Introduction

This paper investigates the educative significance of “affective self-understanding” (Mortari, 2009a, 91 et seq.), which is a reflective practice that allows people to comprehend their own emotions in order to gain awareness of them. Considering an eidetic phenomenological perspective, I propose an original method of affective self-understanding (Husserl, 2012; Mortari, 2009a). To introduce this topic, it is important to explore the existent literature of studies that concern both the emotional experience and emotional education.

In its history, psychological research on emotions has investigated many aspects: accuracy in recognizing emotions (Buck, 1984; Campbell, Kagan, & Krathwall, 1971; Gross & Ballif, 1991; Rosenthal et al., 1979); communicating emotional expressions using the face (Hall, 1984); using words to describe feelings (Parker, Taylor, & Bagby, 1993); responding with empathy (Flury & Ickes, 2001); and managing emotions with self-regulating strategies (Thayer, Newman, & McClain, 1994).

The theme of emotion understanding, which is investigated in this paper in the form of emotion self-understanding, has been explored especially by psychology. In particular, Pons, Harris, and Doudin (2002) reported on a Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), an instrument that evaluates the general level of emotion understanding by measuring nine components of emotion comprehension. Pons, Harris and de Rosnay summarized these components as follows: “recognition,” “external cause,” “desire,” “belief,” “reminder,” “regulation,” “hiding,” “mixed,” and “morality” (2004, 128-129). The authors considered how these components develop between three and 11 years and suggested that “it is helpful to think in terms of three developmental periods, each period being characterized by the consolidation of a particular mode of understanding (external, mentalistic, and reflective appraisal)” (ivi, 148).

From this kind of researches, we know the different developmental phases of emotion comprehension and we get an instrument for measuring the level of one person’s emotion understanding, but we do not know enough about the educative gains that one person derives from understanding his/her own emotions. In order to gain insights about this specific issue, I organized an educative experience aimed at facilitating participants’ affective self-understanding. Based on this educative activity, I developed a qualitative research study.

In the last decades, the emotional life has become an important object of study for education researchers. We can find research about teachers’ emotional experience (Hargreaves, 2000; Day & Leitch, 2001; Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006; Darby, 2008; Shapiro, 2010; Zembylas et al., 2011) or about the relationship between emotions and learning and achievement (Hannula, 2002; Hascher, 2010; Dettmers et al., 2011; Marchand & Gutierrez, 2012; Ahmed et al., 2013). Nowadays, the popular use of concepts such as “emotional literacy” and “social and emotional learning” (Liau et al., 2003; Zins & Elias, 2007; Perry, Lennie & Humphrey, 2008; Bierman et al., 2010; Durlak et al., 2011; Camilleri et al., 2012; Dracinschi, 2012; Winans, 2012; Castillo et al., 2013; Rivers et al., 2013) highlights the existence of wide agreement on the importance of emotional education. However, we do not yet know enough about how one can organize an educative experience aimed at facilitating participants’ affective self-understanding. In order to fill this gap, I propose the use of a new instrument, which I call the “journal of emotional life.” It is a diary in which the learner writes daily about his/her experience of the self-investigation of his/her emotional life. The educative assumption grounding this experience is that the daily writing increases the capability to reflect on one’s inner experience and, in particular, on one’s emotional experience, and then to gain a meaningful comprehension of it.

In the following paragraphs, I will explain the theoretical framework that I believe gives sense to the intention to do research on emotional education, and in particular, on the theme of affective self-understanding. Then I will present the qualitative design of the study, focusing attention on the educative use of the journal of emotional life. The findings presented at the end of the article highlight what participants learnt from the educative experience, what they found difficult, and which phase of the experience they considered to be most important for learning.

Theoretical Framework

I think that educational research should start from a real and significant question, and a significant question emerges when the researcher thinks through the problematic nature of the educative experience by dialoguing with significant theories.

A significant pedagogical theory is constituted by the Socratic perspective, which assumes the concept of care as the node of the pedagogical discourse; indeed, Socrates affirms that the main aim of education is to educate young people “to care for oneself.” According to Socrates, to care for oneself implies, above all, to know oneself (Plato, Alcibiades, 129a). This is because knowing oneself is the necessary condition for having a human life.

But what does knowing oneself mean? If we accept as our starting point the ontological assumption according to which the essence of our self is that immaterial substance created by the life of the mind, then knowing oneself is investigating the life of the mind.

The intellectual Cartesian perspective, which dominates in our culture, induces us to think that the life of the mind is made, basically, by the thoughts we think, which are both aware thoughts and tacit thoughts.

But by identifying the essence of the mind with its cognitive side, we forget another important component of mental life—that is, its emotional side. The emotional side of the mind, which expresses itself through emotions, sentiments, and moods, plays a very important role in human existence because it conditions our own way of being in the world.

According to Nussbaum, emotional life, like “geological upheavals,” shapes the landscape of the life of the mind and thus shapes our social life, marking our living as “uneven” and “uncertain” (2001, 1).

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the phenomenon of emotional life became an important object of study for some phenomenologist philosophers. The authors who dealt particularly with this issue from a phenomenological perspective were Scheler and Stein.

Scheler stated that the “heart deserves to be called the core of man as a spiritual being much more than knowing and willing do” (1973, 100). He also added that “man, before he is an ens cogitans or an ens volens, is an ens amans” (ivi, 110-111). Stein also highlights the importance of the heart, that is to say the importance of the emotional side of the life of the mind in the life of a human being. She writes that “even though the heart signifies the bodily organ to whose activity bodily life is tied, we have no difficulty in picturing the heart as the inner being of the soul, because it is evidently the heart that has the greatest share in the inner processes of the soul, and because it is in the heart that the interconnection between body and soul is most strikingly felt and experienced” (2002, 437-438).

Furthermore, when we deal with the topic of emotional life, we cannot avoid considering Heideggerian thought. After all, Heidegger was the philosopher who paid particular attention to emotional life maintaining its existential primacy. Indeed, he affirms that the phenomenon of mood is a “fundamental existential,” since “Da-sein is always already in a mood” (1996, 126). Even if the moods remain unnoticed, they “are by no means nothing ontologically” (ibidem), because the moods are what “makes manifest ‘how one is and is coming along’” (ivi, 127).

If emotions play a prominent role in life, then education, which finds its reason for being in facilitating human flourishing, cannot avoid being concerned with the emotional side of life in order to allow the educative subject to contribute to the promotion of his/her emotional well-being. Given this theoretical assumption, then learning to care for oneself implies also caring for the emotional life; since a fundamental part of caring is knowing oneself, and the act of knowing implies also thinking over the emotions we feel, consequently educating a person to care for himself/herself is educating that person to understand the emotional life of the mind.

At this point, a vital pedagogical question is the following: how can pedagogical discourse face up to the issue of an education on emotional life? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to develop an adequate theory of emotional education. This implies finding theories of emotions that can be a reference for the construction of the pedagogical discourse about emotions.

Cognitive Conception of Emotions

For a long time in our culture, an irrational conception of emotion prevailed. Indeed, the belief according to which “emotions are ‘non-reasoning movements,’ unthinking energies that simply push the person around” (Nussbaum, 2001, 24), still prevails.

The non-cognitive theory conceives of emotions as merely physical phenomena, not mental. It is true that emotions have a physical aspect, but that doesn’t leave out their mental side. Thinking that emotions, as physical phenomena, are unrelated to one’s mental side is to be subjected to the ancient mind/body dualism, which induces reductionist reasoning. Framed this way, it is impossible to conceive of an education about emotional life.

Recently, psychological and philosophical thinking developed an adversarial perspective that conceives of emotions as infused by a cognitive component; this cognitive perspective will be the reference for our discourse.

Salovey and Mayer (1990) speak of “emotional intelligence” and hold that the skills that configure this kind of intelligence can be measured. In the last years, the idea of the existence of an “emotional intelligence” has been largely explored in the literature. This has delved into several objects of study, such as academic performance and deviant behavior at school (Petrides, Frederickson & Furnham, 2004), experiential learning (Abe, 2011), psychological resilience to negative life events (Armstrong, Galligan & Critchley, 2011), mindfulness and subjective well-being (Schutte & Malouff, 2011), stress process (Schneider, Lyons & Khazon, 2013), and many others.

However, this sort of research is not interesting from a pedagogical perspective, which is founded on Socratic theory. If we accept the ideas that education is a practice of care and that caring for oneself requires knowing oneself, then the aim of pedagogical research concerning emotions should not be that of finding criteria for measuring emotional intelligence in relation to several objects of study. Rather, it should aim to find methods and instruments aimed at supporting people to gain an adequate comprehension of their emotional life.

Relevant to this end is Oatley’s cognitive theory (1992), which affirms that emotions are not irrational phenomena since they have an underlying cognitive component, even if—as of many other aspects of the mental life—we are not always aware of them. The cognitive component of emotions is made by appraisals that we work out with regards to the events we experience; it is postulated that emotions are consequent to the appraisal we work out. The nucleus of Oatley’s theory, which is useful for the purpose of formulating a theory of emotional education, is the following: emotion is a mental state grounded on an appraisal of one’s experience. It has a specific phenomenological aspect that, when we analyze the emotion, must be distinct from the elicitive conditions of the emotion and from the resulting actions.

Furthermore, discursive psychology highlights the idea of a close connection between emotions and their cognitive components. In this perspective, “emotion feelings and displays” are treated as “being psychologically equivalent to statements” (Harré & Gillett, 1994, 145-146).

Regarding the field of philosophy, Solomon notes that “the cognitive theory has become the touchstone of all philosophical theorizing about emotion, for or against” (2003, 1).

An interesting philosophical theory that embraces a cognitive conception of emotions is the neo-Stoic perspective proposed by Nussbaum. On the basis of a profound study of ancient philosophy, she affirms that emotions are infused by thoughts. Specifically, she maintains that emotions are “intelligent responses to the perception of value” (Nussbaum, 2001, 1).

She writes: “Emotions always involve thought of an object combined with thought of the object’s salience or importance; in that sense, they always involve appraisal or evaluation” (ivi, 23).

More precisely still an emotion embodies a thought about an object, and this thought is constituted by a propositional content of an evaluative kind as regards the object; this evaluation exerts a performative power on the way of being of the person. The emotions “embody not simply ways of seeing an object, but beliefs – often very complex – about the object” (ivi, 28).

In this regard, Nussbaum specifies that “severing emotion from belief, it severs emotion from what is not only a necessary condition of itself, but also a part of its very identity” (ivi, 30).

The beliefs about things we conceive of as important with regard to one’s well-being produce evaluative thoughts, and these appraisals generate emotions.

If we follow Aristotle (Rhetoric, book II, 1378a 20-22; Nicomachean Ethics, book II, 1104b 14-15), emotions are subdividable essentially into two categories: positive and negative. When a thought evaluates an experience in a negative way, it generates negative emotions like grief; however, when a thought is evaluated in a positive way, it then generates a positive emotion, such as delight.

If beliefs are constituent parts of an emotion, then it means that one’s emotional life can be the object of a rational understanding.

Heidegger identified the close connection between emotion and thinking; indeed, he affirms that “the two equiprimordially constitutive ways to be there” are in attunement and understanding and that attunement and understanding “are equiprimordially determined by discourse” (1996, 126). It is interesting that to be in a mood is a primordial “existential way to be” (ibidem) that is in relationship with understanding and determined by discourse. If so, mood is not an irrational phenomenon—that is, a phenomenon which manifests itself outside the rational side of the mind—but rather, it is determined by discourse. Thus, it is a rational phenomenon, and as such, it can become the object of a process of understanding.

Once we acknowledge that emotional life is suffused with thoughts, meaning that it has “rich cognitive/intentional content” (Nussbaum, 2001, 11), it is possible to assume that the emotions are objects of a reflective process through which, by investigating their thoughtful component, one can reach an understanding of them.

If opting for a non-cognitive theory of emotions excludes the emotional life as an object of a rational educative process, then we may instead assume a “cognitive/evaluative theory of emotions” (ivi, 3). This legitimizes the conception of experiences aimed at including emotions into the processes of a reflection that aims at understanding.

Principles for an Education about “Reflecting on Emotions”

“If emotions are just unthinking forces that have no connection with our thoughts, evaluations, or plans” (ivi, 26-27), then no education could be possible. We would be destined to suffer the violent power that emotions exert—a person would be like a raft cast adrift, prey to the “invading currents of some ocean” (ivi, 27). Instead, the cognitive theory of emotions implies that education is possible because we can understand emotions by identifying their cognitive components and the actions they induce. Starting from this understanding, we can then carry out a critical evaluation of both the intra-subjective and the social consequences of the emotion and eventually change our way of being by working on the cognitive content that it implies.

If an emotional education is thusly possible, then the pedagogical question is: what educative experiences is it important to give to students?

On the basis of the cognitive theory of emotions, I hypothesized that it is important to give educative experiences in which students can develop the disposition to stop their involvement in daily actions and think about their emotional lives. Then they may learn personal methods for deeply investigating them.

Some pedagogical principles ground the process of conceiving this kind of educative experience. Above all, the starting point of the education, in order to facilitate the comprehension of oneself, can be nothing other than experience. Indeed, as Nussbaum highlights, “scientists who investigate the emotions typically rely on their subjects' (and their readers') ability to identify experientially instances of a given emotion, and to name them pretty reliably” (ivi, 9). Starting from the neo-Stoic view of Nussbaum, it is important to investigate the cognitive attitudes involved in emotion: that is, to reveal its propositional content (ivi, 5).

Since the educative aim consists of promoting and enhancing the capacity to understanding one’s lived emotions, it is necessary to require the students to practice self-examination (ivi, 9).

The method for this analysis of the inward experience is suggested by phenomenology.

Phenomenology is basically a method that should allow the mind to grasp the essence of the flows of conscience; the act of grasping is carried out by bringing one’s gaze to bear on the mental phenomenon in order to describe it. The essential quality of the phenomenological method is to be a description: “All its knowledge is descriptive” (Husserl, 2012, 144). Each person has flows of conscience, but that doesn’t mean that they have them in their gaze (ivi, 149)—that is, that they are aware of them. In order that the flow of conscience from an unreflective condition can become an object of aware thinking, the mind must activate the reflective act. When the mental flows become the object of the reflective gaze, the mind can practice the method of description on them.

When Husserl conceives the phenomenological method, he takes as his reference the conscience in general, which he defines as the continuous flowing of mental phenomena. Pfänder (2002) instead pays attention directly to the emotional side of the mind. By aiming at a scientific knowledge of the sentiments, the author affirms that this science has the necessity of grounding itself on a “phenomenology of sentiments” (ivi, 118), which must pursue the direct grasping of the psychic phenomenon and give the most faithful possible description of it. Through the faithful description of the phenomenon, it is possible to accede to a “fundamental knowledge of the soul” (ibidem).

We have no doubts that it is arduous to realize a direct intuition of the phenomenon so that a faithful description becomes possible; however, since this is the condition for grounding a rigorous knowledge of emotions, it is useless to contest the possibility of this cognitive act before we deal with this aim.

Research design

The Educative Experience to Investigate

In the educational field we can find two kinds of approaches to research: an explorative research and a transformative research (Mortari, 2007, 13; 2009b, 52- 53). Explorative research limits itself to investigate the reality as it is; transformative research engages itself in promoting new kinds of experiences and assumes them as object of inquiry (Mortari, 2009b).

The research presented in this paper is transformative. It foresees the organization of a significant educative experience with the aim of developing affective self-understanding. In a post-graduate course in an Italian faculty of education, I organized a group of 39 students who spontaneously engaged in a reflective experience on their emotional lives; indeed, naturalistic inquiry requires the research design should not modify the natural context of the research (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

The phases of the educative experience are the following:

(1) Writing the emotional identity card

Through daily experience, we embody in our conscience some emotions, and in new situations that we perceive as similar to those we already lived, we tend to react by applying appraisals that are constituent parts of past emotions. This kind of behavior tends to occur in an unreflective way, and when we do not reflect on our emotions, we live as if we were driven and pushed by something external rather than in the frame of our emotional biography. Thus, we don’t live fully. Given this possible and problematic situation, it becomes necessary from the pedagogical standpoint to learn to compose one’s own emotional biography because involving oneself in the analysis of one’s emotional profile means gaining awareness.

On this assumption, the students were required to create their emotional identity card. Once written, they had to read and analyze it in order to identify the critical nodes and reflect on these to search for possible paths of work on oneself from the perspective of provoking changes. So after some time, the card had to be redone. The emotional identity card is not something that can be written only once; rather, it has to be continually rewritten.

(2) Making a conceptual analysis of emotional life

In the second phase, the students were required to elaborate on a conceptual distinction as regards their sentiments, emotions, and moods. It is not always easy to draw a fine line of discrimination among these closely related experiences since “the distinctions are slippery, and some cases may be indeterminate” (Nussbaum, 2001, 9, note 7), but it is important to practice one’s capacity for discriminating the different qualities of the emotional experience in order to facilitate the process of understanding it. This phase foresaw two activities. The first was an individual task in which each student had to find the specific qualities of emotions, sentiments, and moods. Then in the second phase, the students, who were organized into small groups, were required to confront and critically analyze their individual products of reflection in order to elaborate a shared conceptual definition.

(3) Writing one’s emotional experience

The third phase of the laboratory—which is the most important from the perspective of self-training—consisted of writing the journal of their emotional life. After the type of activity was proposed to the students, the epistemological frame of the activity was explained, and then the task was assigned.

Epistemological frame: phenomenology states that what appears to the awareness is a phenomenon, and that describing a phenomenon is the way to accede to the comprehension of its essence; because interior life can also be conceived of as a phenomenon, then the emotional life can be described in order to reach understanding of it.

Task: on the basis of these phenomenological premises, the task was formulated thus: “Develop an interior observation to describe your emotional life as it appears, and then write your reflections in a journal designated as ‘the journal of emotional life.’” That means the students were involved in monitoring themselves in order to grasp the essence of the emotional life.

The writing phase consists of the following three parts:

(3a)The students were asked to write in their emotional journal every day. Specifically, they had to describe the lived emotions. This reflection could assume the shape of a reflection-in-emotion, which occurs when, by perceiving to be living an emotional state, we stop and think of it while it flows, and thus we describe it. However, it can also assume the shape of the reflection-on-emotion, which occurs when, in a state of relaxation at the end of the day, we reflect on our inward experience and describe it. At this moment of the educative experience, students did not receive specific instructions for self-examination. This phase of writing lasted a week.

(3b) The second phase required analyzing one’s writing. This analysis consisted of re-reading the lived emotions in order to do the following: (i) identify the quality of the emotions which were described; (ii) identify the cognitive content of the emotions; and (iii) identify the externalizations, both private and public, which generally follow an emotion. The analytic phase lasted a week.

(3c) After the analysis phase, the students started to write in the journal again on the basis of the same criteria which were applied in the first phase. This third phase also lasted a week.

(4) Reflecting on the educative experience

When the experience ended, the students were given some questions with the aim of enhancing a critical reflection about this educative experience.

The questions were these:

What do I think I have learned?

What has been difficult?

What was the most important phase for learning?

During the experience, we organized some group discussions in order to give some kind of scaffolding to the process. We did this because in previous explorative research it had emerged that reflection on the emotional life is a difficult task, and as such, it requires that the students be supported during the activity.

Figure 1. The educative experience

Collected Data

There are two kinds of material to investigate: the journals and the conclusive reflections. All the journals and the papers of the reflections were gathered at the end of the experience and transcribed verbatim.

I think that the more interesting data are the conclusive reflections because the educative significance of this experience emerges from them. Therefore, the process analysis takes as its object the students’ reflections about their lived experience. From the perspective of the participatory research, it is possible to maintain that making the subjects responsible for the evaluation of the experience is essential to obtaining a meaningful and valid evaluation of it.

Method of Analysis

On the basis of the grounded theory, we worked out an inductive process of analysis that consists of approaching the reflections without preconceived procedures of analysis in order to construct one which is faithful to the quality of this precise material. This inductive, grounded method implies repeated readings of the reflections in order to do the following:

(a)identify, in the answers given to the questions, the significant reflections;

(b)label any reflections;

(c)group similar labels and find a category for each group.

The reference to grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1978; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) in this type of research is justified because even though it is a method originally developed in sociological research, nowadays it is considered applicable also in different fields of research.

Findings

The research is of an exploratory kind without any generalizing aim.

Below are the findings that emerged from the analysis of the answers given to the different questions asked of the students. The following findings are a discursive elaboration of the categories and the labels, which are highlighted in the tables of findings presented at the end of the article (see Appendix).

1) What do I think I have learned?

Analyzing the answers given to the first question, it is possible to say that students thought they had learned the following:

a) To know themselves better. In particular, students had learned to reach awareness of themselves, to reach a more precise image of themselves, to understand the most intimate part of themselves, and to know unforeseen aspects of themselves.

b) To remain with themselves. In particular, students had learned to listen to themselves, to pay attention to themselves, and to look inside themselves.

c) To develop the posture of reflection (mindfulness). In particular, through this experience, reflecting had become an active habit and an act that went deep, and students had learned to reflect on the practical implications produced by their lived emotions.

d) To recognize the emotions.

e) To understand the quality of their emotional lives. Regarding the emotional life, students had understood in particular its complexity, its importance in their way of being, its performative power on being, and its degree of relevance.

f) A method for self-examination.

g) To accept parts of themselves. In particular, students had learned to accept negative emotions and the experience of suffering.

h) To transform their gaze on themselves. In particular, students had learned to place less emphasis on the negative, to be more critical, and to have a gaze outside themselves.

i) To act on their emotional lives to transform their own being. In particular, students had learned to modify their externalizations, to better manage themselves, and to not demand an impossible control of things.

l) A new emotional posture. In particular, students had learned to have faith and compassion.

m) To discover the value of writing. In particular, students discovered the formative and therapeutic value of writing.

What did I learn from carrying out the analysis?

Some students, reflecting on the cognitive dynamics activated in the third phase, discovered what they had learned from the second phase; these were spontaneous reflections, not explicitly requested.

In particular, students had learned to describe and to redimension the emphasis they tend to give to certain emotions. Furthermore, in the third phase, they realized more analytic and detailed writing in consequence of the fact that the technique of analysis continued to act in their minds even after the second phase was finished.

2) What has been difficult?

Analyzing the answers given to the second question, it is possible to say that students encountered difficulties in the following activities:

a) In talking about themselves.

b) In stopping themselves in order to think.

c) In putting forth the cognitive effort required.

d) In finding the emotional experience being lived.

e) In grasping the essence of emotional life.

f) In acquiring awareness of the self.

g) In carrying out the reflection on action.

h) In doing the analysis. In particular, students encountered difficulties on the cognitive plane. For them, it was difficult to find the underlying beliefs, to return to the antecedents of the emotional act, to find the externalizations, to find the beliefs and the externalizations, to make regular analysis, and to bear what emerges in consequence of the fact that the analysis went deep and took away all the hidden veils.

i) In the third phase—that is, writing again. In particular, after the analysis it was more difficult to express their emotions. Furthermore, after the analysis, the words seemed inadequate.

l) In writing. In particular, students encountered difficulties in stopping and writing, in writing about themselves, in writing regularly, and in bearing with the effect of writing since writing gives consistency to feeling.

m) In succeeding in describing. The cognitive act of describing was difficult because their minds tended to make a narration. In particular, it was difficult to describe the positive emotional experience being lived. Furthermore, it was difficult for them to find the words for describing the phenomenon faithfully.

n) In not having a given method to follow for self-examination, but rather having to construct one.

o) In accepting what the analysis brought to light in the awareness. In particular, students had difficulty in accepting negative sentiments that they had, up until then, believed to be extraneous to themselves. It was difficult for them to listen to themselves regarding the painful aspects of themselves and to accept their own being.

3) What was the most important phase for learning?

The answers given to the third question were subdivided as follows:

Thirty-four students picked the analysis phase. In their opinion, this phase was important because it allowed them to reach self-awareness, to comprehend the complexity of their emotional lives, and to find a new gaze for their inward experience. Furthermore, it increased their reflective capacity.

Two students picked the phase in which they started to write in their journals again. In their opinion, writing again after the analysis produced faith in themselves and facilitated their concentration on themselves.

Only one student answered that all of the phases without distinction were equally important.

Two students picked the group’s discussion.

Discussion and Conclusion

Since “emotional illiteracy” (Goleman, 2006, 231) seems to be an increasingly widespread phenomenon in contemporary society, one of the most important and urgent educational tasks is to propose experiences that offer people opportunities to reflect on their emotional life, in order to gain awareness of it.

The educative experience presented was organized starting from the theoretical framework of the cognitive conception of emotions, with particular reference to Nussbaum’s neo-Stoic theory and Oatley’s cognitive theory and with reference to the phenomenological method (Husserl). This theoretical framework is particularly useful because it suggests learning devices that facilitate the development of emotional awareness. In their conclusive reflections, participants recognized the great educational value of this experience. Therefore, it is important to discuss at least three elements that emerged from the data: the connection between self-understanding and self-transformation, the value of the writing, and the importance of the analysis.

Self-understanding and self-transformation

In particular, the answers given by students to the first question highlight that they have acquired competences not only at the level of self-understanding but also at the level of self-transformation.

Since one’s own emotions and personality are strongly connected, the practice of affective self-understanding leads people to reach a better understanding of their being with others in the world.

Students recognized that emotions have an ontogenetic consistency and a performative power, because they give to one’s personality its specific characterization and they condition one’s choices and acts.

Hence, they also recognized that emotions influence every event of one’s personal life and have implications on one’s specific way of relating to other people. For example, one participant writes: “I learned…to reflect about what my feelings produce in myself and in my relating to others.” Another student says: “Only during this laboratory I have succeeded in thinking of emotions as something that affects every single event of my life and my day, of my staying in the reality. Furthermore, all of this has had repercussions on my way of relating with others.”

From an educational point of view, this sort of awareness is very fruitful because it leads people to understand the importance of managing their own emotions in order to improve the quality of their personal and relational life. In explaining what he has learnt from the experience, a student says: “Now it is easier to identify my states of being and (...) to succeed in managing them, controlling them, and foreseeing their consequences.”

In trying to reach a greater awareness of the emotional side of their mind, students were engaged in the practice of the phenomenological method. They were required to find a time for thinking in the midst of daily actions and then to activate a reflection aimed at describing and grasping the essential quality of their emotional lives. It is important to note that reflection and description are activities that can be contaminated by hidden forms of self-deception, especially when, during the exercises of self-analysis, participants encounter emotions or beliefs that are incoherent with the image that they have of themselves. For this reason, Husserl’s “principle of all principles” (Husserl, 2012, 43) should be accompanied by the virtue of honesty regarding those emotions and beliefs that participants do not like to feel and think. Husserl’s principle affirms “that every primordial dator Intuition is a source of authority (Rechtsquelle) for knowledge, that whatever presents itself in ‘intuition’ in primordial form (as it were in its bodily reality), is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in which it then presents itself” (ibidem).

Only in the light of this honesty, can an exercise of affective self-understanding have a real transformational effect, because it can be considered as a real concretization of the effort to know oneself in order to care for oneself.

The value of the writing

The answers given by students to the first and second questions highlight that even if the writing activity seems difficult for them, they recognize its significant value. Some of the major difficulties that participants encountered during the research were connected to the practice of writing down their emotions: for example, for them it was difficult not only to write regularly, but also to find words to define what they felt, and to describe their affective experience.

Nevertheless, during this “educative laboratory", some participants learnt to use the writing in a formative and therapeutic way. Regarding the first qualification (formative), the following example seems to be particularly explicative: “I think I have learned a different way to use writing, not only as a mere instrument of outburst when emotions and thoughts were too dense to be contained, but also as a means of discovery and research through which I can give voice and form to my emotional life, as a gaze on my being.” Regarding the second qualification (therapeutic), another example appears to be significant: “In some moments it seemed to me also that I felt better thanks to writing, because putting experiences and emotions on a piece of paper often gives relief and a strong sense of peace.”

The diary used in this experience can be considered an educative instrument since the practice of writing helped students reflect on their emotional life in order to gain awareness of it.

Some answers given by the students suggest that in phase “3c” some of the initial difficulties that they encountered with writing were overcome due to the practice of analysis required during phase “3b”. After the analysis, some students found less difficulties in describing and they were able to produce more analytic and detailed writing. The following quotes can give evidence of this point: “With regard to phase C, I can say that, while writing, I perceived the sensation of being more quiet and relaxed. I have had less trouble finding the right words to describe my emotional experiences, and I realized to be faster and, at the same time, more precise in the writing. Furthermore, compared to phase A, I realized that the description of emotional phenomenon are less surrounded by narrative parts;” “With regard to the restarting of the journal, I noticed that I was mentally proceeding according to the structure of the analysis.”

Nevertheless, it is also significant to note that a minority of students said that in phase “3c” they encountered more major difficulties than in phase “3a" at the level of expressing emotions and finding the appropriate words: “The hardest part was the third; I felt stuck without understanding why;” “I found it a bit more difficult than I had before to define what an emotion was. […] Suddenly, every word that came to my mind was no longer looking appropriate; I looked for other words but often vainly.”

The importance of analysis

Reading students’ answers to the third question, it can be seen that for the majority of them, the most interesting phase for learning was phase “3b” – the phase of the analysis of their journal.

Thanks to this phase, some participants acquired a better awareness of themselves, of the complexity of their emotional life, and of their inward experience. Furthermore, some students pointed out that the analysis had increased their reflective capability. To explain these points, the following examples of what students say about the analysis are presented: “It is precisely at that moment that I became aware of how my being behaves and reacts with respect to emotional phenomena;” “It was also very interesting to discover the always-different interweaving between certain feelings;” “It has increased my capacity for reflection and my personal knowledge...The analysis has also obligated me to reflect on troublesome truths that put into crisis the idea I had of myself.”

During phase “3b”, students received some instructions for analyzing their diaries: (i) identify the quality of the emotions which were described; (ii) identify the cognitive content of the emotions; and (iii) identify the externalizations, both private and public, which generally follow an emotion. Reading the students’ conclusive reflections, I find that difficulties were encountered with each one of these actions. Nevertheless, starting from the instructions given to them, participants learnt a method not only to analyze what they had written about their emotional life but also to analyze their emotional life in itself. A student writes: “I think I have learned a methodology to be able to handle what I feel, to succeed in understanding what I feel, from where it comes, and what can derive from it;” “By now, thinking in the way I have learned to think during the analysis of the journal has become habitual.”

Due to the educative experience presented in this paper, participants learnt to reflect on their emotional life by acting directly on themselves by first being required to act on their diaries.

The findings of the analysis phase could be a promising starting point for future research aimed at developing and evaluating some methods and instruments that can facilitate the affective self-understanding of people of different ages.

The challenge is to invent, realize, and study programs that incorporate the educative experience that was developed in this research on affective self-investigation.