We don't usually think of "Awe" as one of the essential human emotions, but licensed psychologist and American Psychological Association Fellow Dr. Kirk Schneider's research suggests that we should.
Schneider, President Elect of the Existential-Humanistic Institute and past president of the APA's Society for Humanistic Psychology, says that awe is a contradictory emotion - one which makes us feel both elevated and fragile, elated and terrified — and that without it, life becomes rote, even mechanical, a process of just going through the motions. We need experiences of awe to live as deeply as we can.
