The Plowboy Interview: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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That let the cork out of the bottle ... I exploded. After eight hours of crying and talking with my friends, I was able to empty a whole pool of negativity and get in touch with something from way back in my childhood.

You see, as I've indicated before, my parents never gave me much affection, so eventually I rejected them and lavished all my love on some pet bunnies I had. Every once in a while, though, my father—who was a thrifty Swiss—would get a taste for rabbit meat ... and order me to carry one of my bunnies to the butcher shop. The clerk there would slaughter and process the animal, and then I'd have to walk all the way back home, carrying a bag filled with the warm meat of my dead pet.

Finally, I had only my favorite bunny, a black one, left ... and eventually my father told me I had to sacrifice him. Oh, I let that rabbit out of his cage and tried to get him to run away, but he loved me too much to flee. So I had to carry him all the way down to the butcher shop. That man cut up my animal and came back to me and said, in a matter-of-fact voice, "It's a pity you killed this one. She was pregnant. In another week she would have had babies."

I didn't say a word—or eat a bite—at supper that night ... because I was determined not to let my family see the deep pain I felt. And I continued to repress my anguish over that childhood sorrow so completely that I eventually forgot it ... until the actions of that cheap man in Hawaii brought back my angry feelings. Then, through my intense work with my friends, I was able to release that negativity, so I'm not likely ever to murder a man for miserliness! In fact, I can now bless that individual for what he helped me learn about myself.

And that's why I've said that every man and woman in every one of our prisons is there because of his or her own "black bunny". So I believe that if someone else is a criminal, then I am a criminal, too.

PLOWBOY: Let's move on now to the other two natural emotions. What are they?

KÜBLER-ROSS: Jealousy, the fourth natural emotion, is a healthy urge to improve, to be able—for example—to read or roller-skate as your big sister does. When it's repressed, though, it turns into envy and harmful competitiveness ... and is often associated with a lot of shame and guilt. To get rid of those unnatural feelings, you have to be able to recognize when you act out of envy and then try to connect that feeling to its origins—likely from your childhood—so you can understand how you became that way. Once that's done, you can look at your own gifts, see the ways in which you are special and unique, and let go of the old envy.

The last, and most important, emotion is love. It has two aspects. One is the need to hold and hug, to feel very secure and wanted and physically close. And the other aspect of love is the ability to say ,.no", to provide firm, consistent discipline.

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