"A frustrated or unhappy animal can do relatively little about its tensions. A human being, however, with an extra dimension (the world of symbols) to move around in, not only undergoes experience, but he also symbolizes his experience to himself. Our states of tension--especially the unhappy tensions -- become tolerable as we manage to state what is wrong -- to get it said -- whether to a sympathetic friend, or on paper to a hypothetical sympathetic reader, or even to oneself. If our symbolizations are adequate and sufficiently skillful, our tensions are brought symbolically under control. To achieve this control, one may employ what Kenneth Burke has called "symbolic strategies" -- that is, ways of reclassifying our experiences so that they are "encompassed" and easier to bear. Whether by processes of "pouring out one's heart" or by "symbolic strategies" or by other means, we may employ symbolizations as mechanisms of relief when the pressures of a situation become intolerable."
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Academics from the United StatesAcademics from CanadaEducators from the United StatesMembers of the United States SenateLinguists from Canada
Original Language: English
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p. 144-145
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/S._I._Hayakawa
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S. I. Hayakawa
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and political figure. He was an English professor, served as president of San Francisco State University and then a United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983.
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