The Risk of Positive Emotions

from delancyplace.com:

In today's excerpt - the risk inherent in positive
emotions: observations from the psychiatrist George
Vaillant, who has long been the chief curator of the
Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the
longest-running - and probably the most
exhaustive - longitudinal studies of mental and
physical well-being in history. Begun in 1937 as a
study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores
(all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70
years:

"As Freud was displaced by biological psychiatry and
cognitive psychology - and the massive data sets and
double-blind trials that became the industry
standard - Vaillant's work risked obsolescence. But in
the late 1990s, a tide called 'positive psychology'
came in, and lifted his boat. Driven by a savvy, brilliant
psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania named
Martin Seligman, the movement to create a scientific
study of the good life has spread wildly through
academia and popular culture (dozens of books, a
cover story in Time, attention from Oprah,
etc.).

"Vaillant became a kind of godfather to the field, and a
champion of its message that psychology can
improve ordinary lives, not just treat disease. But in
many ways, his role in the movement is as
provocateur. Last October, I watched him give a
lecture to Seligman's graduate students on the power
of positive emotions - awe, love, compassion,
gratitude, forgiveness, joy, hope, and trust (or
faith). 'The happiness books say, 'Try happiness.
You'll like it a lot more than misery' - which is perfectly
true,' he told them. But why, he asked, do people tell
psychologists they'd cross the street to avoid
someone who had given them a compliment the
previous day?

"In fact, Vaillant went on, positive emotions make us
more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is
that they're future-oriented. Fear and sadness have
immediate payoffs - protecting us from attack or
attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude
and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper
connections - but in the short term actually put us at
risk. That's because, while negative emotions tend to
be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the
common elements of rejection and
heartbreak.

"To illustrate his point, he told a story about one of
his 'prize' [Harvard] Study men, a doctor and
well-loved husband. 'On his 70th birthday,' Vaillant
said, 'when he retired from the faculty of medicine, his
wife got hold of his patient list and secretly wrote to
many of his longest-running patients, 'Would you write
a letter of appreciation?' And back came 100
single-spaced, desperately loving letters - often with
pictures attached. And she put them in a lovely
presentation box covered with Thai silk, and gave it to
him.' Eight years later, Vaillant interviewed the man,
who proudly pulled the box down from his
shelf. 'George, I don't know what you're going to make
of this,' the man said, as he began to cry, 'but I've
never read it.' 'It's very hard,' Vaillant said, 'for most of
us to tolerate being loved.'

Joshua Wolf Shenk, "What Makes Us Happy?" The
Atlantic, June 2009, pp. 47-48.