THE WASPS ARE RIGHT AGAIN:

The virtue of stoicism (Cathy Young, 3/3/2003, Boston Globe)

IN RECENT DECADES, stoicism and emotional reserve, once considered virtues, have come to be viewed as hopelessly outdated and unhealthy. Many schools nowadays have programs and exercises to teach children how to express their feelings; in reading materials, students are often asked to ponder how the story they have just read made them feel. In professional psychotherapy and pop self-help literature alike, failure to express and explore one's feelings is the deadliest of all sins.

Men in particular have been both castigated and pitied for their inability to ''open up'' and for not being in touch with their feelings. A few years ago, the best-selling book ''Real Boys'' by psychologist William Pollack lamented that boys' training to ''take it like a man'' does terrible damage to their mental and even physical health.

But according to some fascinating new research reported by writer Lauren Slater in The New York Times Magazine, the prevailing wisdom may be wrong. The old-fashioned advice to suck it up and move on may have been far healthier than anyone suspected -- and as far as the gender angle is concerned, Henry Higgins may have been on to something in ''My Fair Lady'' when he sang, ''Why can't a woman be more like a man?''

The research summarized by Slater, conducted by several American and Israeli psychologists working independently of each other, suggests that people who tend not to talk much about their problems and to cope with pain or grief by distracting themselves generally recover better and lead happier lives.

If the Brothers actually had any feelings, we'd have had a feeling this was true. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2003 8:03 PM