and white terms. Now you want to talk about shades of grey. It's trivially true that you're not going to be able to use reason to stop you feeling intense sadness the moment you hear of the loss of a loved one, for example. However for someone experiencing long-term depression, the ability to challenge the thoughts which have led to the depression with logic, evidence and reason really isn't something that is up for much debate any more.
Some one who is schizophrenic or psychotic for example can not come out of that state by rationalisation
Yeah, schizophrenia isn't a 'state', and psychosis isn't an emotion, it's an inability to discern reality. On top of this, no one said anything about bringing someone totally out of a severe mental illness with reason. Taking the most extreme example you can think of to show how reason doesn't work excludes 99.99999999999999% of people with emotions. It's like claiming that humans can't walk around because some of them don't have working legs.