There were the films of symphony performances, the full-scale operas, the unending virtuous concerts! I thought I would go mad with the beauty of it—witnessing in living color and mesmerizing detail the London Philharmonic play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or the great Itzhak Perlman racing through the Brahms Concerto with an orchestra surrounding me. One of the situations in which children of all social levels come together and compete for status in terms of the same set of middle-class criteria and in which working-class children are most likely to be found wanting is in the schooled. American educators ae enamored of the idea of “democracy” signifies the fullest realization of the individual’s potentialities, the development of skills to an optimal level, the development of character and the abilities which can be bound by others, preparation for effective participation in the adult vocational World. Despite reservations such as with due regard to individual differences, this conception of democratic education implies that a major function of the schools is to promote, encourage, motivate, stimulate, in brief, reward middle-class ambition and conformity to middle-class expectations. However sincerely one may desire to avoid odious comparisons and to avoid, thereby, injury to the self-esteem of those who do not conform to one’s expectations, it is extremely difficult to reward, however subtly, successful conformity without at the same time, by implication, condemning and punishing the non-conformist. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

That same teacher who prides oneself on one’s recognition and encouragement of deserving work-class children dramatizes, by that very show of pride, the superior merit of the college-boy or college-girls working-class child to one’s less gifted or [street] corner-boy and corner-girl working-classmates. There are three goof reasons why status in the school, insofar as it depends upon recognition by the teacher, should be measured by middle-class standards. First, the teacher is hired to foster the development of middle-class personalities. The middle-class board of education, the middle-class parents whom they represent and, it is to be presumed, many of the working-class parents as well expect the teacher to define one’s job as the indoctrination of middle-class aspirations, character, skills and manners. Second, the teacher oneself is almost certain to be a middle-class person, who personally values ambition and achievement and spontaneously recognizes and rewards these virtues in others. The third relates to the school itself as a social system with certain structural imperatives of its own. The teacher’s textbooks in education and one’s own supervisors may stress individualization and consideration for the needs, limitations and special problems of each student. Nonetheless, the teacher actually handles 20, 30, or 40 students at a time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Regardless of what one conceives one’s proper function to be, the teacher necessarily looks with favor on the quiet, cooperative, well-behaved pupils who make one’s job easier and with disapproval and vexation on the lusty, irrepressible boisterous youngsters who are destructive of order, routine and predictability in the classroom. Furthermore, the teacher is like to be upwardly mobile or at least anxious about the security of one’s tenure in one’s present job. One is motivated, therefore, to conform to the criteria in terms of which one’s superiors evaluate one. Those superiors may themselves be progressive and in teacher meetings preach democracy in the classroom and individualization and indeed genuinely believe in those goals. However, the degree to which a teacher tries to achieve these goals or succeeds in doing so is not highly visible and readily determined. On the other hand, grades, performance and standardized examinations, the cleanliness and orderliness of the classroom and the frequency with which the children are sent to the front office are among the most easily determined and objective bases for the evaluation of teacher performance. A good rating, then, by one’s supervisors is possible only if the teacher sacrifices to some degree the very individualization and tolerance which those same supervisors may urge upon one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Research on the kinds of behavior which teachers regard as the most problematical among their pupils gives results consistent with our expectations. The most serious problems, from the standpoint of the teacher, are those children who are restless and unruly, who fidget and squirm, who annoy and distract, who create discipline problems. The good children are the studious, the obedient, the docile. It is precisely the working-class children who are most likely to be problems because of their relative lack of training in order and discipline, their lack of interest in intellectual achievement and their lack of reinforcement by the home in conformity to the requirements of the school. Both in terms of conduct and in terms of academic achievement, the failures in the classroom are drawn disproportionately from the lower social class levels. The child has little or no choice in selecting the group within which one shall compete for status and one is evaluated against the total range of the ability distribution. It is here that, day after day, most of the children in the lower fourth of the distribution have their sense of worth destroyed, develop feelings of insecurity, become frustrated and lose confidence in their ability to learn that which they are capable of learning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

In dialogue, each experiences the other as a person, as the origin and source of one’s intentional acts. Each participant aims to show one’s being to the other as it is for the individual. Transparency, not mystification, is one of the goals. It matters little whether the dialogue is nonverbal or verbal; whether it occurs between a philosopher and one’s pupil, a therapist and one’s patient, a parent and child, or two friends. The aim is to show oneself in willful honesty before the other and to respond to the other with an expression of one’s experience as the other has affected it. Dialogue is like mutual unveiling, where each seeks to be the experienced and confirmed by the other as the one he or she is for oneself. Such dialogue is most likely to occur when the two people believe each is trustworthy and of goodwill. The threat that motivates people to conceal their intentions and experience in manipulative encounters is absent in dialogue. The aims that makes the action of each intelligible to other will be fully revealed. Now, I would like to examine the relationship between an experimenter and one’s subject in the light of those analyses of the two kinds of encounter. The usual encounter between a psychological researcher and one’s subject has more in common with the example of the young being on the make than it has with dialogue. The experimenter wants something from the subject, but one wants to keep the individual partly mystified as to what it is. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Moreover, one does not want to frighten the subject away; so the psychological researcher often cloaks one’s intentions with camouflage. If one tips one’s hand, one may influence the subject and bias one’s findings. One tells the subject as little as one can when the latter appears in the laboratory. Actually, in some ways a research psychologist tries to impersonate a machine by depersonalizing oneself. One tries to be invisible or to be constant. One seldom tries to fin out from one’s subject just how that person experiences one, the researcher, either perceptually or in one’s fantasy. When an individual appears before others one’s actions will influence the definition of the situation which they come to have. Sometimes the individual will act in a thoroughly calculating manner, expressing oneself in a given way solely in order to give the kind of impression to others that is likely to evoke from them a specific response one is concerned to obtained. Sometimes the individual will be calculating in one’s activity but be relatively unaware that this is the case. Sometimes one will intentionally and consciously express oneself in a particular way, but chiefly because the tradition of one’s group or social status require this kind of expression and not because of any particular response (other than vague acceptance or approval) that is likely to be evoked from those impressed by the expression. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Sometimes the traditions of an individual’s role will lead one to give a well-designed impression of a particular kind and yet one may be neither consciously nor unconsciously disposed to create such an impression. The others, in their turn. May be suitably impressed by the individual’s efforts to convey something, or may misunderstand the situation and come to conclusions that are warranted neither by the individual’s intent nor by the facts. In any case, in particular impressions, we may take a functional or pragmatic view and say that the individual has effectively projected a given definition of the situation and effectively fostered the understanding that given state of affairs obtains. There is one aspect of the others’ response that bear special comment here. Knowing that the individual is like to present oneself in a light that is favorable to one, the others may divide what they witness into two parts; a part that is relatively easy for the individual to manipulate at will, being chiefly one’s verbal assertions, and a part in regard to which one seems to have little concern or control, being chiefly derived from the expressions one gives off. The others may then use what are considered to be the ungovernable aspects of one’s expressive behavior as a check upon the validity of what is conveyed by the governable aspects. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

In this fundamental asymmetry is demonstrated in the communication process, the individual presumably being aware of only one stream of the individual’s communication, the witnesses of this stream and one other. For example, in Shetland Isle one crofter’s wife, in serving native dishes to a visitor from the mainland of Britain, would listen with a polite smile to his polite claims of liking what he was eating; at the same time she would take note of the rapidity with which the visitors lifted one’s fork or spoon to one’s mouth, the eagerness with which one passed food into one’s mouth, and the gusto expressed in chewing the food, using these signs as a check on the stated feelings of the eater. The same woman, in order to discover what one acquaintance (A) actually thought of another acquaintance (B), would wait until B was in the presence of A but engaged in conversation with C. No being in conversation with B, and not being directly observed by him, A would sometimes relax usual constraints and tactful deceptions, and freely express what one was actually feeling about B. This Shetlander, in short, would observe the unobserved observer. Those who discuss labor often comment that nowadays most jobs call for a capacity to deal with people rather than with things, for more interpersonal skills and fewer mechanical skills. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The fact that individuals now talk to other individuals, rather than interact with a machine, is the fundamental fact about work in the post-industrial society. There is a continual subdivision of work in many branches of the economy. Complex tasks in which a craftsman used to take pride are divided into simpler, more repetitive segments, each more boring and less well paid than the original job. Work is deskilled and the worker belittled. However, celebrants and critics alike have not inspected at close hand or with a social-psychological eye what it is that people jobs actually require of workers. They have not inquired into the actual nature of this labor. Some do not know exactly what, in the case of emotional labor, becomes deskilled. A second discourse, closer to the person and more remote from the overall organization of work, concerns the display of feelings. There are many minor traffic rules of face-to-face interaction as they emerge at a card game, in an elevator, on the street, or at the dining table of an insane asylum. We cannot dismiss the small as trivial by show how small rules, transgression, and punishments add up to form the longer strips of experience we call work. At the same time, it is hard to explain, for example, why companies train flight attendants in smiling, or how emotion tone is supervised, or what profit is ultimately tied to emotional labor. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

It is hard, in other words, to draw on this discourse alone and see how display work fits into the larger scheme of things. The third discourse takes pace in a quiet side street of American social science; it deals with the timeless issues of what an emotion is and how we can manage it. To uncover the heart of emotional labor, to understand what it takes to do it and what it does to people, it is important to realize that certain events in economic history cannot be fully understood unless we pay attention to the filigreed patterns of feeling and their management because the details of these patterns are an important part of what may men and women do for a living. Because such different traditions are joined here, my inquiry will have a different relevance for those who do the work it describes—the flight attendants. However, most of us have jobs that require some handling of other people’s feelings and our own, and in this sense we are all partly flight attendants. One who has realized truth according to the Secret Doctrine may continue to follow the same vocation which one was practising before. That is, a king may remain a king and a carpenter may continue one’s carpentering. There is no law or rule which may be laid down as to the kind of work an illuminate may perform or abstain from performing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Similarly, the illuminate is not to be judged by one’s practice of or one’s omission to practise asceticism. The secretary who creates a cheerful office that announces her company as friendly and dependable and her boss as up-and-coming, the waitress or the waiter who creates an atmosphere of pleasant dining, the tour guide or hotel receptionist who makes us feel welcome, the social worker whose look of solicitous concern makes the client feel cared for; the salesman who creates the sense of a hot commodity, the bill collector who inspires fear, the funeral parlor director who makes the bereaved feel understood, the minister who creates a sense of protective outreach but even-handed warmth—all of them must confront in some way or another the requirements of emotional labor. Emotional labor does not observe conventional distinctions between types of jobs. By my estimate roughly 33 percent of American workers today have jobs that subject them to substantial demands for emotional labor. Moreover, of all women working, roughly 50 percent have jobs that call for emotional labor. As traditionally more accomplished managers of feeling in private life, women more than men have put emotional labor on the market, and they know more about its personal costs. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Any functioning society makes effective use of its members’ emotional labor. We do not think twice about the use of feeling in the theater, or in psychotherapy, or in forms of group life that we admire. It is when we come to speak of the exploitation of those at the lower level of the hierarchy by those at the higher levels in any society that we become morally concerned. In any system, exploitation depends o the actual distribution of many kinds of profits—many, authority, status, honor, well-being. It is not emotional labor itself, therefore, but the underlying system of recompense that raises the question of what the cost of it is. In the primitive World, we might say, the child had been the bearer of the collective immortality, since it was through him or her that the souls of the ancestors reentered the World. This is one reason why many primitives handled their children so gently: the child was actually in the process of giving birth to himself or herself with the help of the ancestral spirit; if one was mean to the child, the spirit might be upset and withdraw from the World. Under the ideology of the patriarchal family, the child becomes the individual successor to his father—actually, then, merely, the son of a father, and is no longer the independent mediator of the spirts from the ancestral World. However, this now the only spiritual lineage in which the on can perpetuate himself in turn. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

This is why, too, fathers could be despotic with their children: they were merely objects to whom one had oneself given life. Today we are shocked when we read of the ancient Greek who blinded his sons for disobeying him and going off to war—but their lives were literally his personal property, and he had this authority and used it. Considering that science is widely regarded as the highest value in contemporary industrial society, it is very difficult for the average person to believe that what science commands could be wrong or immortal. If the Lord had not told Abraham not to kill his son, Abraham would have done it, like millions of parents who practiced child sacrifice in history. For the believer neither God nor his modern equivalent, Science, can command anything that is wrong. For this reason, the high degree of obedience is not more surprising than that 35 percent of the group refused at some point to obey; in fact this disobedience of more than a third might well be considered more surprising—and encouraging. People remove the awareness of the conflict by renationalization, and the conflict manifests itself only unconsciously in increased stress, neurotic symptoms, or feeling guilty for the wrong reasons. Subjects are in a conflict situation because they are caught between obedience to authority and behavior patterns learned from childhood on: not to harm other people. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

However, is this really so? Have we learned not to harm other people? That may be what children are told in Sunday school. In the realistic school of life, however, they learn that they must seek their own advantage even if other people are harmed. It seems 65 percent of the subjects could be conditioned to behave cruelly, but a reaction of indignation or horror against this sadistic behavior was clearly present in most of them. Apparently they had little or no feeling of opposition to the cruel acts they were performing. Possibly this is because they enjoyed the suffering of others and felt no remorse when their behavior was sanctioned by authority. Another possibility is that they were such highly alienated or narcissistic people that they were insulted against what went on in other people: or they might be psychopaths, lacking in any kind of mortal reaction. As for those in whom the conflict manifested itself in various symptoms of stress and anxiety, it should be assumed that they are people who do not has a sadistic or destructive character. (If one had undertaken and even could have made an educated guess as to how people would behave.) However, we cannot forget in more people the presence of conscience, and their pain when obedience made them act against their conscience. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Thus, while it may seem there is proof of the easy dehumanization of beings, the subjects’ reactions show rather the contrary—the presence of intense forces within them that find cruel behavior intolerable. We have to consider not only cruel behavior but the—often unconscious—guilty conscience of those who obey authority. (The Nazis had to use an elaborate system of camouflage of atrocities in order to cope with the conscience of the average being.) Another attitude in the striving for power is that of never giving in. Agreeing with an opinion or accepting advice, even if they are considered right, is felt as a weakness, and the mere idea of doing so provokes rebellion. Persons for whom this attitude is important are inclined to lean over backward and, out of sheer fear of giving in, compulsively take the opposition stand. The most general expression of this attitude is the neurotic’s secrete insistence that the World should adapt itself to one instead of adapting oneself to the World. One of the basic difficulties in psychoanalytic therapy comes from this source. The ultimate reason for a patient’s analysis is not the gaining of knowledge or insight, but the use of this insight in order to change one’s attitudes. In spite of recognizing that a change would be for one’s own good, a neurotic of this type abhors this prospect of changing because in implies for one a final giving in. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The incapacity to do his has implications also for love relationship. Love, whatever else it may mean, always implies surrender, giving in to the lover as well as to one’s own feelings. The more a person, whether man or woman, is incapable of such giving in, the more unsatisfactory will be one’s love relationships. This same factor may have a bearing also on frigidity, inasmuch as having a climax presupposes just this capacity of completely letting go. The influence which we have seen that the striving for power has on love relations allows us to understand more completely many of the implications of the neurotic need for affection. Many of he attitudes involved in the striving for affection cannot be wholly understood without considering the part that is play in them by the striving for power. It is impossible to present the basic conflict by simply showing it in operation in a number of individuals. Because of its disruptive power the neurotic builds a defensive structure around it which serves not only to bolt it from view but so deeply imbeds it that it cannot be isolated in pure form. The result is that what appears on the surface is more the various attempts at solution than the conflict itself. A simple detailing of case histories, therefore, would not bring all its implications and nuances to full relief; the presentation would necessarily be too circumstantial and give too untransparent a picture. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

When we look at the complaint type of personality, it manifests all the traits that go with moving toward people. One shows marked need for affection and approval and an especial need for a partner—that is, a friend, lover, husband or wife who is to fulfill all expectations of life and take responsibility for good an evil, one’s successful manipulation becoming the predominant task. These needs have the characteristics common to all neurotic trends; that is, they are compulsive, indiscriminate, and generate anxiety or despondence when frustrated. They operate almost independently of the intrinsic worth of the others in question, as well as of the person’s real feelings toward them. However, these needs may vary in their expression, they all center around a desire for human intimacy, a desire for belonging. Because of the indiscriminate nature of one’s needs, the complaint type will be prone to overrate one’s congeniality and the interests one has in common wit those around one and disregard the separating factors. One’s misjudging of people this way is not due to ignorance, stupidity, or the inability to observe, but is determined by one’s compulsive needs. One feels-as illustrated by a patient’s drawing—like a baby surrounded by strange and threatening animals. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

There she stood, tiny and helpless, in the middle of the picture, around her a huge bee ready to sting her, a dog that could bite her, a cat that could jump at her, a bull that could gore her. Obviously, then, the real nature of other beings does not matter, expect in so far as the more aggressive ones, beings the more frightening, are the ones whose affection is the most necessary. In sum, this type needs to be liked, wanted, desired, loved; to feel accepted, welcomed, approved of, appreciated; to be needed, to be of importance to others, especially to one particular person; to be helped, protected, taken care of, guided. When in the course of analysis the compulsive character of these needs is pointed out to be a patient, one will be likely to assert that all these desires are quite natural. And, of course, here one is on defensible ground. Except for persons whose whole being has become so warped by sadistic trends that the desire for affection is choked beyond all possibility of functioning, it is safe to assume that everyone dos not to feel liked, to belong, to be helped, and so on. Where the patient errs is in claiming that all one’s frantic beating about for affection and approval is genuine, while in reality the genuine portion is heavily overshadowed by one’s insatiable urge to feel safe. Only when a being finds out one’s correct relation to the Universe and to one’s fellow creatures will one find one’s own well-being. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18