C.G.Jung on Emotion

You see, whenever you make an emotional statement, there is a fair suspicion that you are talking about your own case; in other words, that there is a projection of your emotion. And you always have emotions where you are not adapted. If you are adapted you need no emotion; an emotion is only an instinctive explosion which denotes that you have not been up to your task. When you don’t know how to deal with a situation or with people, you get emotional. Since you were not adapted, you had a wrong idea of the situation or at all events you did not use the right means, and there was as a consequence a certain projection. For instance, you project the notion that a certain person is particularly sensitive and if you should say something disagreeable to him he would reply in such-and-such a way. Therefore you say nothing, though he would not have shown such a reaction because that was a projection. You wait instead until you get an emotion, and then you blurt it out nevertheless, and of course then it is far more offensive. You waited too long. If you had spoken at the time, there would have been no emotion. And usually the worst consequences of all are not in that individual but in yourself, because you don’t like to hurt your own feelings, don’t want to hear your own voice sounding disagreeable and harsh and rasping. You want to maintain the idea that you are very nice and kind, which naturally is not true. So sure enough, any projection adds to the weight which you have to carry. 

– C.G.Jung Nietzsche’s Zarathustra 2: 1494-8