Disappointment is a subjective response related to
anticipated rewards. Disappointment recovery time depends on the intensity of the disappointment, as well as the person experiencing the disappointment. For some it can take a few minutes while for others the same disappointment can take a few days. Disappointment, and an inability to prepare for it, has also been hypothesized as the source of occasional
immune system compromise in
optimists. While optimists by and large exhibit better health, they may alternatively exhibit less immunity when under prolonged or uncontrollable stress, a phenomenon which researchers have attributed to the "disappointment effect". This disappointment effect has been challenged since the mid-1990s by researcher
Suzanne Segerstrom, who has published, alone and in accord, several articles evaluating its plausibility. Her findings suggest that, rather than being unable to deal with disappointment, optimists are more likely to actively tackle their problems and experience some immunity compromise as a result. In 1994,
psychotherapist Ian Craib published the book
The Importance of Disappointment, in which he drew on the works of
Melanie Klein and
Sigmund Freud in advancing the theory that disappointment-avoidant culture—particularly
therapy culture—provides false
expectations of perfection in life and prevents people from achieving a healthy
self-identity. Craib offered as two examples
litigious victims of
medical mistakes, who once would have accepted accidents as a course of life, and
grieving people following the death of a loved one who, he said, are provided a false
stage model of recovery that is more designed to comfort bereavement therapists than the bereaved.
Lacanians considered childhood disappointment essential to entry into the
symbolic world of culture; disappointment in adulthood - the frustration of our demands by the world - as key to discovering who in fact we are. ==Law==