This admittedly self-serving introductory quote is reprinted to proffer a chronological timeline to the study of hurt feelings. This quote was followed up by a specific study by Frey, Holley, and L’Abate (1979), who found that couples liked a sharing-of-hurts scenario better than two other scenarios. Because I cannot think of any other way to organize pioneers about the study of hurt feelings except chronologically, this is the way pioneers in the study of hurt feelings will be presented within and among themselves.

Edward M. Waring

This Canadian physician/psychiatrist wrote about “intimacy” rather than specifically on hurt feelings. Nonetheless, his contribution is worth inclusion as a pioneering study of intimacy, if not hurt feelings (Waring, McElrath, Mitchell, & Derry, 1981). He has been ignored by the emotion and intimacy literature, even though his work deserves relevant coverage. For example, in a whole series of studies summarized herein, Waring, Tillman, Frelick, and Russell (1980), in an open-ended format, questioned fifty adults in the general population regarding their concepts of intimacy. A second random sample of twenty-four couples from the general population and twenty-four clinical couples received a standardized interview in which concepts of intimacy were systematically rated to develop an operational definition of the dimensions of intimacy.