You have to vent emotions whichever way you do. That doesn't necessarily mean acting on them although it might mean that sometimes. It does mean acknowledging them properly and knowing what they are. Having done that, rationality needs to come in. That might mean organising emotions in terms of how they are understood. It might mean amending behaviour with respect to them - for example not acting out when it is inappropriate to do so. With that, complexity sets in as you go about behaving in ways other than what emotion dictates. This is healthy enough, and necessary, because without that capacity society couldn't function. Freud and the early psychologists understood this.

The important thing is the relationship of the emotional to the rational. Ideally the two should work with each other. That is often not so. There are many who employ rationality at the expense of the emotions. They may repress important feelings in order to get an easier ride. They are trying to avoid the difficult and sometimes dangerous job of working through inner feelings. The problem is that suppressed emotion can appear later as something unrecognisable, the source unclear. It might appear as irrational behaviour, unwarranted actions, conduct out of character and the likes which can be damaging to relationships and quality of life. Just as common would be all the patterns of substance abuse which often bring on dramatic changes in personality. An otherwise placid individual can turn into an aggressor with alcohol consumption for example.

There is a polarising of how the emotional and the rational are perceived. For some, big emotion is bad, something to be minimised; people who can't control their feelings are held to be inferior. For others, emotion is the good guy thought to be more honest and true. Of course both are needed and it is how they interact that is important. That rationality can be applied to the emotions is not a very well understood idea. In another sense, rationality might just be a different kind of feeling, a particular brand of emotion.

John Macmurray explored this in the 1930s and I think he hit upon a cardinal issue. It is not wise to base a society on too much rationality without the huge enterprise of incorporating some kind of understanding of emotional make-up. One of the misconceptions of societies historically was believing that humans are much more rational than they actually are. The rational part is a relatively small part. It is a vitally important and powerful part but small nevertheless compared to the vastness of the emotional landscape.

The rational should never preside in an individual always at the expense of emotion. When this is done the legitimacy of the rational is compromised and can then do more harm than good. The emotional life has to be venerated, worked through, felt fully and understood to the best of capacity. Then the power of rationality can be brought to it. The potentially explosive world of the emotions can then be kept in healthy check working in service to humanity instead of against it as is too often the case.