Research on Crying
Excerpts:
They’re considered a release, a psychological tonic, and to many a glimpse of something deeper: the heart’s own sign language, emotional perspiration from the well of common humanity.
Tears lubricate love songs and love, weddings and funerals, public rituals and private pain, and perhaps no scientific study can capture their many meanings.
Having a “good cry” can and usually does allow people to recover some mental balance after a loss. But not always and not for everyone, argues a review article in the current issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.
Over the years, psychologists have confirmed many common observations about crying. It is infectious. Women break down more easily and more often than men, for reasons that are very likely biochemical as well as cultural.
When asked about tearful episodes, most people, as expected, insist that the crying allowed them to absorb a blow, to feel better and even to think more clearly about something or someone they had lost.
People who are confused about the sources of their own emotions a condition that in the extreme is called alexithymia also tend to report little benefit from a burst of tears, studies have found.
In her book “Seeing Through Tears: Crying and Attachment,” Judith Kay Nelson, a therapist and teacher living in Berkeley, Calif., argues that the experience of crying is rooted in early childhood and people’s relationship with their primary caregiver, usually a parent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/03mind.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink