COMMUNICATION OF FEELINGS IN TODAY'S GROUPS

The communication of feelings in today's groups appears to have an evolurionary base. Emotions have species-survival functions. Primates have developed interpersonal and group bondedness on the basis of the honest and direct expression of feelings, and this has assured their survival for more than two million years. Earlier peoples of hunting and gathering societies established bonds in which the honest and open expression of feelings was vital to their mutual aid relationships. Later civilizations produced overcrowdedness in which symbolic language and limited emotional connections created conditions for emotionol dishonesty with self and others. Today 3 groups in social work practice seem to be reestablishing species-survival trust and bondedness through the spontaneous expression of intense feelings and their empathic experience and response by members. The increased need for this experience appears to be based in our evolutionary "blood."