"How societies deal with their citizens emotions— which are acceptable, desired and tolerated and which are prohibited— speaks to the degree of freedom that individuals therein enjoy." Or so claimed Claudia Wassmann, a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, during the international workshop "Taking the Pulse of Our Times: Media, Therapy and Emotions," which she also coordinated. The workshop was held on November 21 and 22, 2014.

Dr. Wassmann said that emotions "are essential aspects of human nature: they determine and indicate how we relate to ourselves and the society in which we live." Thus, she emphasized that "societies that allow the expression of emotions promote the welfare of their citizens."

In this regard, she claimed that emotional tolerance is closely related to democratic states: "Democracies consider it essential to live and express emotions without fear of repression. Authoritarian regimes do not support any kind of disagreement."

Indeed, the international workshop aimed to probe what emotions characterize and shape the emotional climate of today's society starting from the lens of films and television programs. It is part of the ICS's Emotional Culture and Identity research project, which is funded by Zurich Insurance. The project includes regular contributors from interdisciplinary fields— including history, psychology, sociology, communication and film studies— that hail from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Spain.

Some topics: anger, emotion management, emotional intelligence

As Dr. Wassmann said, "The movies allow us to address various emotional issues in ways that we could not otherwise do so, e.g., through rehearsal." For this German scholar, film offers the possibility of addressing certain debates "that are often not present in society."

Some of the issues addressed during the conference included anger, emotional management, emotional intelligence, the "happy" feelings of relaxation and self-enjoyment, and subjects with a strong emotional charge, such as old age, disability and death. Close attention was paid to the culture of psychotherapy.

Workshop speakers included Peter Stearns, a professor from Harvard University and former president of George Mason University (United States), Sally Chivers, a professor of English Literature and a founding executive member of the Center for Aging and Society at Trent University (Canada), and Stella Bruzzi, research director of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom).

Claudia Wassmann holds a doctorate in medicine from the Free University of Berlin and a PhD in the History of Science from the University of Chicago. In the United States, she undertook her postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and, before studying history, she was the Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).