True friendship disregards selfish considerations, and rather risks to offend by endeavoring to serve, than aims to please by concurring in what is injurious. There are thousands of art, music, and dance therapists who do beautiful work with abused children, soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), abuse victims, refugees, and torture survivors, and numerous accounts attest to the effectiveness of expressive therapies. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking. That new sense, which is the gift of sorrow, –that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the icebergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection. However, at this point, we know very little about how they work or about the specific aspects of traumatic stress they address, and it would present an enormous logistical and financial challenge to do the research necessary to establish their value scientifically. 

The capacity of art, music, and dance to circumvent the speechlessness that comes with terror may be one reason they are used as trauma treatments in cultures around the World. One of the few systematic studied to compare nonverbal artistic expression with writing in San Francisco, California USA. One third of a group of sixty-four students was asked to disclose a personal traumatic experience through expressive body movements for at least ten minutes a day for three consecutive days and then to write about it for another ten minutes. A second group danced but did not write about the trauma, and a third group engaged in a routine exercise program. Over the three following months members of all groups reported that they felt happier and healthier. However, only the expressive movement group that also wrote showed objective evidence: better physical health and an improved grade-point average. (The study did not evaluate specific PTSD symptoms.) The mere expression the trauma is not sufficient. Health does appear to require translating experiences into language.  

The enemies who have once loved each other are the bitterest enemies of all. The stranger who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends. In a true attachment, there is an innocent familiarity implied, which is forgetful of ceremony, and blind to consequences. True friendship disregards selfish considerations, and rather risks offending by endeavoring to serve, than sims to please by concurring in what is injurious. However, we still do not know whether this conclusion—that language is essential to healing—is, in fact, always true. Writing studies that have focused on PTSD symptoms (as opposed to general health) have been disappointing. Most writing stories of PTSD patients have been done in group settings where participants that the object of writing is to write to yourself, to let yourself know what you have been trying to avoid. 

There are jilts in friendship as well as in love; and, by the behavior of some men in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously sought to gain the affections of others with a view only making the parties miserable. A treacherous friend is the most dangerous enemy. In life, it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best. Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many. We amicable relations between two men happen to be in jeopardy, there is least danger of an ensuing quarrel if the friendly communication has been of artificial growth, on either wise. It is false that in point of policy a man should never makes enemies. As well-wishers some men may not only be nugatory but good obstacles in your peculiar plans; but as foes you may subordinately cement them into your general design. 

Reciprocal friendship seldom exists in a strong degree between superiors and inferiors. Love may do much, but friendship shall do wonders; friendship, the nobler passion of the mind, born with the soul, must still with that survive, when love, the silly baby of the fancy, can be no more. This remarkable attitude of a quite prosaic young man certainly needed some explanation, so I asked him to continue his free associations. The next thought was of a factory stack which he could see from his bedroom window. He often stood of an evening watching the flame and smoke issuing out of it, and reflecting on this deplorable waste of energy. Heat, flame, the source of life, the waste of vital energy issuing from an upright, hollow tube—it was not hard to divine from such associations that the ideas of heat and fire were unconsciously linked in his mind with the idea of love, as is so frequently in symbolic thinking, and that there was a strong masturbation complex present, a conclusion that he presently confirmed. Those who wish to get a good impression of the way the material of numbers becomes elaborated in the unconscious thinking, must pay attention to reality. Friends may laugh: I am not roused. My enemy’s laugh is a bungle blown in the night.