The Mystery of Emotions: Seeking a Theory of What We Feel [1 ed.] 1800131747, 9781800131743

Table of contents :
FRONT COVER
HALF TITLE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
Contents
Tables and figures
Acknowledgements
About the author
PROLOGUE – A happy little girl
Part I – Introduction—what, and who for?
CHAPTER 1 – Theories and confusions
CHAPTER 2 – What we already know
CHAPTER 3 – Affects and cognition
Part II – The hard work—a method
CHAPTER 4 – “Discoveries” of the disciplines
CHAPTER 5 – Scoping and clusters
CHAPTER 6 – A 3D space
CHAPTER 7 – Congruence and complementarity: the “Social role” of affects
CHAPTER 8 – Exchange and being
EPILOGUE – What are our results?
References
Index
BACK COVER

Citation preview

‘R. D. Hinshelwood has a distinguished place in psychoanalysis and related fields. Deeply rooted in clinical practice, he has, over many years, encouraged a respect for objective knowledge of the subjective world, while retaining the aliveness of the psychoanalytic process, and he has shown us how to get to it. In this book, he applies his distinctive acumen to affects, the heart of human experience. What better place to grasp these dimensions together. We live in the immediacy of affects, they impel us to think and judge, we are social through them, and they are rooted in our bodies. Hinshelwood masterfully guides us into knowing them.’ Karl Figlio, clinical associate, British Psychoanalytical Society, and senior member, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association

R. D. HINSHELWOOD is professor emeritus at the University of Essex and a founding member of The Association of Therapeutic Communities and The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities.

Cover image by Finley Norman-Nott

ISBN 978-1-80-013174-3

THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

‘Emotions have been the Cinderella of philosophical, psychological, biological, and psychoanalytic theories of the person. This, despite their being central to our subjective experience of ourselves and our relations to others. R. D. Hinshelwood has written a masterful and lucid account of theories of emotions over 4,000 years, and synthesised them into clusters of agreement and overlap. He goes on to evolve his own highly original formulation of emotions that captures both their subjective and bodily experience and their communicative function as existing in a metaphorical 3D mental space. As in his previous writing, Hinshelwood describes complex ideas with great clarity. This important book will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, and psychoanalysts in providing an outstandingly clear guide to a central aspect of what it is to be human.’ Richard Rusbridger, training and supervising analyst and child analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society, and honorary reader, UCL

Hinshelwood

‘The Mystery of Emotions: Seeking a Theory of What We Feel introduces a bold thesis: affects which have often seemed to be like an accumulation of mess of whatever is left over after the more well-thought processes have been used are more seriously meaningful. R. D. Hinshelwood takes us on a panoramic tour of the realm of emotions starting with the Greek philosophers through modern technology and artificial intelligence and up to politics, commerce, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The text is well organised, astute, and informative, and I would highly recommend it to my colleagues and students.’ Aner Govrin, professor and psychoanalyst, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS Seeking a Theory of What We Feel

R. D. Hinshelwood

firingthemind.com HINSHELWOOD 9781800131743_JKT UK.indd 1

27/02/2023 17:33

THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS Seeking a Theory of What We Feel

R. D. Hinshelwood

First published in 2023 by Phoenix Publishing House Ltd 62 Bucknell Road Bicester Oxfordshire OX26 2DS Copyright © 2023 by R. D. Hinshelwood The right of R. D. Hinshelwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978-1-800131-74-3 Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India

www.firingthemind.com

Contents

Tables and figures vii Acknowledgements ix About the author xi Prologue: A happy little girl xiii Part I Introduction—what, and who for? Introduction to Part I 1.  Theories and confusions 2.  What we already know 3.  Affects and cognition

3 5 11 25

Part II The hard work—a method Introduction to Part II 4.  “Discoveries” of the disciplines

35 37

v

vi  contents

5.  Scoping and clusters 6.  A 3D space 7. Congruence and complementarity: the “Social role” of affects 8.  Exchange and being

117 145 161 187

Epilogue: What are our results? 197 References 203 Index 217

Tables and figures

Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4

Jones’s substitutions The clusters of features Superordinate clusters Dimensions of difference Generosity in the 3D space Curiosity in the 3D space Feeling cheated in the 3D space

69 138 141 147 155 155 155

Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 6.4 Figure 6.5 Figure 6.6 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4 Figure 7.5

Satisfaction–frustration, x-axis Self-evaluation 1 Appreciation 1 Change of heart A hedonistic man A football fan Persons A and B in love A and B in love Marital dynamics Plot for gratitude (and generosity) Generosity–gratitude cycle

147 149 149 150 151 152 165 166 171 174 175

vii

viii  tables and figures Figure 7.6 Forgiveness–apology cycle Figure 7.7 Parallel cycles Figure 7.8 Zone of some complementary feelings

177 178 180

Acknowledgements

There are many to whom I feel the emotion of gratitude and appreciation. It would not be possible to write about this topic without the emotional relations which make up anyone’s ordinary life. Not least are my daughter Nell and her mother Anna. I need to put foremost my intimate teachers during my psychoanalytic training—my analyst, Stanley Leigh, and supervisors, Isabel Menzies and Sydney Klein. In terms of more formal learning, I must include Esther Bick, Betty Joseph, and Irma Brenman-Pick. But it is difficult to separate formal learning from that which comes of emotional life in general, and I need to include Gill Wyatt, Gillian Walker, my four children, and my eight grandchildren. It was probably Ruth Stein’s book in 1991 on theories of affects (or their lack) which put me onto the idea that something serious could be done to follow up that work she did. I need to thank Michaela von Britzke and Gillian Walker for reading this dense tome, and conveying their academic opinions, and also the important comments of Barney Malin which required a later rewriting. And finally, my thanks are due to Finley Norman-Nott for his graceful painting on the front cover.

ix

About the author

R. D. Hinshelwood is a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He worked in the National Health Service for over thirty years and then as professor at the University of Essex. In the 1970s, he worked at the Marlborough Day Hospital as it became a therapeutic community, and in the 1990s, he was director of the Cassel Hospital. He has written widely on Kleinian psychoanalysis and on the application of psychoanalysis to understanding organisational and social dynamics.

xi

PROLOGUE

A happy little girl

I start with a memory which has taken many years to germinate, and which initiated this quest to understand how much we are rooted in the experience of our feelings. People having their feelings know exactly what they are talking about—from the inside. Speaking of affects of the deepest personal kind means we must reach inside ourselves in order to express them. And yet they are not obscure even for the youngest, who speak eloquently and often without words through their crying, smiling, etc. Many years ago, a father wondered how his little girl could begin to identify her own feelings. A little girl and a small incident My recollections: One of my children around the end of her second year came walking through the kitchen at breakfast time with a breezy air and announced, “I feel happy.” I was struck by a child so young having words for feelings. She was at the beginning of learning xiii

xiv  PROLOGUE

language, and yet she was already applying it to her feelings, as well as to the world around. It was not, I believe, a copied phrase from a saying or an expression regularly used by her mother or myself. It seemed a genuine statement. And if it was, that would presuppose that she had a state of mind which she could identify as one which other people call “happy”. I wondered if it may have referred to any state of mind randomly; well, perhaps it did, but I had some confidence from her demeanour that she was probably having a genuine feeling, of happiness, at that moment. For a number of decades now, I have had this incident in mind. Such a young child, who was occupied with that emotional world inside her, had a familiarity with the way one announces such things to others. Language is learned during the second year of life, so she was able to form the representation linguistically, not just to recognise her perceptions. She could clearly enquire about her world, and that included the representation of the inner emotional world. And she could represent it to others in her external world. Hence, I came to reflect on what must be involved in this kind of statement. Providing it was exactly as my little girl said, there must have been a sense of some state of being which she felt herself to be in, and in addition she must have had some awareness of others being in a state she could believe to be comparable and that they had a word for it and could therefore understand it in themselves. And on top of that, she must have observed that other people’s states are often referred to as of interest to others. If it were that someone in her world—mother, or other caregiver— had identified the girl’s state of mind and had given it a name, it was still a state that the little girl could recognise as one that other people recognised. This was a move beyond the purely imitative facial expressions and auditory sounds which younger infants, from a few weeks, can recognise in mother’s face and can attempt to imitate (Murray & Trevarthen, 1985). In the very young imitative example, a link is made between visual perception and attempts at muscular co-ordination of the face (and, maybe, hands and body) to imitate. This is similar to, and often co-ordinated with, auditory imitation. There is a difference, however,

PROLOGUE   xv

with the example of my little girl. The link is between an inner state within the girl and a verbal representation of her inner state. This is not a physical/bodily imitation, but a representation of something personal, and is felt to be internal, which is then communicated externally. There is a major shift of linkage and intention between two months and two years. It may connect with Vygotsky’s notion (1962) of the interchange between inner speech and external communication. Despite psychoanalysts lacking a theory of affects, here is a two-yearold who had herself a rudimentary theory. The state of mind which she could identify as “happy” could clearly be identified as different from some other states of mind; she also noted it was a state of mind adhering to an “I” which she clearly thought of as herself. She could represent her state of mind in words to herself, and to her Daddy and Mummy who were present and listening. She was not, at that moment, representing perceptions of the external world. She represented to us some inner features of her own mind. There are certainly aspects of a theory of affects here in this little girl, who did not at that time show other signs of being especially precocious. At the age of two, we can say, on this admittedly slim evidence, there is a recognition of a self that can feel and identify at least one affect. As Piaget (1929) noted, this age (the beginning of the pre-operational stage) is the point at which language is being learned, and there is already a capacity to represent the world. In this instance, it is the internal world that is being represented. And it is a world of affects not directly of objects. And she represented them in abstract symbols, words, and not just as bodily behaviour. This verbal representation of internal feeling states starts as early as the verbal representation of the external world— that fact, my two-year-old showed me. It might be even more fascinating to consider preverbal representations of feelings—but that can only be guessed at, perhaps. The upshot of this formative moment for this book was for me to consider how to take further the issues raised in this serendipitous occurrence.

Par t I Introduction—what, and who for?

INTRODUCTION—WHAT, AND WHO FOR?   3

Introduction to Part I Is there anyone who is not interested in what a person is, and what they are themselves? Well, I guess there are such people, but I would also guess that for the vast majority of people there is a fascination about this most important thing in our worlds, the human person. We are each a person and we live in the midst of a teeming society of them. We feel ourselves as persons. We are not just cognitive ideas or memories or language. Affects are something else. They are not communicated, they are exchanged with others. These questions about feeling human emerged gradually for me, but who would be interested? And why? Well, I knew they interested me. My evidence has told me we can be interested from the age of two, if not before. And that interest is a connection between the “I” in us, and feeling happy, as described in the Prologue. Yet understanding the contribution of our intimate emotions to what we are is a wide and disorganised world of philosophical confusion (Chapter 1). We cannot ignore the disastrous academic heritage that the emotions have had to endure for millennia, and, since Plato, there has been a profound suspicion of affects. We relegate affects to less significance, but this book intends that you, the reader, may rescue this added dimension to your thinking about what human life is, and what it is about. Of course, many people may be quite satisfied not to have that added dimension. And that is OK, there is no reason to feel any loss for not being curious. But this book is not for you. So, put it down! We all have access to the necessary data because feelings inhabit us all, under our skin. And potentially we have minds that could process all the data we have from our own experience. Chapter 2 will offer a personal account which may document my own idiosyncrasies. The reader may find him- or herself objecting to my account, but that could in principle lead to a potentially creative debate. The millennia-long discrepancies in views on affects imply a wide diversity of personal reactions. Someone with good sense might make it a good reason to keep out of such contentions. Nevertheless, it has focused my curiosity to try to grasp something so ill-agreed, and yet something so essentially close to the nature of being human.

4  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

Chapter 3 will be an extended discussion of what we find most useful in our minds: our reasoning and cognition, or our emotions. Emotions drive us, but they are also suspect because they so often derail us. This will lead into the review of the startling array of divergent views on affects among the various disciplines, set out in Part II.

CH A PTER 1

Theories and confusions

R

ecently there has been a resurgence of interest in affects in various disciplines—sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, politics (Ahmed, 2004; De Sousa, 2011; Furtak, 2018; Grigg & Seigworth, 2010; Oatley et al., 2006; Pick, 2010; Strongman, 2003; Turner, 2007; Wollheim, 1999; Zietsma et al., 2019). The textbook of Oatley, Kelner, and Jenkins states at the outset their attempt to be comprehensive; the “abiding questions” are: What are emotions? How do we express them? Where do they come from? How are they registered in our bodies and brains? How do emotions shape our reasoning? What functions do emotions serve? How do they act as compasses in our relationships? (Oatley et al., 2006, p. 31). Not so easy to confront such a barrage of questions when there are, according to Smith’s (2016) compendium, 154 emotions. To manage some of this, we need to address one main question: What is the nature of a feeling? Further questions—Where do feelings come from? What are they for?—remain secondary issues that are tangential to the main aim in the present account. There is no consensus between disciplines, or even within the disciplines of science and the humanities, on what it actually is that we feel. 5

6  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

They are not like our perceptions, our ideas, our thoughts and thinking, which all represent something. There are huge social, historical, and cultural factors in how we understand feelings, and this leads to the confusion. Yet across cultures and throughout history, there are some commonalities that can be recognised. First of the commonalities is that we all have them; they make us human. Plato would banish them altogether. He was suspicious of feelings. He would exclude poets, the experts in feelings, from the “polis”, that is from public affairs, or politics. He advised that precisely because they put human emotion high on the scale of human priorities, they could not be relied on for sound judgement. We cannot ignore this prejudice which seems to place affects as second-class compared with cognition. Body, mind, and social That emotions are the most personal of all mental contents can be concluded from arguments in two directions. First, feelings arise out of deep connections with the body, which is our very own unique possession. And then at the same time, there is a strong case that the emotions are the real glue that sticks social life together. Of course, we do gain from sharing our cognitions and their cooperative productions, but what fascinates us about each other just as much are the canteen conversations we have about what we feel. Our technological triumph in inventing the smartphone and the G4 system, the G5 system, G6 … is only a triumph because we can be in simple personal touch with others for whom we have feelings. There is a triple balancing act of feelings— psycho, bio, and social. This bedrock to the nature of affects gives a boost for thinking about emotions as well as feeling them.

Personal knowing Emotions have a unique position. Everyone is an authority on feelings because we all have them and are occupied with them for every minute of our day. But we do not fully understand why we have them. And often we can wish we didn’t have some of them. To know what feelings are, is to some degree to know what I am. Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am”, and could take comfort knowing he existed. But what is it that exists in the “I” that is me? This is a start.

theories and confusions   7

But for many, it is important to go further than merely to say I exist because I think. It is more important because the “I” knows it does more than think, it lives a life and, above all, has emotions about every second of that life. In a particular way this book challenges the priority of cognition. To ask the question, “What are affects?”, we are entering a discussion of what human beings are. We might say that if thinking is the substance of a human existence, affects give the colours to that existence. Why theory If we want to put some coherence into the theories of affects and emotions, then we might wonder why we want to do that. And then how do we go about getting it? Of course, what we don’t fully understand is always a fascination for some people who have a restless curiosity, and wish to explore space, or the atom—and in this instance “inner” space. But simple curiosity is not enough; NASA would not be funded if there were not the possibility of something valuable and important being found. In the case of inner space, what would be valuable and important to know? In some ways, this is a redundant question, because the pay-off for having an affect is not a designated end point. We don’t have a feeling in order to do or achieve something in the way we can with cognition, for instance—I learn the alphabet in order to read and write. I have feelings just because I do. There is a sense of confusion at the heart of this kind of enquiry. Why would we want to know more about our affects when they are precisely the aspect of ourselves which we know best? Without skill, without training, from the age of two, we know so much about sharing feelings with each other as we do all day each day. Despite that personal grounding, there is a persisting interest in, and disagreement over, what our emotions are. If we want a researched knowledge about our feelings, it is because our own sense of being a person depends, whether we like it or not, on having our feelings. The psychoanalytic priority While psychologists study behaviour, and today cognition, psychoanalysis studies what we feel. So, psychoanalysis is of wide interest because it gives support to a wary fascination we have about what

8  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

we are ourselves. Psychoanalysts prioritise affects and so do their analysands. Yet, even psychoanalysts have no generally agreed theory of affects. In the discipline, practice, and overarching theoretical models, psychoanalysis has affects at its heart, while in contrast, general psychology, aiming at objectivity, has narrowed its range to marginalise emotions. Although academic psychology commenced with Wilhelm Wundt’s respectful recognition that the investigation of mind implies a reliance on personal (and therefore subjective) experience, psychology has not sustained that view. Perhaps understandably, it emphasises our biological inheritance, and so the more subjective approach of psychoanalysis has been separated off. The result is that psychology has veered towards neuro-anatomy and neuro-physiology, and psychoanalysis towards social science (and philosophy). There is a palpable need for these disparate points of view to move closer.

What to call them Unlike cognition, affects transcend too many boundaries. Theories about affects are consequently diverse, and potentially clash. A first elementary step might be to consider what we should call them, even. The terminology is confused—“affect”, “emotion”, and “feeling” are terms that can be used interchangeably. There has been some differentiation in proposals for a more precise academic language of psychology. Moore and Fine (1968) proposed that an affect is the whole complex of emotions and feelings, whereas feelings are the subjective experience, and emotion is the more objective bodily and behavioural state. But this has not been universally accepted. More often, “affect” tends to refer to the more biological basis, and “feelings” to the more subjective experience, while “emotion” tends to include both. Overall, there is little consistency, and the three terms do not easily come apart. Moreover, it is more or less usual to include the basic passions (as the ancients referred to them), meaning the bodily desires—sex, hunger, and so on. Inclusiveness may seem uncomfortable. Not only are the desires and needs regarded as affects, but the experiences of their satisfaction or frustration are also dealt with as affects. This confusion muddles the models that define them. Affects, the passions, emotions, feelings demonstrate by their inexactitude how there is little systematic working out

theories and confusions   9

of their nature. Then, if the different models make different assumptions about what to include under each heading, inevitably the models will show incompatibility. Despite that, this book will be inclusive, using the terms interchangeably for whatever can be felt subjectively. Accepting this inclusiveness places an emphasis on the subjective experiencing inherent in each of the words.

CH A PTER 2

What we already know

T

here is almost no other way to “know” emotions than by being a person. We just have them. We discourse with each other every day on our feelings without having to know what they are. In fact, my two-year-old taught me that as soon as language starts (and maybe long before) there is an experience of feelings and an urge to express them. They operate in the world of others, and they are what we transact between us. Just being someone in our social world depends to a significant extent on the feelings we have and how we express them to each other. Though sophisticated discourse on affect aspires to a more objective view, being a person is really the only way of accessing the experience of having a feeling and of knowing which one it is. They are appreciated and understood by us according to a frame of reference. We use the dimensions of space and time to understand what we see and hear. And we can also apply that frame to the feelings we know inside. There is perhaps no other entity more accessible to subjective knowing than our feelings, and more resistant to an objective study. Moreover, we not only know our own feelings, but we can know other people’s feelings, and there could be some “objectivity” in that kind 11

12  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

of observation; however, observing someone else’s feelings is not an ordinary scientific observation. We observe them and their feelings through a direct kind of experience of knowing what it feels like to be them at the moment they are expressing themselves. Known as empathy, it involves putting oneself in the emotional position of another, and thus compromises the intention of standing from without.

Personal knowledge The very personal quality of empathy attracts us, and it is all over newspaper headlines. It is the staple for theatre/cinema dramas, and indeed most of the arts. Feelings arise often unbidden and often unwelcome. They are frequently paradoxical, occurring in startling and disconcerting mixtures that require considerable ingenuity to resolve. Wherever we are, we cannot get away from them, from the experience of others, from the atmosphere of a place, and so on. Being fundamental to everyone’s personal life experience, affects themselves are at the very core of our own personal subjectivity; they are “us”. Biologically, the recognition of emotions from their physical expression, notably facial in humans, is commonplace and, to a degree, is common between different species. Darwin (1872) thought the expression of emotions showed a continuity between humans and the higher animals. Correlation between bodily behaviour and emotional state does give us a leverage to know with some confidence what the other is feeling, just as animals seem to. Confronted with someone who is frowning, we might ask if they are puzzled or angry or whatever. Facial expression particularly is read between individuals. A dog that snarls communicates anger and fear to another dog. However, in humans there is a self-conscious intuitive introspection into the other person. We consider how it must feel for them. That capacity for the I-know-how-you-feel moment of contact comes from knowing the feeling oneself as one listens to it from the other person. It is an extraordinary achievement of humans and seems only minimally shared with animals. We know what another person feels like from inside them, and we can respond to others with curiosity and enquiry, whilst animals respond with action. Our personal knowledge comes from the peculiar faculty of introspection that characterises humanity.

what we alre ady know   13

Feelings are not apparently observed as representations through our usual perceptual systems—sight, sound, touch, etc. They arise from some sort of internal perception. We might call it consciousness. As Brentano (1874), one of the originators of phenomenology, said, there is a kind of inward attention (translated badly into English as “intention”). Thus, we can say that we perceive in an inward direction inside ourselves. The inward view we can call introspection, and it registers what we can call psychic qualities. The fundamental qualities are pleasure and pain, correlated with bodily needs and sensations. But there are many variants of those experienced satisfactions/ frustrations. Emotions can be personally idiosyncratic and unique to individuals, and that creates the suspicion with which subjectivity and introspection are regarded, although it can be argued that subjectivity may in fact be quite capable of rigorous study if standards of research and analysis are carefully adhered to (see Hinshelwood, 2013; Holmes, 2019). So, an academic book on feelings must give some place to introspection, since an emotional experience can only be confirmed from “inside”. Evolution has bestowed on us the rather large human brain capacity. We believe it distinguishes us as superior in cognition and reason compared with all other animals. We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the wise hominid. Yet it is ironic that our brains give us a mind preoccupied with feelings. Humans are the only animals who laugh and, also, the only animals who cry. Our minds are greatly occupied with emotions, and with emotions that are often of a greater intensity and persistence than those of the animals. Feelings are hardly the afterthought we sometimes like to assume they are. One instance of this difference from animals is the propensity for aggression. The human animal is the one most intent on killing, killing other members of the same species. Most animal species indulge in aggressive display with others until one or other of the combatants takes flight. The victor on the whole does not give chase to annihilate the loser, as is common in human belligerence. One only has to think of the involvement in ever more destructive wars to wonder if cognition is really such a supreme governing principle of the human evolutionary success. Though cognitive powers may be involved in the technology of human life— including the technology of wars—emotions could be seen to have as

14  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

big a role as the drivers of our motivations. It is hatred and fear that drive wars, not cognition. Aggression is only part of the story, and there is a particularly intense range of all sorts of feelings. Humans are also the animal most engaged in the obsessive pursuit of sexuality. We have the most complex forms of masturbation and “fore-pleasure”. From simple observations, too, the kind of sexual satisfactions gained by animals is, though similar in character, rather abbreviated and a lot less intense compared to the human orgasm. Thus, humans seem to spend an unnaturally large amount of time seeking the kind of satisfaction which appears to be unnaturally intense. That makes a special kind of animal of the human. If Freud was right in regarding the pursuit of libidinal satisfaction as the great problem of mankind, it is because humans are endowed with a much greater need of sexual satisfaction. This line of argument also accords with Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape (1967), where he (in accord with Freud) traces human sexual obsession to the nakedness of our skin which, unlike animals, mostly covered in fur or scales, is bound to make human skin more sensitive and arousable. Our biology, whether brain or skin, is affect-intense. Intensity Emotions have intensity. Not only the quality of a feeling but its intensity must be gauged subjectively. Our memories, for instance, can be intense, but only by virtue of the intensity of feeling the memory evokes. We might gauge if we love someone more than another; or indeed, if a feeling of love is stronger than hate, or vice versa. Or sometimes we compare the intensity with that of another person, often a painful assessment within a love relationship. This is a non-parametric form of measurement called “ordinal”, which means ranking emotional instances in order of strength. So, an affect is “measured” in terms of whether its intensity is greater or lesser than another. Losing your handkerchief, or your wallet, or your spouse will be ordered in a sequence of rising intensity of feeling. It is a position in a sequence along a dimension that produces a qualitative “measurement” which is only somewhat equivalent to a quantitative one.

what we alre ady know   15

Location Affects are not extended in spatial dimensions, and thus like other mental entities they contrast sharply with physical objects. Nevertheless, because affects depend at least in part on bodily sensations, they have a location— in that body. While listening to someone’s troubles and knowing the feelings they have, suffering a bereavement for instance, we do “share” their feelings. But we still continue to know, usually, who is bereaved. They are the speaker’s feelings, not the listener’s. They are located in him, not in me. They are located inside that body. Some feelings are specifically associated with a part of the body. When anxious, we say we have butterflies in the stomach, or sadness can be a lump in the throat, and so on. Such expressions emphasise in ordinary language the close relations between feelings and the body or a part of the body. Sensations from the genitals are distinctly different from sensations from the bowels or the sensation of choking on some food, or the extraordinary aural range of sounds that we call music. Our bodies hold a vast repertoire of distinct sensations for contributing to the qualities of affect. There is a unique collaboration between being a person and having a body. A person is a body, with a brain. However, the body is not merely a physical material presence. It is also my personal experience and almost certainly an experience thoroughly infused with affect. A pain in the tummy is an emotional experience, a state of being. “I am hungry” is a state of oneself, and different from knowing that it is six hours since my last meal. The contrast is the experience of having a body, with at the same time a knowledge of the body’s objective condition. Partly this is due to the latter being a representation of my body in contrast to my direct experience, from inside. Thus, in general, affects and bodily sensations are two sides of the same coin of self and body—but it is a coin which has two sides that can slide apart. Indeed, perhaps all affects have a bodily reference, and it may even be that all body sensations have associated mentally experienced feelings. It could be claimed that we do not always feel bodily sensations accompanying our feelings. When we hear someone’s distress at being bereaved, we do not necessarily find ourselves crying, or even wanting to cry. However, we would recognise the memory of the tingling in the

16  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

eyes when we had suffered a similar bereavement. The issue may be one of attention. Intense mental distress may draw attention away from the bodily component, until at a sudden moment we do start to cry with sadness, or until we shout out our anger with a churning in the stomach. There are times too when the bodily component achieves an overwhelming dominance and can even hide the emotional experience. The result then is a so-called “conversion symptom”. If the connection between a sensation and an affect is inevitable, then it may be incorrect to think of a specific somatising process as the conversion of an emotion into a bodily sensation or symptom. If psychological experiences and bodily sensations are already correlated with each other, then there is not a place for a conversion. How a move from mental to bodily takes place is the wrong question. Rather, it may be more connected with a selective attention to one or other of the opposite sides of the coin— either bodily sensations (somatisation) attract attention away from some mental state, perhaps intolerable, or a psychological symptom (psychologising) attracts the attention from fears of a bodily condition. So, just as an emotional experience has a bodily component, so every bodily sensation may have a correlated mental emotion. Bodily stimulation of one kind or another (not only sexual) is in fact close to an affect. For instance, should the soothing experience of being stroked on the skin, especially when in pain, be included as an affect? Or is this purely a mechanical sensation and outside the precise category of affects? The stroking would certainly be described as a comforting feeling. A feeling shares a location with other mental entities. Cognition, ideas, and reason can also be said to emerge from a location, a single person. However, affects and cognition belong to a location in a very different way. An emotion shared with another person is quite different from a cognitive communication. Affects are identified with a specific person. Cognitively, we may learn Pythagoras’s theorem, but we do not share it with Pythagoras in the way we share the feelings of bereavement with a friend. In fact, we take the logical theorem away as our own, to use when necessary. Pythagoras’s theorem is not just some characteristic of its originator, Pythagoras. It has become one’s own cognitive asset. But learning of someone’s feelings—about their mother dying, for instance—however much we know the experience (perhaps our own mother has died), we do not claim it as our own feeling. It is

what we alre ady know   17

a quite different possession from the claim that Pythagoras’s theorem is a part of our cognitive knowledge. We place the mental entities in different locations in interpersonal space—when I learn the theorem it becomes my knowledge, but feelings of bereavement remain those of the bereaved person even though I know the feelings expressed. By their nature, feelings are not logical, and seemingly they form a parallel universe of experience to that of reasoning and cognition (see the next chapter). Cognitive products require some reasoned justification of a supra-personal and widely accepted kind. Reasoning is a form of validation, and we need logical landmarks that are not just idiosyncratic. No such features apply to feelings. If someone claims to feel something, we can only acknowledge their claim; we might of course test its genuineness, but we would do so with some empathic method of identifying with them, and not a generalised from of “proving” with reason. We simply acknowledge someone’s feeling at the moment, and moreover we do so with our feelings, with an empathy. Indeed, reading this book will inevitably have to rely on the willingness to introspect into one’s own feelings and give them a personal consideration not a cognitive appraisal. And each reader will, whether I like it or not, be using their own subjectivity to gauge my descriptions in terms of the personal feelings they have. Claims need therefore to be measured against the reader’s own experience, and an inherent plausibility for her/him of what is being discussed. Despite having these affective brains, cognition is studied more. In fact, cognitive psychology lends itself well to the dominant technology of our twenty-first century. Digital calculation has become a part of the general field of the “cognitive sciences” together with neurology. Most other mental entities are therefore studied academically in relation to this dominant interest, as if mind were a simple part of a biological machine. Location in time Though there is a memory of having felt some emotion, that memory feels different. Driving along a road and hitting a small deer, as I did some twenty years ago, I remember the alarm and the regret, and the sense of guilty responsibility, but it is located back then. It still feels alarming and so on, but it is felt as a past state of mind and not in

18  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

the present. Present feelings are usually identified as such and different from those recognised from the past. This, too, differs from cognitive knowledge. What I knew cognitively then, I still know now in the same way. In fact, there could be scope here to speculate that affects are a significant component in recognising the passing of time, something which reason and knowledge cannot accomplish so well. Having characterised emotions as being located in a person or at a time, that process may be disturbed. We may become confused sometimes by feelings that somehow occupy us, as the contagion of a panic in a crowd, for instance. Or there may be memories that are so sharp they are felt now—flashbacks in PTSD, for instance. It may even be that memories are not primarily perceptive, but that perceptions are the trigger for affects to bring back a sense of the past. Going into a building where one has not been for a long time, the sense of familiarity may provoke the historical memory of emotions aroused there, rather than the perceptual memory of actual events that are represented visually and aurally. In other words, affects may not be just the pictorial, auditory, tactile, olfactory representations we expect them to be, but more of a reliving of the past, known to be the past but felt to be lively in the present. Memories have “duration”, as Bergson (1889) would say. And it may be that it is affects that ensure memories endure. Moods and traits Typically, a feeling may last a few minutes or up to perhaps an hour, or it may persist longer and we then call it a mood. In addition, a person may be said to be characterised by the frequency of a particular feeling state; someone may be a grumpy character. Then such traits of character are a long-term state, a disposition. And so, a persistent irritability or grumpiness is a feature of his personality; or alternatively, he may be the life and soul of the party, always talkative and jolly, and so on. Neuro-location Another kind of location in space has recently been refined in a precise way by neuroscientists. Some brain locations or connections inside the brain—the limbic system in particular—are correlated to the specific functions of emotions. Locating feelings in the limbic system may

what we alre ady know   19

eventually prove productive. The temptation is to think that the emotion in some way “inhabits” that location. However, as yet it is not clear that feelings which are experienced can be equated with neural locations. And nor is it yet clear how they could be more than correlated— neuropsychology has this problem of the direction of causation. Does the brain cause the feelings, or do feelings excite nerves into action? In the present book, this debate will not be pursued, and the location of neural activity and feeling states will simply be viewed as correlated. The methods of observation in neurology and personal experience are fundamentally different. Whatever their biological substrate in brain activity, we know our affects by how they feel. The method is introspective and subjective, and that cannot be known from the brain activity, or conductivity, or MRI patterns, where the method is objective and concerned with material substances and forces. They are different objects of experience—felt experience and material substance are known in different ways, subjective or objective. However much we can be confident of the activity in a part of the brain, we do not know what the subjective experience of that brain activity will be. The experiences correlated with the brain observations can only be attributed to the subject by voicing that experience—from inside us, as it were. So, the “neural location” and the “felt location” are known separately. These are two modalities of knowing, and they can be brought together but cannot be substituted for each other. What can be added to understanding affects when we turn to the physical structure and function of parts of the brain has on the whole still to be decided. So, location in the brain is not the same as location in the experiential world—whether the location within our relations with other beings, or the experience of feelings in certain parts of the body, or the location in time present and past. Brain location is not part of that personal experiencing. Therefore, traditional introspection must be sustained despite the correlated physical and objective empiricism arrived at from neuro-anatomy and -physiology. Representation and authenticity On the one hand, communications depend on the direct expression (and reception) of feelings such as the alarming impact of screaming, but on the other hand, there is the communication of language and

20  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

named feelings, as well as the much more delicate and nuanced feelings in, say, music. The elaborate system of language (Deacon, 1997) has extended the communication of feelings, but represented in symbolic form—literature, poetry, and ordinary conversation. When we smile as a means of overcoming an embarrassment, we simulate ease when we do not feel it. The human experience is complex in this regard. A feeling in our minds can have a genuine quality. But equally it can be a falsity, often apparent to others. An emotion is falsely expressed for purposes of enabling an escape from something uncomfortable. The capacity to represent allows the possibility of inauthenticity, simulation, and falsity. Both affects and cognitive ideas are reproducible in other minds. However, the method and kind of reproduction are quite different. We have noted that learning Pythagoras’s theorem is different from empathising with someone else’s feelings—either a reasoned argument, or an evoked feeling. While science deals with measured observation and reasoned logic, affects are evoked and a whole area of cultural life is devoted to evoking affects. That is the aesthetics of art and literature. A dramatic performance is a very different kind of reproduction from the reciting of cognitive knowledge. I may have a visual perception of the cat I have just seen sleeping on the rug. That is an image that I can keep in mind. I represent it to myself. It is in my “mind’s eye”. Then I can further represent that visual scene in words (like the words I have just written), or if I could draw well enough, I could reproduce it in a painting. I can also represent the feeling as well as the scene in a verbal expression of the affect, as the little girl in the Prologue did. But an affective communication is a direct “action” on another person—even though that evocation may have been mediated by representations such as words, poetry, acting, painting, and so on. If I put into words my sense of warmth for the pet cat and a pleasure in its apparent satisfaction as it lies comfortably on the rug, it evokes comfort, affection, warmth, quite different from reporting the facts of where the cat is and what it looks like. The emotional state transmitted by evocation is not false. The difference between a representation of a perception and an evoked state of feeling is a telling difference. Being in a feeling state is different from representing it.

what we alre ady know   21

The word “anger” is one kind of communication, but a second is the snarl of a dog. We can say without doubt that a dog is aggressive and dangerous when we see it snarl, because it impacts on us emotionally, creating fear. The snarl is not a simple symbol. Its impact is real—the dog’s bite will not produce a symbolic wound. The dog’s emotions get inside us and provoke us—not merely to recognise the aggression; but to take care of ourselves. A snarl transmits an affect in itself (fear). On stage, representing the feeling of fear is a theatrical device from the earliest tragedies of Greek antiquity. The audience does not just see the representation of anger, as if holding up a sign. They need to experience the anger, as anger; as if Oedipus is threatened with the truth. Feelings are “contagious”; they spread from one person to another and get inside us, often unbidden. The logic of Pythagoras which we study hard to master is a communication that a machine can do. But, a mind is receptive to evocations. We receive emotions as well as being evokers. Evocative transmissions exist in two forms. First, the receiver may have the same feeling as the one who evokes it, resulting from empathy, so that we feel the sadness of someone bereaved—it can be called concordant. Or alternatively, the evoked affect is complementary to the other person’s, such as fear in response to the other person’s rage, or we can feel guilt in relation to someone’s righteous accusations. The terms “concordant” and “complementary” are taken from Heinrich Racker (1948, 1957). And we will come back to these kinds of transactions later (Chapter 7). Emotional interpenetration When two subjectivities interact, we are drawn into an emotional engagement. We can say we are “there for him”; we enter into his sadness ourselves, as if it is, say, a lake where we swim together. It is an everyday phenomenon in social relations. Humans are very sensitive to each other in this way. There is a giving and receiving. In any situation of exchange, whether it is an academic lecture or a family exchanging photographs of their summer holidays, the rapt attention displays a serious engagement that is much more active than the passive downloading of one computer

22  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

from another. In fact, we often ignore these background affects while we concentrate on the cognitive rational message. The holiday photographs are accompanied by information about place, personal incident, and so on. And that is one of the stranger aspects. We tend to put aside our emotional connections in favour of a more formal exchange of intellectual information. Nevertheless, what engages our attention to the holiday photos is an affective connection going on in the background. Human beings are especially subtle at these emotional exchanges. But a similar exchange of intimacy does exist among animals in a limited way. Those in a herd follow each other, and may sense danger almost instantaneously as a contagious fear. The impulse to take flight penetrates the entire herd of antelope as if one. Being affects If feelings are not representations of something, then they are something in their own right. They are something and therefore much closer to a sense of being. We are in a state of feeling which is a state of being. That state of feeling is not a representation (though it can be represented), it is the state we are in. Therefore, it may not be reason which gives a sense to existing in the world, but affects. Possibly we may have to conclude that instead of Descartes’s “cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”), we should assert sentio, ergo sum: “I feel, therefore I am”. Being in a state of feeling may be just as valid as Descartes’s assertion, if not even more so. So, affects have specific properties with respect to space, time, and location. They are reproducible in other persons, in a penetrative form that impacts on the other’s state of being. As states of being, feelings are unlike reason and cognition, even though affects may also be represented as cognitions can. That direct or aesthetic form deals with non-rational qualities, such as beauty.

Reflection and cognition While I have concentrated in this chapter on the gain from introspection into this unique idiosyncratic experiencing, it is not the only avenue of advance. In fact, if we have considered what might be extracted from

what we alre ady know   23

personal reflection on the emotions, it has been done through a process of cognitive representation of the personal experiences of my affects. Such representation of affects subjected to cognitive appraisal leads to an interest, and even concern about the relations of different modalities of experience to each other in our mind—and in particular the relations of affects to cognition. As we move from personal reflection and introspection to a more formal consideration of the muddling attempts at a more academic cognitive appraisal, we will consider these two modalities—affects and cognition—which have distinct differences (to be clarified in the next chapter).

CH A PTER 3

Affects and cognition

A

ffects and cognition are frequently juxtaposed and placed in opposition, so in this chapter we will discuss two thought experiments that can throw some light on the comparisons between the two. First, to illustrate what a thought experiment is, we consider the Chinese Room of John Searle. This concerns the experience of meanings, on one hand, with the function of computer algorithms, on the other. It is a model for then comparing an Affect Machine with a computer. Machines to simulate mental functions have been invented and used for many centuries (Asprey & Campbell-Kelly, 1997). It is, however, cognition emphasised by computers.

Experiment: minds as machines (John Searle) Both affects and meaning are systems of personal experiences of a different order from calculating. The aim here is to consider the question whether the contents of subjective experience (like affects and meanings) can be represented by the function of machines. This comparison will distinguish affects from the kind of information represented and processed by machines. 25

26  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

Alan Turing (1950), the scientist who first developed a working computer at Bletchley Park in the 1940s, issued a challenge known as the Turing test. The test is to require an interrogator to determine whether messages he receives are from a human person or from a computer. The challenge is to design a computer that cannot be distinguished from a human mind. Seventy years on, there is some success in developing a computer with a learning capability, or AI (artificial intelligence). However, despite these impressive technological achievements in mechanically reproducing mental functions, this has not created another race of machine beings comparable to humans. Maybe that is yet to come! However, some would argue it is not possible. The Chinese Room One who denied this possibility is John Searle (1980). He described a thought experiment he called the “Chinese Room”, in which he imagined himself—unable to speak Chinese—responding nevertheless to Chinese characters. Locked in isolation in a room, he was provided with, first, a text in Chinese, and second, instructions indicating what response to make to each symbol. He could then respond mechanically to each symbol without having to understand the symbols themselves. He was comparing a process (typical of a machine) that could use some shape-recognition algorithm, on the one hand, with, on the other, the capacity of a human mind to understand the meaning of the Chinese characters. Searle argued that the latter, the mind, would experience the meanings; the machine would not. The algorithm would not “understand” and would not comprehend the content. Understanding is quite different from a mechanical recognition of shapes. The two kinds of response, he argued, are inherently different from each other—experiencing meanings and matching shapes. Despite a vigorous debate about this argument (Harnad, 2001), Searle concluded that meanings are a significant feature of mental functions which a machine does not possess (Bruner, 1990). In effect, he answered Turing’s challenge with a thought experiment. He claimed a categorical difference between machine algorithms and human understanding. Therefore some aspects of a

affects and cognition   27

mind are inherently impossible to build into machines. One is the experience of meanings. In fact, the concept of “information” and the concept of “meaning” are often elided together in a slippery way as if they were synonymous. The technical uploading and downloading of information, such as a computer might use to read Chinese characters, is to be regarded as significantly different from reading the meaning of that information. An Affect Machine We can ask a comparable question: instead of a machine using information, what if it could operate with the experience of feelings? Experiencing feelings is subjective and comparable to experiencing meanings and thus an extension of Searle’s experiment. It suggests an experiment: what if we could build an Affect Machine that could do for affects what a calculating machine can do for cognition? What could we learn from making this a thought experiment like Searle’s? Can we imagine how to build such a machine? What would it consist of? And how would it operate? We are proposing a technological innovation to simulate an affective function, an ability to have and use affects. To compare an Affect Machine with a calculator, we might start by specifying the key functions of the calculating machine. Three seem most crucial: 1. The calculator performs the task of manipulating figures according to the rules of mathematics; 2. The calculator can substitute for a human mind by making those calculations in a more accurate, efficient, and speedy way compared with our minds; and 3. The calculator will provide resulting calculations which the human mind can adopt for its own use. Deriving from those functions, we can specify what an Affect Machine must do: 1. The Affect Machine would perform the task of generating affects according to whatever rules govern the generation of affects;

28  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

2. The Affect Machine would substitute for a human person creating feelings in some way more effective than we humans; and 3. The Affect Machine would provide the appropriate affects for the humans to adopt for their own experiencing. If these do indeed represent the key functions of the two machines, then what is routine for a calculator is far-fetched for an affect machine. In detail, how does an imagined Affect Machine compare on these key functions? • The first is the generation of an experience—having a feeling would be the equivalent to the calculator producing a mathematical result, so that the result would be a “feeling”, an affect in some appropriate context. It seems unlikely that a machine can evoke an experience (a feeling) in us in the way a calculator can represent a mathematical result. • Then, could the Affect Machine be a substitute for a human, and feel for him? It seems unlikely that the representation of numbers in a computer chip could do the same for evoked feelings. • Could a machine assist its users in experiencing their affects? Again, it seems unlikely that the machine could provide better/clearer affects for us to experience in the way a calculating machine would produce precise calculations for our use. To be sure, these key functions have been chosen to provide the stiffest test. But they are nevertheless key functions that a machine would need to perform. These tests, in thought, would seem to confirm that an Affect Machine could not supplement its owner’s feelings as a calculator can produce calculations to supplement its user’s calculations. Indeed, the real advantage of a machine is that it does not have feelings, rather it merely follows the rules of its mechanics (electronics). At best, perhaps an Affect Machine could identify the contexts in which its user might expect to have a feeling. However, that is quite different from producing a feeling as such or producing a feeling in its operator as the purpose of operating it. On these criteria as set out, it would seem most unlikely that a calculator could produce affects. The essential problem is that to work with

affects and cognition   29

affects entails of necessity having experiences. And a machine with that capacity is improbable. This analysis of the imagined thought experiment has been the comparison of human feelings with those “affects” a calculator might feel. For purposes of simplification a calculator was chosen, but it could be reasonably claimed that the results would apply to a computing machine however complex. It is not part of the repertoire of a non-organic machine to have experiences it could feel consciously, or unconsciously. An Affect Machine appears to fail the required conditions. It does not perform the experience of having affects and is no more able to do so than to experience meaning in Searle’s experiment. Any such machine could not be an assistant to substitute for, or to augment, the user’s capacity to experience and manage his appropriate feelings. It is the difference between knowing the solution to Pythagoras’s theorem, and the feeling of pleasure in knowing it. There are more complex issues in addition to the three chosen above. A machine would have to accomplish more complex functions. How would one develop a machine with a passion for chocolate? A machine could choose the chocolate (by recognising the chemical constituents), but that cannot be equivalent to having a passion. Cognition is disembodied, but many affects are closely tied to the body. So, an Affect Machine would have to have a “body” with bodily sensations located in some parts. A machine could in fact be built which recognises the state of some of its parts; and indeed, a computer screen represents in some derived form the complex state of many integrated parts, but such a recognition and display cannot be graced with the description of being a “sensation” comparable to the experience a mind senses in its body. Were we to build an Affect Machine, perhaps that somatic sensitivity would be the first consideration—to develop a sensory system for the machine with evidence of the internal condition of all its parts. Would it have needs—perhaps its energy supply counts as a “need”? But would it then feel hunger when switched off? Our aim is quite different from creating a machine that can calculate figures at a pace, reliability, and endurance that is beyond our own. That is, following an algorithm is not the same as suffering an experience. The wish for a calculating machine is for an instrumental function

30  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

which we can use to enhance our own function. Having affects is not an instrumental function. It is some other kind of function. If such a machine were possible, it would seem to replace our own mental states, our own being. So, a machine adept at having feelings would have something of a “being” itself and would not function as an auxiliary to the human beings who use it. Its feelings would define its self, not its operator. Representation To summarise the distinction, it seems valid to say that a calculator operates on representations, and can manipulate them. Although, as we have discussed in the last chapter, affects can be represented, but they are more. They are evocations as well. At best, we might expect a machine to manipulate and “calculate” the representations of affects. It could be fed algorithms that could suggest representations of affects. It might connect a verbal representation, such as “rage”, with another verbal representation, “fear”. It could perhaps manipulate representations of “bereavement” transferred between separate persons. But would that be empathy? What a machine could not do is to evoke its own unrepresented feelings in others. Because cognitive function operates upon mental representations, therefore it can be replicated by a machine. But affects are reproduced and exchanged in a very different way. They become a state of mind, not a content of a mind. This is a result from the operation of an imagined (and as yet non-existent) machine. It is not an answer to the question whether it is possible to build such a machine. In fact, it suggests the result is that, if it were possible to build one, then such a machine could only be another mind. A machine cannot represent sentience in the way it can logic. The difference between the two categories, affects and logical reason, leads to quite different possibilities of simulation. And that difference is the one between representation and evocation.

Results of the experiment So, arising from this thought experiment, an Affect Machine appears to give an emphatic contrast between cognition and affect. Machines could represent something for us but cannot be our experience for us. There is a clear mandate here for studying affects independently of cognition.

affects and cognition   31

In summary There are many dimensions of the stark difference. Reviewing some of the intuitive features included in this chapter and the previous one: • Affects are the most subjective of mental entities; • Like other entities, affects have no extension in space, though they do in time; • However, they have location; • That location being within a specific body (and even part of the body); • They are reproducible in other persons, but in a very different way from, say, the way cognitive contents are reproduced in the mind; • Reason and cognition can be communicated freely in a non-possessive way, but affects remain located with a specific identified person; • Representation can occur in words, poetry, acting, and even music, but unlike cognitions, feelings evoke another’s feeling rather than a representation; • Machines can simulate representations (cognitions) but not representational feelings or meanings; • Closeness of affects with a person’s state of mind suggests an affect is part of their being, and cannot be mechanically reproduced. As Searle concluded, the function of a machine lacks a significant feature of a human mind; for him, it was meaning. But it is not just meaning: a machine cannot evoke affects either. As a result, affects should therefore be taken more as a phenomenon on their own which does not overlap or grow out of cognition. For the rest of this book, therefore, we are interested in that unique characteristic of the sentient being—he has his feelings and in particular, he has a knowledge of owning his own feelings (though he may sometimes remain unconscious of that knowledge). A correlated question is: does the brain have feelings? If the mechanical structure of a calculator or a computer appears to lack the capacity for direct self-observation or evocative experiencing, it might be clear that an organic structure like the brain can do no better. It is certainly more complex than a computer, with some 90 billion nerve cells, each with an average of 10,000 connections to other cells. We are as

32  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

yet lost with the potential patterns of activity, and what might possibly emerge from them. We can only say “emerge” and leave it to a theory of emergence (Kim, 1999). Just as the theory of natural selection through the survival of the fittest cannot be reduced to the chemical laws of the DNA molecule, so perhaps the modality of conscious experience cannot be reduced to neuronal activity. This question must be left for the indefinite future.

Par t II The hard work—a method

THE HARD WORK—A METHOD   35

Introduction to Part II There are endless twists and turns in what has been written about affects. Nevertheless, there is in the variety a possibility of drawing out the commonalities in various accounts. In this part of the book, we will do just that. This will centre on an initial survey of the contributions made over the years and centuries—millennia actually (see Chapter  4). We will consider the literature in three disciplines: philosophy, academic psychology, and classical psychoanalysis (instinct theory and, separately, object relations theory). From this review, some components of a model do emerge which can be considered as defining a multidimensional space.

Surveying the subjective Chapter 4 will therefore be a scoping exercise of the literature on affects and passions. Despite the tendency for affects to be considered a secondary and even suspect element of humanity, there are significant published works over many centuries from the earliest times (in Western civilisation, at least). This survey of the emotions will be in three sections. In the first, contributions from the philosophy of mind, going back at least to Plato (375, 370 bce) and Aristotle (350 bce); the second section will look into objective experimental psychology from the late nineteenth century to the present; and the third will examine extended accounts from various schools of psychoanalysis from the twentieth century—psychoanalysis being a discipline which places affects as central to its study. This reconnaissance of the combined knowledge retrieved over the centuries from the academic studies is what might be called a qualitative meta-analysis. From it, we can extract a quantity of ideas and observations, in fact 113 features of affects. After that scoping exercise, subsequent chapters will then boil them down, like an alchemist making his potions, to a manageable set of “superordinate” dimensions, useable for defining and differentiating affects (Chapter 5). The initial result will be a shortlist of “clusters” of these “ features” which are more or less common across the three disciplines. An interaction of the clustering produces superordinate clusters that can then be considered as dimensions

36  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

of difference and suggest a three-dimensional space within which emotions may be plotted in relation to each other (Chapter 6). The methodology of identifying the features and the clusters and the superordinate clusters depends upon the judgement of the researcher—I myself, albeit with my own subjective biases—since, as noted repeatedly, the research depends heavily on the recognition of emotions, which have subjective existence only. The point for the work in this book is that by scoping across a wide range of studies, we might expect to balance out much of the bias the various writers could have introduced from their own views, and from variations in the cultures they operated in. The method is to identify commonalities between theories and disciplines. However, not only my biases will be a constraining factor but also the reader’s, which may clash with mine. Although our two points of view make for a very small debate, this is one way of cautioning against too ready acceptance of what is written here. In other words, in the latter parts of the book particularly, the reader needs to put together his or her own views with those in this book to determine any commonality there is between us.

CH A PTER 4

“Discoveries” of the disciplines

T

his is a major (though still perhaps cursory) attempt to survey the field(s) of affect theories in philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The aim is ultimately to extract commonalities across the schools of these three disciplines that can give a more general picture of what affects are. The aim of this long chapter is not to emerge with one of the theories as the winner. It is rather to see what dimensions emerge as more common than others across the various schools and disciplines. Those commonalities then deserve to be foundation stones for a more general theory. While much has to be excluded, it is intended that the conclusions to this survey are general enough to indicate the most significant of the common features, and will enable a subsequent discourse about the dimensions of the differences in subsequent chapters. It will consist of three sections: Section 1—Philosophy; Section 2—Experimental psychology; Section 3—Psychoanalysis (in two parts, 3.1 classical instinct theory, and 3.2 object relations theory). It is to be borne in mind that this chapter selects as far as possible writings about affects, and not about the mind in general. Much may be well known already, or of less interest, and so readers may decide to move on to the way the argument evolves 37

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subsequently—from Chapter 4 onwards. If this chapter is unacceptably long, it has proved not possible to shorten it. The investigator is not without his own emotional experiences, and rivalries, and so personal issues may come into the appreciation of the schools of thought. Nor is it valid really to restrict the survey to publications in English and the prioritising of the Western cultural emphasis. Such subjectivity may be regrettable for some readers, but on the other hand, some degree of bias may be inevitable, as it is even in quantitative science (Kahneman, 2011; Lewis, 2016). There is no standard process for investigating affects in the way we investigate the fields of science. No generally agreed methods exist. Nevertheless, some academic, philosophical, and scientific attention has accumulated. It is divided between personal and biological approaches, and so we might note the contributions of Spinoza and Darwin, no mean intellects. One is a philosopher drawing on life experience, and the other the supreme biologist. They represent the ambiguity of the emotions, both ephemeral and subjective, on the one hand, whilst also felt to have a bodily and material basis—ambiguously both are reachable mental phenomena, but reachable via different avenues of approach. Emotions are perhaps the mental entities most closely associated with the body, and each to a specific body, which gives affects a particularly personal quality. However, in a culture such as Western modernism where the mental and the bodily have been radically separated, affects straddle the mind–brain problem in a way which has never been adequately resolved by philosophers. Thus, our affects may be the most personally defining functions while being the most enigmatic problem. The method started with a review of the various observations, ideas, and theories to produce this written-up account. The script was then put aside for a short while (in practice, a few weeks). It was then returned to and reread, carefully marking the points where this author considered a significant contribution was indicated. Each of those points in the text was numbered for the purposes of the subsequent analysis. In the text, the various disciplines will be indicated by Ph, Psy, PaI, and PaO. They indicate philosophy (Ph), academic psychology (Psy), psychoanalysis using instinct theory (PaI), and psychoanalysis using object relations (PaO). And the reference to the idea at that moment will be numbered.

“discoveries” of the disciplines   39

Section 1—Philosophy of mind It seems that around five centuries bce, we humans turned our thoughts towards ourselves and our nature. It has given philosophy the longest timescale—some two and a half thousand years. One might assume that as a more settled life in cities developed, it bred intellectual interests that reflected on the individual’s need to adapt to the way of life in civilised and elegant society beyond the agricultural, and it provided the time for an elite to reflect on existence and self. The ancient philosophers conceived the emotions within the framework of their own assumptions and experiences. There developed a medical doctrine of the humours. [Ph 1] The theory of humours was an important explanatory device (see below). Emotional states with bodily reference [Ph 2] were conceived as the need to balance the four humours (Hippocrates, c.400 bce). An emotional balance [Ph 3] between those humours indicated bodily health as well as emotional well-being. There is a sense from these earliest times of a common view that affects are potentially problematic and at the core of conflicts. Both Plato and Aristotle were concerned about the unbalanced intrusion of emotions into ethical and political life. [Ph 4] Around the same time, Buddha taught that unhappiness comes from the desire for certain satisfactions and recommended the relinquishing of all wishes and desires. It was a form of psychological practice rather than a true religion. The word “Nirvana” meant the “blowing out” of passion and sensuality, hate, and ignorance [Ph 5] (Collins, 1998; Gombrich, 2009), to achieve an ideal mental state, repudiating the sense of self. For the Greeks, the emotions were of two categories. On the one hand, there were the entirely self-oriented appetites (passions), such as the desire for basic pleasures (appetites); and on the other, there were the noble virtues [Ph 6] that demanded appropriately civilised feelings in the context of a society. The virtues, or higher affects, were those such as compassion and respect. The interference between the two—between appetites and virtues—was a continuous issue for the individual. This was because the passions, the appetites, are experienced passively; they arrive unbidden, but the nobler virtues had in contrast to be cultivated. The imperative was to achieve a balance between the basic pleasures and socially acceptable conduct.

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The world of the emotions, and indeed all mental phenomena, exists in parallel to the material world. Such a dualist philosophy recognised two substances—first, the physical, material substance, and then in addition a mental, spiritual one. Both were real, and the spiritual “substance” was as present as the material substance. They were quite separate substances, even though the two interacted intimately. For instance, the humours were a visible and palpable manifestation of the spiritual but could be directly manipulated via the physical body. Plato (427–347 bce) emphasised the need in public life for reason to prevail over passion [Ph 7] in order to have good government (Denham, 2012; Murdoch, 1978; Plato, Republic, Book IX). Thus, the influence of appetites, the less noble affects, could corrupt good government. In consequence, the arts inflame passions and so poets need to be kept at a distance from politics. Passions must be kept in check, especially by the will. The will, or self-control, needs to be in support of the nobler affects (courage, morality, etc.) which often exist in opposition to the appetites. And in Phaedrus, Plato stressed the analogy of the charioteer who has to drive the two horses keeping them as a team pulling in one direction, so that reason, and the will, must keep these two categories of affects in order. Willpower may, however, be weak, leading to a knowingly unethical act, impelled by passion (an occurrence known as akrasia). For Plato, knowledge is to become aware of pre-existing essences/ forms. They are the immaterial reality behind our perceptions. But as mere mortals we operate with opinions. Opinion results from forgetting the knowledge of essences, due to being trapped in the body. We see only shadows on the wall because from the body come appetites which interfere with our access to the pure and certain knowledge of essential forms. Those absolute forms of knowledge require reason to successfully tame the distortion caused by affects (Dancy, 2004). In contrast to Plato, Aristotle (384–322 bce), in Nicomachean Ethics, moderated the inherent friction between passion, on the one hand, and virtue plus reason, on the other. They need to be kept in a balance, less oppositional. Passions are acceptable but in moderation. A person must school himself to having his emotions to the right degree, and at the right time. This golden mean, or happy medium, [Ph 8] implies there is indeed danger in excess passion—but also in passionless reason. It is

“discoveries” of the disciplines   41

necessary to cultivate a faculty of mind in which virtuous passion is kept under the moderating supervision of reason. Aristotle was interested in the means for dealing with passions. As the son of a doctor, he described a kind of emotional evacuation likened to a medical purging of the bowels, which he called “catharsis”. [Ph 9] Typically, the painful passions (fear and pity, particularly) may be handled through discharge by a play in a theatre, for example, in which tragedy portrays human suffering. Extremes of fear and pity will then be used up and evacuated in this diversionary way. He used the same word, catharsis, for both the evacuation of the bowels and of the affects—in his formulation, they are combined as the humours. From the ancient traditions, therefore, reason and passion are distinct modalities of experience; they may be in conflict and can be opponents as well as collaborators. In that age, the passions were the expression of the non-material, and this relation between soul and body gave rise to a model for medical thinking, attributed to Hippocrates (480–370 bce) and Galen (Claudius Galenus, 130–210 ce; see Brain, 1983). This was the theory of the four humours, a model that dominated medicine in the West and Islam until the seventeenth century, and still lingers in the shadowy principles of alternative medicine today. The humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile [Ph 10]— are physical substances, but they were evidence of the soul. They were experienced as affects, arising from four organs—heart, lungs, gall bladder, and spleen, respectively, So, these organs were associated with specific emotional temperaments (personality)—sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic. These are attributes we still employ as personality characteristics today. They were also associated with the four elements—air, water, fire, and earth—and with various astrological signs. Thus, the spirit, inhabiting the physical body, gave the immaterial and experiential passions a fundamental relation to our material substance and beyond, to the universe. This spiritual dimension was strongly emphasised by St Augustine (354–430 ce) once the Roman Empire was Christianised in 380 by Theodosius I. Augustine was influenced by the ancient Stoics who repudiated the desire for pleasure, [Ph 11] and, indeed, the fear of pain.

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Aspiring to virtue was the only “good”. For Augustine, this translated into the doctrine of original sin, and the denigration of desire as lust (Dixon, 2009). His was a doctrine espoused by the Christian Church throughout the theocratic Middle Ages. It was a religious doctrine which was nevertheless based on a theory of the emotions. St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), however, was not as harsh, and though much of one’s emotions were concupiscent (i.e. appetites), some were discriminatory, judging good from bad, pleasure from pain (Dixon, 2009). After all, emotions are part of the being that God made. However, above all, Aquinas is classical in assigning reason as the defining character of the human being. Reason is part of the intellectual side of man, the place that is made in the image of God. Animals have only passions. It is required, therefore, that reason should be the master of the passions, a direct connection back to ancient times. René Descartes (1596–1650) comes at a significant cusp. He trained as a mathematician and scientist (as well as a military officer), and he evolved a view that true knowledge comes from empirical science honed with the logic of mathematics. Like the long tradition of emphasis on reason, Descartes evolved his principle “cogito, ergo sum”, and he did so with an empirical finding derived from his own introspection, rather than distilling the work of previous philosophers. Translated, his Latin phrase means, “I think, therefore I am”; the only truly certain thing I can know about myself is that I can think (Descartes, 1637). This proved, for him, mental existence, a soul. It is moved by passions which existed in, and flowed through, body structures, [Ph 12] particularly the nerves. However, this is a flow of spiritual “substance” closely inhabiting the physical body. He was a dualist, but at a moment when Western culture was just beginning to separate the two substances, positioned himself more widely. And it was even possible to embrace monism— that is to say, there is only one substance, the material one. However, from then on, that attempt to provide explanations of the immaterial emotions in terms of a single substance, physical matter, [Ph 13] has slowly increased in influence. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was just such a monist, relying on a materialist explanation only, and without recourse to a spirit or soul (Hobbes, 1651). He attempted to explain the experience of passions in the body as a motion circulating from the awareness of perceptions. [Ph 14] And he evolved the unconventional

“discoveries” of the disciplines   43

view at the time that emotions act as motivators of imagination [Ph 15] and action, rather than being a corrupting influence. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was also a rationalist and materialist who understood the determinism of science, but then had to work hard to find a place for human free will in a life determined according to scientific causation characteristic of physical matter. Spinoza (1677) identified passions with perceptions, the latter having an immediate impact on experience. That is, passions are an influence to which one reacts passively, [Ph 16] unless the perception and passion are subjected to reason. When the modifying effect of reason achieves ascendance, then that person approaches God through having thoughts about the perception, and he can then escape the determinism of matter. David Hume (1711–1776) also challenged the supremacy of reason, suggesting reason is more of a partner to the passions, [Ph 17] or even an obedient slave to the passions: “[R]eason is, and ought only to be the slave to the passions” (Hume, 1739, Part III, Section III)—most un-classical. Passions then serve as the motivators of reason, and thus emerge as integral to living a life. However, mostly the rationalist philosophers like John Locke (1632–1704) remained classically suspicious of emotions, which could cause moral failure if the guiding hand of reason were not in charge (Locke, 1689). Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) regarded emotions as potentially interfering in the pursuit of virtue, but not to be completely eradicated by the will, which must take emotion into account (Kant, 1797). For the Enlightenment (as it still endures today), the emphasis has, not surprisingly, been solidly on the cognitive aspects of human achievement and logical prowess. The aspect of the philosophy of mind focusing on affects has become less prominent, and the baton has tended to be passed to the new objective science of psychology that emerged in the later nineteenth century. However, a reaction against the empiricism of the rationalists came in the form of Romanticism [Ph 18] in the late eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century, when imagination, aesthetics, and sentiment were striven for. Stemming from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), and his Confessions (Rousseau, 1782), this approach was taken up in Germany by Fichte (1762–1814), Hegel (1770–1831), and Schelling (1775–1854)—(Fichte, 1797; Hegel, 1807;

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Schelling, 1797). Inherently, human passions are good: the noble savage, the innocence of children, and the wonders of nature. This view had been enhanced by the liberating intentions of the French Revolution in 1789, and in turn inspired art and poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Romantics condemned an over-civilised world that demanded too much restraint on the human spirit. Parallel with this came a movement known as Utilitarianism [Ph 19] which placed happiness, the most joyous of emotions, at the centre of the ethical values of moral philosophy. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) developed what has been called a calculus of happiness demanding that our actions be gauged quantitatively by how many people will be made happy by what we do, and to what extent (­ Bentham, 1789; Mill, 1861). Analysis of the surveying From this sketchy zip through these philosophers, it is possible to derive a set of features of the emotions. They are listed below, collected from the numbered points in the text: Ph 1. Ph 2.

Ph 3.

Ph 4. Ph 5.

Medical doctrine of the humours The four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—in the right proportions constitute physical and mental health

Emotional states have bodily reference

The emotions are connected to the state of the body and the humours derive from bodily organs—the heart, lungs, gall bladder, and spleen

Balance indicates bodily health as well as emotional

Imbalances of the bodily organs and humours cause specific emotions/moods, such as melancholia derived from too much black bile

Intrusion of emotions into ethical and political life Emotions interfere with sound judgement in public life

“Blowing out” of passion and sensuality, hate, and ignorance Conscious eradication of emotions leads to a calm, contemplative life

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Ph 6.

Ph 7. Ph 8. Ph 9.

Ph 10.

Appetites (passions) versus noble virtues The basic bodily needs are countered by civilised (moral) virtues to constrain those personal needs to reasonable levels and occasions

Reason to prevail over passion

In the conflict with the basic passions/needs, reason should prevail against emotional impulsiveness

Golden mean, or happy medium

In the conflict between reason and passion, the ideal state is a compromise allowing moderated and appropriate satisfactions

Catharsis

To control emotional impetuousness, the excessive passions may be discharged in harmless ways, such as watching a tragic drama in the theatre

Humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile

The humours from the several bodily organs need to be balanced in correct proportions

Ph 11.

Repudiating the desire for pleasure (original sin)

Ph 12.

Passions flow through body structures

Ph 13.

Single substance, physical matter

Ph 14.

Basic passions need to be repudiated and suppressed The soul flows through the body as compelling passions Emotions, similar to the existence of the body, arise from physical matter alone and there is no spiritual substance

Motion circulating from the awareness of perceptions

Emotions are part of a form of motion (i.e. stimuli) arising from perceptions

Ph 15.

Motivating imagination and action

Ph 16.

Passions as passive/unbidden

Ph 17. Ph 18.

Emotions motivate thought, imagination, and action The basic emotions and needs (or passions) arise unbidden and are inflicted upon the passive individual without choice

Emotions as partner and motivators of reason

Emotions motivate thought and reasonable action

Romanticism—imagination, aesthetics, and sentiment Emotions are the origins of an impelling, meaningful life

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Ph 19.

Utilitarianism and happiness The basis of an ethical life is to calculate the number of happy feelings one’s actions generate in others as well as oneself.

These features derived from philosophical sources are not all consistent by any means but arise from the most prominent set of issues and solutions. This list will be taken up in due course to compare with similar lists from the other disciplines. We continue now with the more recent discipline of psychology and its attempt to continue an objective scientific approach in an empiricist and materialist tradition.

Section 2—Objective psychological investigation The intensely emotional functions of human beings have not been clearly conceptualised psychologically with any consensus since the discipline of experimental academic psychology arose some 150 or so years ago. Various models have been proposed from the late nineteenth century. Mostly, since Pavlov, academic psychology has been dominated by behaviourism and more latterly cognitivism, and so, inevitably, interest in the emotions has not been great. Nevertheless, a number of models have been proposed, sufficiently varied to create debates. The experimental psychological approach has tended to emphasise objectivity and to sideline the essentially subjective. [Psy 1] The mere report of someone who “feels” a feeling has not been regarded as reliable, nevertheless investigations into emotions have inevitably had to use a “feeler’s” subjective corroboration of their feelings in order to identify the empirical data. This detracts from the purity of a consistent objectivity. The subjectivity of the experimental subjects, and of course the observer, may help to explain the variance in the results and models. Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) interest in biological structure and function is a good place to start. However, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Darwin, 1872), his interest was more to demonstrate a continuity between human beings and other animals than to invent a systematic psychology. His work was an influence towards the social role of affects, [Psy 2] more about communicating between persons

“discoveries” of the disciplines   47

(and between animals) than about states of mind provoking action. This contrast has been a persistent source of debate ever since.

The bodily dimensions On the whole, psychology has emphasised the relation between affects and behaviour; and this has tended to prioritise the appetites. [Psy 3] The pleasurable and noxious feelings seem naturally to be motivations to action [Psy 4] of some kind, to gain pleasure or avoid frustration. However, William James (1842–1910) in the US and Carl Lange (1834–1900) in Denmark questioned that (Lange, 1885). They had evolved, independently of each other, a theory now known as the James–Lange theory: [Psy 5] Common sense says we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened, and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry, and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not induced by the other, that the bodily manifestation must first be interposed between them, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be (James, 1890, p. 100)

This has been further elaborated by suggesting that affects arise via the autonomic nervous system [Psy 6] as secondary to bodily functioning, like feeling pain after being wounded. This is a theory that has waxed and waned in its popularity. One empirical advantage is that we could then claim that objective bodily measures are valid measures of subjective affects, thus dealing with the criticisms of subjectivity in the studies. In contrast, Walter Cannon (1871–1945) and his student Philip Bard (1898–1977) disagreed, and defended the common-sense view—bodily sensations and actions come from affects [Psy 7] (Bard, 1928; Cannon, 1927). We feel alarm when we see a tiger, and as a consequence the body reacts. The sight first fills us with anxiety and tension—our mental

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state—and then it causes us to run away. So, first the affect (fear) and then the bodily reaction (running away). So, we have two theories— the James–Lange and the Cannon–Bard—which argue for two opposite causal sequences; either a bodily reaction causes an affect, or an affect causes a bodily reaction. The contest between these two opposing points of view has not been settled. Cannon and Bard’s argument, made against James, was that the two theories predict very different time contours and could therefore be compared empirically. An emotional reaction typically starts with a sharp peak—fear of a runaway car, for instance—with almost instantaneous reactive behaviour. We jump out of the way because we are afraid. The sudden panic contour therefore indicates there is an immediate instantaneous (emotional) reaction before the behaviour. In the James–Lange view, the physiological changes would come first. But in fact, physiology builds up slowly. Therefore, affects would follow a slower contour, rather than the sudden alarm at the perceptual image. These are two different time contours, and the observable rapid response is claimed to favour the Cannon–Bard model. Cannon and Bard were empirical investigators and they pursued their theories with controlled experiments. They acknowledged that affects could be located in the brain, [Psy 8] in the limbic system, and thus the “primitive” brain. So, in another experiment, they tested another contrast between the two theories. They postulated that, according to the rival James–Lange theory, certain bodily viscera would display their physiological functions first and the “emotional” activity would come later in the primitive brain centres. But in their own Cannon–Bard theory the situation would be the reverse—the emotions first, in the brain, would be followed by the physiology and the body reaction. So, they surgically isolated those visceral organs in the body (in laboratory animals) from the brain centres. They found that the activity of the emotional brain centres continued as expected. The emotions did not start in the body with a secondary impact on the emotional brain. In yet another experiment, they artificially stimulated the viscera, which were still connected, and the stimuli did not result in correlated emotions. From both these experiments, the causal sequence did not start from the body to then influence the brain. So, they concluded that the emotions erupt in the brain without help from the viscera,

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even though they may be felt in body sensations, and may result in visceral reactions. Though the Cannon–Bard theory appears to be confirmed by such scientific experiments, nevertheless some experiences remain to be explained. For instance, when a child playfully runs away from Daddy who starts to chase, the child can then frequently become more and more frightened as if the Daddy gradually becomes some dangerous predator. It is as if the body behaviour, running away, significantly enhances the brain activity experiencing an imagined predator. As a consequence of such observations, the exact direction of causality has remained under debate. We might wonder whether there is some relevance in the fact that the objectivity of psychology tends to place less interest in cyclical feedback sequences of causes and tends to restrict itself to linear causality. Innate affects On the whole, there is a tendency to view the brain as the arousal site for emotions (Damasio, 1999; Ekman & Davidson, 1994; LeDoux, 1996; Panksepp, 1999; Rolls, 1999). The brain, regarded as the command centre for the body, implies that affect arousal is one function, and its centres in the lower, more “primitive” parts of the brain are seen as the most animal-like. [Psy 9] In line with the cognitive belief in the sharp distinction between reason and emotion, cognition is believed to be located in the cerebral hemispheres and to have evolved much later than the centres of the emotions in the quite distinct “primitive” brain. Such an anatomical distinction fits neatly with the tradition handed down from ancient times of the superior functioning of the intellect. Because the cortex represents a far larger proportion of the total brain mass in humans, the cortex must therefore be the base for the supposed cognitive superiority of the fully evolved “wise hominin”. Brain localisation is a founding principle of this approach and supports the view that subjective feelings arise from events in specific areas of the brain (Olds, 2003). [Psy 10] Continuing the Darwinian debate about the innate biological origins of emotions, Sylvan Tomkins, in an authoritative career, attempted a detailed comprehensive model in which he emphasised physical, bodily aspects and their biological origins. He published a series of

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four volumes between 1962 and 1991. These pointed to the evolutionary effect of a brain so enlarged that its increased volume had greatly multiplied the variety of potential stimuli. Such a brain needs a system which will alert it to the most important and urgent stimulus at a given time. So, affects comprise that attention-alerting system needed to identify the most pressing information from so many sources. This selective function, according to Tomkins, chooses from nine categories, and his primary list is: Interest, Enjoyment, Startle, Fear, Anger, Disgust, Dissmell, Startle and Shame (dissmell being a neologism for an unpleasant smell). These affects alert the brain [Psy 11] in a reflex-like manner. [Psy 12] In this model, affects play a significant part in directing attention to the cognitively perceived stimuli. Each person deals with these innate manifestations in a typical pattern which comprises his unique personality. Following Tomkins, Paul Ekman (2003), Robert Plutchik (2002), and others also investigated affects as a psycho-evolutionary phenomenon. Ekman regarded emotions as in some special way linked with the face and its musculature. Ekman and Friesen (1971) tested this proposed innateness by showing photographs of facial expressions of Western people to New Guinea tribal subjects who were relatively unfamiliar with Western culture, the aim being to exclude cultural factors. The tribal people did recognise emotional expressions similarly to Westerners, and there was a strong correlation of some 60–90%. Ekman concluded with Darwin that emotions were therefore innate and universal across all peoples. Plamper and Lazier (2012) give some account of the wide debate about Ekman’s universal claim, including Margaret Mead’s (1975) dismissal of it. This emphasis away from the cultural and towards the innate nature of affects led researchers to define lists of the emotions that are innate; [Psy 13] Ekman’s list of those “basic emotions” was: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, Surprise. Later he added: Amusement, Contempt, Contentment, Embarrassment, Excitement, Guilt, Pride in achievement, Relief, Satisfaction, Sensory pleasure, Shame (Ekman, 1999). This listing followed the tradition that goes back to classical times, and the enduring sense of a natural endowment. It is no longer of the spirit and the humours but they are now attributed to DNA and brain function.

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Plutchik identified a somewhat different list of primary emotions— Anger, Fear, Sadness, Disgust, Surprise, Anticipation, Trust, and Joy. He regarded these as advantageous for evolutionary survival, [Psy 14] and therefore inherent in the species, and were inevitably primitive biologically. Plutchik went on to arrange them in pairs [Psy 15] as opposites or complements, creating a circular structure (a wheel) (Plutchik, 2002). James Russell argued against a comprehensive theory: “Emotion is too broad a class of events to be a single scientific category, and no one structure suffices” (Russell & Barrett, 1999, p. 805). So, instead, Russell identified broad categories of emotions rather than lists of specifics; he described two general dimensions—(i) pleasure–displeasure, [Psy 16] and (ii) arousal–sleepiness [Psy 17] (an activation dimension) He identified what he called “emotional episodes” which comprised a sequence of several elements: antecedent causes of emotions (including physiological), behavioural responses, and then self-categorisation (group and individual identity) (Russell et al., 1989). [Psy 18]

The social and cultural dimension The isolation of a certain number of “basic” or primary emotions from innate origins has raised debates. Ekman’s attempt to exclude social influences may not have been completely successful since even New Guinea tribes have well-developed human cultures. They may be different in some respects from Western culture, but quite possibly all cultures demand enough similarities to educate for similarly expressed forms of emotion in a society. Russell (1993) also pointed out that specific emotions are not just expressed facially, but they have another impact as well—they arouse emotions in other people. [Psy 19] That is to say, emotions are signals to which others respond in their own emotional way. Such signals are universally recognised (Russell, 1993, p. 337). He redressed the balance, moving away from a purely individualised biological system. Interpersonal context is important as well as biology in both the nature and arousal of affects. Tomkins had placed affects as a function within the brain/mind— aiding the focus of attention on certain topics and perceptions, etc. In a related way, Allan Schore (1994) was also interested in the manner

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in which emotional function is regulated, [Psy 20] but for him it is within a context of other persons. Schore thought, as did the ancients, that affects need regulating, society demands moderation, or more, and the demand for conformity has to be acknowledged and accommodated. This adaptationist view of the place of emotions harks back to Aristotle’s principle of moderation. Schore focused on the methods used to modulate one’s personal state in a given situation. The study of the mechanisms of regulation drew on the psychoanalytic notion of defence, while he attempted to give it a parallel neuroscience dimension. Emotions are seen by Schore as a composite of feelings plus associated cognitive ideas, [Psy 21] together with the subjective experience and the physiological basis (including heart rate or pallor, etc., automatic gestures, and expressions). All these facets are required in order to allow controlled verbal articulation for the benefit of others (Schore, 1994). Social psychologists using social science methods of observation have examined the influence of culture and social dynamics on the nature and development of affects. Notable in this trend is the description by Hochschild (1983) of the training for “emotional labour”. [Psy 22] She described the willed control of emotions in the course of a work occupation. Her observations of the training programme for personnel in service industries showed how a flight crew of an airline are required to have the “correct” emotional expressions on their faces to greet passengers. It is part of their employment contract, however implicit that contract may be. This is not merely the regulation of emotions required for their moderation or suppression in a social situation as Schore described. It is the adoption of the required emotions in the course of a socially interactive form of paid employment. Maybe it is the modern, commercial application of old-fashioned books of etiquette. Similarly, the age-old art of acting on stage is not just the reciting of emotionally significant words, but the fulsome and convincing simulation of those emotions. [Psy 23] Simulation of affect is not entirely specious. A smile on the face of an air hostess may indeed induce a sense of well-being in the passenger, and indeed in the hostess herself as well (cf. the James–Lange theory). An actor immersed in playing King Lear may begin to feel himself actually to be a cranky old man ravaged by bitter and anxious feelings. Such simulated feelings are not just adornments but have a compelling quality for both actor and audience, as effective as if those simulations

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were the real thing. And this resonates back to Aristotle’s description of how emotions are evoked, and evacuated, by tragic dramas. That unexpected interplay between simulated and true emotions may connect with the powerful emotional states arising in an infant from the imitative kind of “conversation” [Psy 24] that goes on between mother and baby at a very early age: “A two-month-old enjoys the ‘primary intersubjectivity’ of a rhythmic musical conversation, taking turns with happy sounds” (Trevarthen & Delafield-Butt, 2017, p. 201). From that point of view, we can see the intimate interaction between two minds in the experimental infant whose interactions with mother have been investigated in the first few weeks of life. These experiments have studied the interactions of these emotional expressions as they are swapped back and forth (Murray & Andrews, 2000; Trevarthen, 1979, 2011), as the earliest of “imitative conversation”. Stern (1985), for instance, described in detail the development of this affective attunement in the first years of life. Further details of such early affective interactions have been described by Gergely and Watson (1996) and Hobson (2004). While these observations concern movement and facial expression, there is clearly a strong affectively powerful transmission between the two partners. This exchange is highly arousing and leads to a delight in mother as well as baby (and even onlooker) when accurately imitating each other’s movements; or alternatively, a painfully despondent disengagement when imitation fails. A considerable interest has been created by the discovery of “mirror neurons” that appear to mimic the observed movements of another person (Pascual-Leone et al., 1995; Rizzolatti & Luppino, 2001). Imitation of others, at least at the neuronal level, appears to be a lifelong activity. In principle, it can be hypothesised that an empathic emotional attunement could also be found at the neuronal level, activated in interactive emotional states [Psy 25] and not just attunement to behaviour (Iacoboni, 2009). In fact, ordinary social cues do imply such an impact of one mind on another to create a similar emotional response in each. Such a responsiveness of brain activity to a context with others serves to loosen the rigidity of explanations based on an innate determinism. It is clear that clues within our social and interpersonal context are of great importance emotionally, whatever the innate potential upon which those cues play.

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An extension from Schore’s accounts of affect regulation, and Hochschild’s emotional labour, points towards the considerable literature on the social management of emotion (Turner, 2007). [Psy 26] Martin Seligman (2002), as many others in the past, has promoted therapeutic methods for the control and manipulation of emotions. Seligman’s positive psychology, as he called it, started from a conceptual model believed to enable a person to “manipulate” their own mood. Both Schore and Seligman point us towards a sociology of emotion, and the pressures, even coercion, society exerts upon us to have the right feelings in the right way, in the right place, at the right time. The social role of individual affects in interpersonal intercourse will not be discussed in further detail here. So, despite their importance, a sociology and a history of emotions takes us beyond the attempt to understand the nature of the basic experience of feeling. And indeed, feelings are the possessions of individuals, so social scientists must come searching individual psychology, however much there are social factors in the experience of the emotions.

Cognitive epiphenomenon The relation between emotions and cognition is not settled. The recent overarching dominance of cognitivism is compatible with the Cannon– Bard theory which places the origins of emotions in the cognitive awareness of significant external situations. Affects are no longer rivals to reasoning, nor corrupt it. In this approach, affects derive from cognition [Psy 27] which identifies stimuli that reasonably warrant an accompanying affect. Schachter and Singer (1962) elaborated this as a two-factor theory: one factor, a physiological state, brought out by the second factor, a cognition. Emotions are seen therefore as derivative; that is, they are reducible to other mental and bodily functioning—cognition and physiology. Cognitivism can imply that no specific theory of affects need go further than that, because affects are only a kind of inconsequential spin-off, apparent in subjective experience but lacking subjective significance. It is in contrast to the assertion by the psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs that whatever the derivation of affects from instincts, we can still study the affective experience rather than the biological instincts.

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It is true, in fact, that cognitive activity may sometimes cause affects; the pleasurable satisfaction when finally solving a crossword puzzle clue that had eluded you for some time is a familiar example of a feeling of cognitive success. But such an example is not necessarily an example of a general rule that all emotion is a spin-off from cognition. A little differently, Tomkins gave emotions the contrasting role of determining what the cognitive functions [Psy 28] should attend to. His view was that the experience of the emotions gives a selective awareness directed by the lower centres of the brain towards the cognitive significance of the perception. Most people would regard emotions as not the best methods of evaluating the real world. It could, however, be vital in some instances, such as the feeling of hunger; then scanning the information from perception for sources of food would be very appropriate. On the other hand, an irrational fear of spiders that prompts an urgent movement away from one’s chair may be the cause of an accident for oneself or for someone else. There must be some sort of differentiation between so-called “rational” feelings and “irrational” ones that may be difficult to define.

Summarising approaches from psychology Though research on the emotions has a minor place in academic psychology, considerable activity over significantly more than a century has amounted to a body of work and debate. Interestingly, some of the issues arising in classical times have found their way through to modern empirical experimentation. In particular, there are three of these age-old trends. First is the enduring debate about the relation between affects and the body. As we saw in the last chapter, there is no such debate with regard to cognition, which is quite free of bodily experience. However, with the emotions there is no settled view on what the relations are except that body sensations seem to be a central part of affective life, with innate biological origins. Second, there is a lot of interest, with perhaps more consensus, about a felt need to control the emotions in a civilised society. It is not agreed how much the emotions need to be controlled, and that estimation may have varied over the millennia, resulting, therefore, in different degrees of emotional control necessary in different cultures.

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Third, a continuous theme has been the relations between affects and cognition. This has to some extent gone along with the previous theme, control. Specifically, should it be reason that is the controlling internal function to regulate the affects? There are varying views on how much reason needs to assert a dominant position, or even alternatively, as Hume wrote, be a slave to the passions. Having spent a considerable time in putting together this survey of the varying place of these three themes—affects and the body, control of affects, and affects and cognition—they have each remained consistently in the picture, each one at times pushed into the background but later coming forward again. Also, the importance of the social dimension in psychology has emerged in this second section of this chapter, and it is indeed recognised as a subspecialty of social psychology. This played much less a part in the philosophical approaches, where the role of affects was more to do with the impact of virtue and with a system of overriding ethical principles. Psychology has given more detailed attention to affects in interpersonal interactions. Possibly, this connects with the world of individualism in our later centuries. So, today there is increasing need to pay attention to the social psychology of emotions, which in the past, in more gregarious times, could be taken more for granted. The social dimension is nevertheless a highly significant element, and history might be a little ashamed of having neglected it. Analysis of the survey We therefore complete this section of this chapter with the features of affects arising from academic psychology. The same process—the scoping survey and subsequent close reading and marking—was adopted as for the survey in Section 1. The listed features of the survey of experimental psychology follow: Psy 1.

Experimental objectivity and subjectivity The emotions can and should be observed objectively as well as statements by subjects

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Psy 2.

Social role of affects

Psy 3.

Priority to the appetites

Psy 4. Psy 5. Psy 6.

Affects have a role in social relations and dynamics The most basic affects (needs or appetites) are the fundamental building blocks of emotional life

Motivations to action

The emotions motivate action in a reflex-like way

James–Lange theory

The feelings follow on the reflex actions elicited in the body

Affects arising via the autonomic nervous system

Feelings are channelled via the autonomic nervous system (the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves)

Psy 7.

Cannon–Bard theory

Psy 8.

Affects located in the brain

Psy 9.

Bodily reactions follow on from emotional states of the brain The affects arise from the function of locations in the brain, and especially the limbic system and the “primitive” level

Affect is animal-like

Affects, being a function of the basal levels of the brain, represent the animal inheritance of human beings

Psy 10. Secondary to the physical (biological) events

Felt emotions originate as biological events in the brain/body

Psy 11. System for alerting

Emotions are a system for alerting the complex brain to what is most urgent to attend to

Psy 12. Reflex-like manner (passive)

The emotional system alerts as a kind of reflex influence in the brain

Psy 13. Lists of basic emotions

The biological inheritance primes the human animal to start with a restricted set of innate affects

Psy 14. Advantageous for evolutionary survival

The biological development of innate emotions prompts survival

Psy 15. Arranged in pairs

The emotions can be arranged as complementary pairs forming a “wheel”

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Psy 16. Pleasure–displeasure Pleasure–displeasure is the most common pair, but oppositional rather than complementary

Psy 17. Arousal–sleepiness (an activation dimension)

Emotions serve to create an arousal when appropriate

Psy 18. Self-categorisation (identity)

Sequences of emotions from physiological and behavioural factors create group and individual identity

Psy 19. Arouse emotions in other people

Emotions are not just signals but they arouse emotional states in others

Psy 20. Emotional function regulated

Emotions have to be regulated in the context of other people

Psy 21. Feelings plus associated ideas

Emotions gain a specific character from being consistently associated with cognitive ideas

Psy 22. Emotional labour

Options may be consciously willed or simulated as an element of a work responsibility

Psy 23. As if simulations were real

Simulated emotions can become authentic in the context of others, for example acting on stage

Psy 24. Imitative kinds of “conversation”

The infant can imitate an emotional expression in responding to mother’s equivalent expression

Psy 25. Empathic attunement (mirror neurons)

Adults attune to others’ emotions, to the degree that the neuronal activity corresponds between the two people

Psy 26. Social management of emotion

Emotions are managed in social company as if from a book of etiquette

Psy 27. Affects deriving from cognition (inconsequential spin-off)

Cognitive attention triggers appropriate emotional responses as derivatives

Psy 28. Determining the cognitive functions

Cognitive functioning triggered by emotional responses.

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In the next section, we will engage with the psychoanalytic project where emotional understanding is central.

Section 3—Is it Freud? Psychoanalysis requires a rather more extended survey of feeling states for several reasons. First, the clinical practitioner is drawn to focus on feelings by the complaints of his clients. Second, the psychoanalytic method for drawing conclusions from subjective experience has been developed continuously for well over a century. And third, the method of psychoanalytic investigation is introspective and can at its best get beyond the verbal and subjective limitations that cause the grave suspicions about subjectivity. Psychoanalysts would claim that subjective introspection can be rigorous. One argument at least can be found elsewhere (Hinshelwood, 2013), and Gabbard wrote with some intensity: “[W]e can derive a great deal of gratification from the fact that we still see value in the unique subjectivity of the person who comes to us for help” (2000, p. 714). However, despite being such a developed psychology of affects and of the subjective, not even psychoanalysis has a commonly agreed core theory of affects. Many authors agree with Ruth Stein, “[U]ntil recently a coherent and updated affect theory has been conspicuously lacking in psychoanalysis, and more than one article has been written deploring this state of affairs” (1991, p. xii). And ten years after Stein, the psychoanalyst André Green, too, prefaced his remarks on affects thus: “It is customary to begin this topic [on feelings] by saying that there is no present satisfactory theory of affects although a hundred or more theories exist” (2002, p. 208). David Rapaport bluntly said, “We do not possess a systematic statement of the psychoanalytic theory of affects” (1953, p. 177). This neglect or confusion of systematic studies is surprising given that the patients’ central complaints orbit around painful feelings. Psychoanalysis is anti-Enlightenment in that it takes affects, feelings, and emotions more seriously than other disciplines. However, at the same time, it is utterly pro-Enlightenment in that it seeks to find the systematic logic in, and causality of, affects. Affects are observed in terms of people’s descriptions of an experience, insofar as it is possible:

60  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS Strictly psychological theory can take two forms, either impersonal general theory of the dynamics and economics of mental processes and their organization, i.e. metapsychology, or [it] expresses itself in terms of experience, of “I” and other selves. It is “subjective” theory for which I borrowed the word “personology” from Smuts in 1945. (Brierley, 1969, p. 448)

In this section, I will follow Brierley and divide the survey between those two approaches, both the impersonal metapsychology (Section  3.1, Instinct theory), and then in terms of personal relations (Section 3.2, Affects and object relations psychoanalysis). Psychoanalysis is an approach less introspective than in the first section of the chapter (philosophy) and less objective than the second section (experimental psychology). It is an introspection of the “other”, the analysand. Whilst its focus is subjective, it claims to generate usable empirical data. So, psychoanalysis is both respected for its ambiguous position, and at the same time chided for being so “unscientific”. Perhaps, increasingly it has become necessary to find arguments for clinical data gained with a subjective method: I have argued that the case study, now held in disrepute, is nevertheless necessary to test psychoanalytic hypotheses and, if properly formulated, can indeed test, not merely generate, hypotheses. (Edelson, 1986, p. 89)

Section 3.1 Instinct theory Psychoanalysis emerged from the nineteenth-century context of scientific medicine and drew on the preoccupations with energy in physics at that time (Freud was influenced by Gustav Fechner’s Elements of Psychophysics, 1860). Physics, being the paradigm science, physiology followed physics, especially the physiology of the nervous system. No longer a theory of the humours, medicine and especially neurophysiology used theories of energy. Brucke (see Vervey, 1985) and Fechner (1860) had a

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huge influence on medicine and neurology and thus contributed to the beginnings of psychoanalysis. Freud, using the idea of a psychic energy, equated it with the instincts. Such energy was seen therefore to arise in the body and from physiological and perceptual stimulation, as instinctual energy. The discovery of the stimulus–response reflex arc in the mid-nineteenth century provided a good model for an imagined flow of energy from perceptual stimulus to instinctual response (Young, 1970). That picture of a flow was strengthened by the discovery of the axon of the nerve cells reaching between different parts of the nervous system. Such a conception of energy derived from the instincts was the crux of early psychoanalysis. It explained motivation as well as symptoms. Although physicists’ interest turned later to subatomic particles, and physiologists turned to cellular biochemistry, psychoanalysts maintained an industrious investigation of the energy model of the mind which survived for three-quarters of the twentieth century. With this model, a central issue in the psychology of affects is the relation between affects and instincts. From the originating case of Dora (Breuer & Freud, 1895d), affects were based on the idea of blockedup energy. [PaI 1] The result is a powerful and painful affect, experienced subjectively as anxiety. Then the undischarged energy is converted into symptoms and somatic problems. Its treatment was by a cathartic release of that energy by abreaction. Sometimes, little distinction is made between instincts and affects. For instance, in “Instincts and their Vicissitudes”, Freud wrote about the libido, or instinctual energy, and how it changed: “The change of the content of an instinct into its opposite is observed in a single instance only—the transformation of love into hate” (1915c, p. 133). So, in that paper avowedly devoted to instincts, Freud’s language changed into that of affects—love and hate. He found several reversals of these instinctual feelings: • Love versus hate; • “I love you” versus “You love me”—an active–passive change; • Loving and hating versus unconcern or indifference.

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Indeed, he equated instincts and affects: “[A] further instinctual vicissitude [is] the transformation into affects … of the psychical energies of instincts” (1915c, p. 153). Freud’s metapsychological work initially reduced psychic energy to a single type, libido. It was, typically, generated from zones of skin adjacent to the orifices (the erogenous zones). And to a large degree, Freud was only interested in one affect, the felt anxiety, which accumulates when this psychic energy, libido, is prevented from smooth and immediate discharge. The later conceptualisation of the flow of energy (libido) within the psychic apparatus (id, ego, and superego) kept his thinking solidly loyal to his “neurological” heritage of the mid-nineteenth century. Feelings were deconstructed into their biological origins: It was a revolutionary act, to the importance of which we psycho-analysts now hardly give a conscious thought, when in his Studien über Hysterie and in Traumdeutung Freud spoke of the affects as psychical energies and proceeded to explain m ­ ental life in terms of these forces. (Landauer, 1938, p. 407)

Affects in these terms were secondary phenomena arising from something else [PaI 2]—that is, they arise from the psychic energy of instinctual impulses or drives. There is a toxicological theory of anxiety: it is blocked-up energy which needs discharge and may otherwise manifest itself as symptoms. Bodily satisfaction arises in the discharge of accumulated sensations aroused in the erogenous zones (mouth, anus, genitals, etc.). However, Freud realised there is an alternative route for energy in which it may divert through cognitive systems to power the useful activity of thought. He formalised this as the reality principle (Freud, 1911b). That alternative discharge of instinctual energy drives more creative ego functions which become the sublimations of thought and behaviour in a reality-based life. In this classical psychoanalytic model, affects were overshadowed by the instincts, and the subjective strength of feelings was an illusion. They are the surface manifestations, the symptoms, of a deeper process; [PaI 3] only the spots on the skin which indicate the underlying infection. Their nature is fundamentally instinctual, and thus connecting

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affects with the bodily dimension and with the activity of a so‑called “primitive” part of the brain. In this early theory of Freud’s, the instinctual energy pushed towards a link with an idea, but when it fails a conscious emotional experience emerges: “[T]he quantitative aspect of an instinct [is] detached from the idea [and] finds expression, proportionate to its quantity, in processes which are sensed as affect” (Freud, 1915c, p. 151). Then, emotions become the experience of a problem, and the energy is released in a less useful product, feelings. Thus, the core experiences of pleasure and pain are derived from drive tension and drive reduction; [PaI 4] in other words, when the energy is held back, frustration/tension is experienced, or alternatively when it is released, pleasure. These polarities of pleasant or unpleasant derive from the discriminations of the pleasure principle. The whole complex is a process which became increasingly described in technical terms so arcane that they lose the reader. For instance, Rapaport summarised, at the high point of this model: The theory of affects, the bare outlines of which seem to emerge, integrates three components: inborn affect discharge-channels and discharge-thresholds of drive-cathexes; the use of these inborn channels as safety-valves and indicators of drive-tension, the modification of their thresholds by drives and derivative motivations prevented from drive-action, and the formation thereby of the drive-representation termed affect-charge; and the progressive “taming” and advancing ego-control, in the course of psychic structure-formation, of the affects which are thereby turned into affect-signals released by the ego. (1953, p. 197)

The abstract level of these inferred processes moved psychoanalysis from the analysis of symptoms (guided by Freud’s method of understanding dreams—Freud, 1900a), to character analysis around 1908, and the structure of the ego and its defences gradually came into prominence, eventually to be prioritised (Freud, 1921c, 1923b; A. Freud, 1936). And with this move to emphasise the ego rather than the instincts, the nature and function of anxiety evolved in Freud’s thinking.

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The original idea of anxiety was blocked-up instinctual energy to be discharged (Freud, 1915c). But later, however, came the idea of signal anxiety (Freud, 1926d). Signal anxiety was a different manifestation; it was not the direct build-up of energy to the point of becoming a danger. Instead, anxiety became a signal of danger, a warning function that reality presented a situation where energy levels could build up to a dangerous frustration. This owes a lot also to Freud’s development of the concept of a “reality principle” (1911b) with which the ego is centrally occupied. Danger situations are those in which the external world, as perceived by the subject/ego, threatens some sort of internal danger. That danger may be from a build-up within, such as hunger. Or it may be some object out there, presenting stimuli which promise a danger within; for instance, a sexual provocation may provoke a danger by stimulating uncontrolled desires. Freud referred to a limited list of affects: the first was anxiety, provoked by conflicts, [PaI 5] typically the oedipal phantasies of excited love and murderous hate. And second, he evolved a specific form of anxiety experienced as guilt—guilt about elicit love and murder (1916d, 1923b). However, there were also specific desires associated with the component instincts of the libido and its various phases of development [PaI 6]— such as the parsimony and orderliness of the anal character (Freud, 1905d, with subsequent editions up to 1925). These he fitted together into a pattern dictated by the development and maturation of the instincts. Thus, instinctual energy (and the derivative affect) has characteristics from each erogenous zone, from the level of maturity, and from the complex interaction of these components as the ego manages them. In addition, there are the more pleasurable affects aroused from discharge of these various forms of energy, following their build-up.

Pain and unpleasure—the time contour The discharge of instinctual energy from all these sources is complex. Unpleasure is Freud’s term for the lack of discharge and the build-up of energy as some form of anxiety. It is unsatisfied desire and is not the same as pain. [PaI 7] Pain is dealt with in different ways from unpleasure, though both may be joined or confused. Touching a scalding kettle (pain) is different

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from the unsatisfied desire for the voluptuous woman who lives next door. One you want to stop, immediately, and you reflexively snatch your hand away; the other you want to stop by satisfying the frustration. The two mental processes have different contours. Moreover, making love is not a simple drive reduction (dischargephenomenon). There are many preparatory steps, known as foreplay, which are aimed at enhancing desire and anticipation through the mounting state of frustration. There is a kind of pleasure in enhancing unpleasure: [PaI 8] [A]n experience of pleasure can give rise to a need for greater pleasure … The part played in this by the erotogenic zones, however, is clear. What is true of one of them is true of all. They are all used to provide a certain amount of pleasure by being stimulated in the way appropriate to them … This distinction between the one kind of pleasure due to the excitation of erotogenic zones and the other kind due to the discharge of the sexual substances deserves, I think, to be made more concrete by a difference in nomenclature. The former may be suitably described as “fore-pleasure” in contrast to the “end-pleasure”. (Freud 1905d, p. 210)

There is an unexpected distinction between the enjoyment of a pleasure and the pleasure of anticipating an enjoyment. This is not all. In addition, for humans, diverse distortions [PaI 9] occur, so that lovemaking does not always lead to full end-pleasure (orgasm), though masturbation at a later point may be an outcome. Possibly, this emphasis on fore-pleasure is common in both women and men. Although women can fail to achieve orgasm, men too can fail to be fully potent even though aroused and with high anticipation. Then there are the “paraphilias”, where arousal is gained from objects and activities not normally desired—such as high heels, wearing the clothing of the opposite gender, or (here we come around full circle) the masochistic suffering of pain. Full sexual orgasm may be achieved by an intense episode of beating, not even directly in contact with the genitals. These comments refer largely to the complexities of sexual desire in humans. Other desires—hunger, for instance—may have a contour

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more like pain. Though the anticipation of a meal when hungry may be a fore-pleasure in itself. So despite these variations, the contours we find are roughly of two types; [PaI 10] on the one hand, tension demands a precipitous fall (snatching the hand from the kettle), whilst on the other, tension feeds on itself with a steadily rising gradient of anticipation enhanced by suitable forms of added stimuli, or fore-pleasure. Freud acknowledged that the instincts (the various components of libido) are particularly plastic and inventive [PaI 11] in their variety. They can be moulded into many different forms. We must include the highly important process of desexualisation in which the energy turns to nonsexual objectives, or sublimations. As Freud indicated, many goals are non-sexual, and thus it appears that the erotic quality of the libido may be disconnected so that many non-orgasmic forms of emotional relations and satisfactions can derive from libido without directly leading to sexual climax. One deformation described in the analysis of Judge Schreber’s memoirs (Freud, 1911c) led Freud to suppose that love for objects in the world may be redirected back towards the self. Love becomes narcissistic and is directed back onto the ego [PaI 12] as if the ego were the object of its desires (Freud, 1914c). The attraction towards the ego, its functions, products and its survival, then takes the form of the ego-instincts. These are the self-preservative impulses. In this redirection, the libido loses its orgasmic quality of climactic feeling. It can extend to quite seriously intense narcissistic preoccupations and egocentricity. Freud had previously postulated a developmental theory which included a primary narcissistic phase in which the libido was originally directed towards the self; in this case, it is primarily erotic and may become fixed so that development is distorted. The primary narcissism survives as masturbation, although it merges very quickly into the phase of secondary narcissism, or, as mentioned, the possibility of desexualisation delivering ego-preservative impulses just described. Jung (and others), on the other hand, disagreed and argued for a non-erotic energy, not a desexualised version. Arguing against Freud, Jung considered psychic energy as a fundamentally different force in the personality, one that emerged in various forms with certain nonmaterial objects and aims that he called archetypes, going far beyond

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sexuality. Jung, without being openly religious, was a dualist, and accepted a separate non-material type of substance that emerged as the collective unconscious and the universal archetypes. Hierarchies—whole object love Abraham (1924) loyally followed Freud’s developmental theory. However, shortly before he died, in 1925, he described a complex of feelings that began to imply another set of conceptions that diverged from Freud’s. When a satisfaction comes from reducing a drive, the human being has collateral feelings alongside the satisfaction. [PaI 13] Not only is a bodily desire satisfied but other feelings of love are aroused as well. The person who satisfies the ego is loved in addition to the satisfaction that the person gives. When a person is loved for the satisfaction, Abraham called it “whole object” love. He was moving towards a view that gratitude and appreciation are brought out in response to the satisfaction and can also be enjoyed. Such a “secondary” pleasure runs parallel to the enjoyment of the primary satisfaction. Sexual satisfaction with a partner leads to a powerful warmth towards that partner, and maybe a very specific attachment to that partner, hand-in-hand with the relief of instinctual tension. Sometimes, of course, people are “in love with love” rather than with a partner. They may have multiple partners which is common when involved in this kind of quest for the satisfaction rather than for the partner. But more usually, sex does not presuppose one to fall in love with sex, but with the accommodating partner who has enabled the sexual satisfaction. In effect, this parallel appreciation might be thought of as a meta-relation—a feeling about a feeling. [PaI 14] That then involves ordering affects in a hierarchical way. Thus, objects are loved at two levels: first the satisfaction of desires, and second the feelings for the object responsible for the satisfaction. So, Abraham’s categories were (a) the feelings towards “part objects” that are the means of a mere satisfaction of an instinctual aim, and (b) the feelings towards “whole objects” that attract a different level of feeling—appreciation for the satisfier. This may have some affinity with the classical distinction between appetites and the higher virtues of the classical philosophers. Such a divergence from Freud, moving away

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from the exclusiveness of the bodily libido, may have been influenced by the fact that Abraham learned psychoanalysis in Zurich when he studied with Bleuler and Jung from 1904 to 1907. Abraham’s paper, in 1924, was seminal by virtue of the fact that it led Melanie Klein in this direction which she followed and developed all her career after Abraham’s death. She developed Abraham’s distinction between part objects and whole objects. Guilt too seems to be one of these hierarchical feelings about a feeling. It is an emotion about some aggressive or shameful feeling (whether the aggression leads to behaviour or not). Freud had puzzled over guilt in a number of papers during and after the First World War (for instance 1916–17, 1917). He eventually (1923b) postulated an internal agency—the superego—that assesses the quality of affects, as well as acts in a morally judgemental way. Guilt is an affect that appears to arise from condemning certain other affects. [PaI 15] It therefore has an opposite tone to appreciation and gratitude and is a manifestation of hate rather than love, in this instance self-hatred, embodied in the notion of the superego. Again, there is a resonance with the classical idea of virtue being cultivated against those basic passions and desires.

Sorting out a theory of affects Freud’s medical training was in mid- to late nineteenth-century Vienna. The city had been one of the places at that time in the forefront of turning medicine from a craft into a science. Interest in symptoms and their relief (which is the patient’s interest) declined among doctors, who became more interested in the causes of symptoms. This redirection of interest was greatly enhanced by the discovery of microorganisms as the cause of infections. And so, Freud heard about his patients’ sufferings, their symptoms which were mostly the painful emotions (though often expressed at that time as physical symptoms) but he was, as were his medical colleagues, more intent on the causal factors underlying those symptoms complained of. He located the causes in the unconscious. Indeed, he was party to inventing the unconscious as the cause of neurosis (Breuer & Freud, 1895d). This invention of the dynamic unconscious (Ellenburger, 1970) has in effect been a “discovery” of causality in human nature. But such a

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scientific determinism left Freud’s approach to affects and their subjectivity somewhat vague. The passing of more than a century since his early explorations does not mean the discovery of the unconscious is fully understood, and affects constantly stand out as one problem. By 1930 or so, there was no clear consensus on how affects fitted the theories of psychoanalysis because, based on the theory of instincts, affects were merely some manifestation of the more important causative factor, psychic energy. A number of attempts were made in the next decades to settle on the main principles to apply, but on the whole, they entailed more and more abstraction and manipulation of the abstract metaphor, leading to an inevitable reaction against a mechanical instinct theory, as some saw it—see, for instance, Erich Fromm’s (1970) plea for psychoanalysis to move away from an approach based on deterministic psychophysics. Ernest Jones (1929) began a discussion on the vicissitudes of affects, which turned out to be somewhat akin to Freud’s notion of the reversal of instincts. Jones selected certain affects which could replace each other. [PaI 16] Not actually reversals but substitutions. In the cases he was interested in, Jones considered there was a series of three substitutions in sequence. Jones selected fear, hate, and guilt, and showed how they appear to permutate in various alternative orders of three. It is not clear why he chose those three, apart, he says, from the fact that those permutations are clinically apparent. Taking these three—hate, guilt, and fear—as basic, he described a number of relations that go from deep to surface (Table 4.1). For instance, he claimed that psychoanalytic experience shows that where fear is, there is also guilt. He argued that animals feel fear, but hardly guilt, so that, from biological observations it is not likely that dynamically guilt is the provocation of fear. Therefore, it must be that guilt substitutes for fear and then that guilt is hidden by further fear. Table 4.1  Jones’s substitutions Layer 1 (superficial)

Fear

Hate

Hate

Layer 2

Guilt

Guilt

Fear

Layer 3

Fear

Hate

Hate

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Then he wrote about a second triad: “[Hate] is one of the commonest covers for guilt” (p. 304). But, paradoxically, guilt also comes from hate. Thus, hate rescues the subject from guilt, although it is more likely that hate is the original provocation of guilt in the first place. In all, he described three separate kinds of layering (as shown in Table 4.1). He called this the “isopathic principle”, a term from homeopathy, because the final solution (Layer 1) is a dose of the original cause. However, that final superficial affect is not quite the same as the deepest one, the superficial being ego-syntonic; that is, it is a more acceptable feeling for the subject. So, in the second triad (in Table 4.1), for example, there is, at the superficial layer, a righteous indignation (an ego-syntonic form of hate), while the primary hate (at the deepest level) is, by contrast, ego-dystonic, [PaI 17] something more destructive, dangerous, and less righteous, which provokes the guilt. He then picked up an idea he had previously described, “aphanisis” (Jones, 1927), and further elaborated a sequence in addition to the three just described. He started with the privation of the Oedipus complex; that privation provokes hatred. Then the hatred provokes a further response, fear. That fear, in an extreme form, leads to the repudiation of the frustrated desire, and in fact, he said, the repudiation of all libido. It is not just the repudiation of the ego-dystonic impulses, but of the ego-syntonic ones as well, in fact, all emotions. Because the latter, the ego-syntonic libido, is most superficial and is sublimated in diverse forms of interests, it goes beyond sexual feelings; therefore, the fear will lead to a loss of all these forms of energy—even, as Jones says, the loss of the personality itself. Jones called this the fear of aphanisis, the loss of all energy for any interests the person may have had. Jones went so far as to say that this loss of all lively emotion, aphanisis, is the greatest and primal fear of the infant. Jones adds in a brief explanation that the surface levels reached in the three sequences distort (or even provoke) the external object to become a punitive figure. This is in part an explanation of the puzzle that the superego experienced by the child is far more punitive than the actual parents. That problem of the excessive harshness of the superego had perplexed Freud (1916d, 1916–17), and Jones speculated that it arises

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from the fear of losing all energy in response to the looming threat of the Oedipus complex. This complicated treatise on the interrelatedness of affects shows them to be intimately connected with each other. Alexander (1935) attempted a more standard explanation of affects, and he emphasised their directional quality—towards both an object and an aim. He called that a “vector”, which, like instincts, was associated with the phases of the libido. So, they were connected particularly with the processes of incorporation, elimination, and retention, deriving, during development, from the various activities of the erogenous zones. Anna Freud, in her classical exposition of ego defences, wrote: The ego is in conflict not only with those id derivatives which try to make their way into its territory in order to gain access to consciousness and to obtain gratification. It defends itself no less energetically and actively against the affects [PaI 18] associated with these instinctual impulses. (1936, p. 32)

So, in her exposition of defences, she clearly conflated the kinds of defences—those against instinctual energy and those against affects. A defence is a more mechanistic conceptualisation when it is a defence against an instinct and involves quasi-quantitative measurements of energy. But it therefore lends a similar mechanical quality to defences against affects. This kind of description from the more objective energy explanation has raised doubts over what kind of explanation of affects we need; would it be an explanation in terms of subjective experience, or an objective energy explanation? This uncertainty perhaps has given rise to some of the difficulties in understanding what affects are, how they can be classified, and their relations with instincts. Marjorie Brierley (1937) reviewed the current position of the theory of affects at that time. Like so many others, she noted that there was no comprehensive theory. She tried however to make a survey of what partial theories existed. In contrast to Anna Freud, her position was more towards the experiential than the instinctual emphasis.

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She noted that: “Indeed patients themselves leave us in no doubt here. With few exceptions they one and all complain of some disorder of feeling” (Brierley 1937, p. 257). In trying to return to their experiential quality, she called the affects “living energy” (p. 266). Indeed, going back to the case of Anna O. (Breuer & Freud, 1895d), it was a focus on the intense experience of the patient’s feelings under hypnosis that constituted the treatment. That idea of the unknown feelings was in fact the very beginning in the 1880s of understanding the hidden unconscious, and the possibility of unconscious “experience”. Eighty years after Brierley, we are still advised of a “return to feelings” by Quinodoz (2018), an injunction which suggests that this necessary interest in affects remains elusive. According to Brierley, affects are connected with instincts, but they are ego-experiences. And so, she disagreed with affects as the experience of tension-discharge: “[I oppose] the idea that affect is itself a discharge and support the view that it is a tension-phenomenon impelling to discharge either in the outer or inner world” (1937, p. 259). Affects are then seen by Brierley as the experience of tension itself. [PaI 19] That is, when an instinctual demand arises, the tension is felt as an affect, until it is satisfied. As an “ego-experience”, affects are central to personology—the study of a person’s experiences in their living and historical context rather than the play of abstract, “mechanistic” forces (Brierley, 1943, 1951). Nevertheless, they are connected with bodily sensations and with the representatives of instincts, images, and ideas. She noted that infants express and communicate emotion before they have words. So, “[Affects] are, genetically, pre-verbal” (Brierley, 1937, p. 265). They arise first but can subsequently attach to ideas—so that the ideas are “rendered dynamic by their emotional charges” (p. 256). And when the emotional charge is added to an idea, it is comparable in some general way with the cathexis of objects—that is, the object becomes the energised focus of an affect. Affects have that characteristic of giving intensity to an idea. In the course of development, affects come to be in complex combinations, [PaI 20] and Brierley attributed that to the developmental process as the ego becomes integrated, from a state of initial unintegration. She drew on the views of Glover:

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I am myself convinced that Glover is right in considering “that the earliest ego tendencies are derived from numerous scattered instincts and converge gradually until, about the age of two, a coherent anal sadistic organization is established” (Glover, 1932, p. 8) and that, in the beginning, there are as many ego-nuclei as there are more or less definitive reaction systems. (Brierley 1937, p. 261)

She quoted Glover and referenced his 1932 paper, although this is an incorrect reference. It is likely that she and Glover were in private discussion of their views (indeed, Glover had previously been Brierley’s psychoanalyst). For Glover, the ego forms in separate “ego-nuclei” around centres of experience associated with the various perceptual organs, and the erogenous zones. An affect develops which is characteristic of each of these unintegrated ego-nuclei, and they eventually fuse with the affects of other ego-nuclei as the nuclei integrate into the mature ego. Integration therefore gives rise to complex emotional experiences: The child who urinates happily after sucking to its heart’s content will establish a very different kind of linkage between its oral and urethral systems to the one perpetually wetting itself in angry privation. In general, these nuclei will tend to integrate and those feelings to blend which are similar. (Brierley, 1937, p. 263)

Therefore, Brierley concluded that as the nuclei of the ego integrate through age and maturity, affects come together in combinations defined by experience. This is a matter of speculation and, though relatively restrained, she asked herself which primary affects might be attached to those initial unintegrated ego-nuclei. She lists fear, the specific appetitive longings associated with each bodily function, various anxieties, and frustrations. She also acknowledged a layering of affects in relation to each other, as Jones had described with fear, guilt, and hate. Her emphasis on affects led to the need for the analyst to identify the subtleties and nuances of the reported feelings:

74  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS [W]e find our way only by following the Ariadne thread of transference affect and go astray if we lose contact with this. It is time that we restored affects to a place in theory more consonant with their importance in practice. (Brierley, 1937, p. 266)

In pointing to the analyst’s emotional sensitivity, [PaI 21] she was one of the forerunners of the eventual move to reconsider countertransference feelings, a move that was realised a decade or more later (Heimann, 1950). The recognition of a patient’s affects is not an intellectual exercise, it is grasped through the emotions in the room arising in the transference. The transference “is always and throughout an affective relation” (Brierley, 1937, p. 266). Much later, Bion echoed Brierley in his own way by saying, “The emotions fulfil for the psyche a function similar to that of the senses in relation to objects in space and time” (1962, p. 310). In other words, the emotions, including those that form the transference, function as the sense receptor for internal, subjectively felt events. [PaI 22] They point to important experiences to be dealt with. This in turn is a variant of Freud’s view of consciousness as “a sense-organ for the perception of psychical qualities” (1900a, p. 615). Implicitly, here, self-consciousness perceives the self in the form of the emotions. Edward Glover (1939) contributed his state-of-play paper at this time. He attempted to lay the ground for the systematic study of affects. He took it as accepted that affects had several constituent features: they (a) are subjectively experienced, (b) have bodily components, but also (c) ideational content, and (d) are experienced in the form of unconscious phantasies expressive of what might be happening to the subject. At this point, he was dismayed by the many classifications of the affects. In fact, he identified as many as eight kinds of characteristics he had found were used for classification: They can be described in crude qualitative terms, e.g. of subjective pleasure or “pain”, or labelled descriptively according to the predominant ideational system associated with them in consciousness. They can be classified by reference to the instinct or component instinct from which they are derived, or they can be considered as either “fixed” or “labile”. They can be divided

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into primary affects and secondary affects, more precisely into “positive” and “reactive” affects, or they can be considered as tension and discharge phenomena. Finally, they can be grouped as simple or compound (“mixed” and/or “fused”) affects. (Glover, 1939, p. 300)

His extensive survey of the difficulties in developing a coherent system of affects traced the problem to an insufficiency in our knowledge of the real emotional experiences of early infancy. The very earliest stages are out of reach of clinical, and indeed out of reach of any other form of, investigation. They can only therefore be inferred. Nevertheless, despite the insufficiency of knowledge, which he felt was inevitable, Glover did speculate on the most basic, or “primitive”, affects, each associated with an ego-nucleus (also called an ego-system), [PaI 23] arising around the various modalities of perception– sight, hearing, touch, etc.—and other bodily functions; and they each develop their own sets of simple emotions. He then discussed the way these nuclei integrate as a whole ego, and so the basic emotions come to be aggregated: “The concept of fusion of affects has to be distinguished from that of ‘mixed’ affect or again from simultaneous experience of affects of different origin” (Glover, 1939, pp. 300–301). These earliest clusters of yet-to-be-integrated ego-nuclei include the very earliest affective experiences of instinctual tensions, as indicated previously with Brierley’s comments. He was attempting to stir a new interest in affects and drew on the work of colleagues—Jones (1929), Brierley (1937), and Schmideberg (1935). In particular, Glover’s account of affects is fully permeated by the language of unconscious phantasies. However, following Freud, he attributed affects not only to the stress of undischarged instinctual desires, but also to the experience of discharged ones as well. And he asserted: “[T]he most useful classification of affects seems to be that into tension affects and discharge affects. Freud himself indicated the importance of this” (Glover, 1939, p. 302). Glover identified one particular affect as important early in life— he called it “disruption”, or “bursting”, deriving it from Schmideberg (1935). The implication was that the experience is of a rising sense of tension which will result in an explosion [PaI 24] that disrupts the person in a terrifyingly total way. Perhaps it would be the disintegration of the

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various nuclei. He compares the experience of bursting with the state of dread that Jones described and called “aphanisis”. That is, the total loss of sexual excitation, gratification, and of energy altogether, though Glover regarded disruption as slightly less primitive. Glover found another problem—a reductionist view of affects: “Yet another factor in the comparative neglect of affects is the tendency to be too exclusively interested in ideational derivatives of instinct” (1939, p. 299). This is a different kind of reductionism from the one that reduces affects more or less to the equivalent of biological instincts. Derivation from ideas could seem to anticipate the familiar view today that affects are derived from cognition and the intellect. But his intention at that time was to begin to criticise the concept of unconscious phantasy as reductionist. The paper of Isaacs (1948) on the topic of unconscious phantasy was read in 1943 during the Controversial Discussions, but Glover was already marshalling his arguments against Susan Isaacs and her Kleinian colleagues. He discussed the view of unconscious phantasy [PaI 25] as associated with instinct: [It is too exclusive] to consider such unconscious phantasies solely in terms of the specific instinct from which they are felt to be derived. By so doing the observer is liable to gloss over the fact that the driving power of instincts cannot be properly appreciated without some measure of the affects they engender. (Glover, 1939, p. 299)

In evidence, he described how affects seem to combine together in a process in which they fuse through ego-integration. He and Jones (1929) had described how a fusion of affects can create a new affect, so that it is difficult to discern the original components. He exemplified this with sadism or masochism which conceals love and violence. Another instance, he said, was jealousy: “[T]he significance of jealousy depends on the fact that it is an extremely disturbing affect reducible on analysis to simpler elements of grief, anger and fear” (Glover, 1939, p. 302). This process of bringing affects together based on the ego-nuclei that he and Brierley had described, resulted, Glover claimed, in an array of possible combinations forming an “affective matrix” (p. 302). Affects

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are then interwoven through, as it were, a web of dimensions, rather in the manner of Jones’s paper on fear, guilt, and hate (see above). Glover’s classification would entail an investigation of how these simple affects combine, in fusion (e.g. sadism or masochism) or in an ambivalence, so that mixed affects develop—for example, a love–hate relationship, or when compulsive sexuality occurs to distract from anxiety. In addition, he noted a pair of qualities: (a) orgasmic forms of tension building, where tension is either painful (frustration) or a pleasurable anticipation of discharge, and (b) mood/tone affects (gratitude, grievance), [PaI 26] involving more enduring pleasure or pain states. These bipolar categories may map onto the pattern of affects as derivatives of instincts (instinct-stress, as Glover called it), or they may be experienced within object relations of various hues. From this, there is a thoroughly worked out theory of affects to which almost no attention is now paid. It suffers from Glover’s reliance on understanding the very earliest state of the ego which he himself says is unknown empirically or clinically. Glover took less note of the impact on affect theory of the development of Freud’s (1923b) structural model. That development had diverted attention to the ego as opposed to the id. In this object relations tradition, Isaacs enunciated the Kleinian theory of unconscious phantasy by saying instincts are mentally represented as phantasy: Phantasy is (in the first instance) the mental corollary, the psychic representative, of instinct. There is no impulse, no instinctual urge or response which is not experienced as unconscious phantasy. (1948, p. 81)

Thus, the experiential components of instincts are, in this view, the narratives, in phantasy, of relations with objects. As Isaacs put it: “Unconscious phantasies are primarily about bodies, and represent instinctual aims towards objects” (1948, p. 96). Thus, affects are from the beginning mental phenomena involving intimate feelings in relation to others. They then have a content of their own—in terms of unconscious object relations, first at a physical, bodily level. In principle, unconscious

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phantasies express a narrative about both a felt wish for some satisfaction with another person, and also the attempt to manage the wish when it is difficult or forbidden. The British analysts just surveyed were perhaps less influenced by Europe’s political instability than Rapaport and others from Vienna. From the mid- to late 1930s, Britain was the most stable of the major psychoanalytical societies, especially after the Austrian Anschluss in 1938. And British psychoanalysis maintained its trajectory towards an experience-oriented object relations approach rather than the classical emphasis on more theoretical instinct theory and the psychology of the ego. They formed a kind of theoretical bridge that accommodated instinct theory, in which instincts have aims towards objects, as Freud has described (Freud, 1915c), and object relations, as British psychoanalysts developed it (see later), which placed affects, especially anxiety, in a much more prominent position than instincts. The Viennese tradition did survive the European political turmoil and, transported to the US, it began to reorganise itself as ego psychology and drive theory.

Ego psychology Otto Fenichel (1941) was at the centre of the regrouping Viennese ego psychology tradition as it arrived in the United States. He made a further attempt to systematise the understanding of affects, giving clear descriptive accounts of the phenomena to be observed in an ego managing its affects, both well and not so well. He attributed the problems of affect, notably those hysterical patients who have emotional outbursts, to a weakness of the ego and its inability to foresee the threat of overwhelming emotions. [PaI 27] That kind of ego lacked the necessary defences, or normal counter-cathexes, for dealing with them. Fenichel concluded that the complexities and conflicts between affects are introduced by the structural model, and the relations between id, ego, and superego. He reviewed Glover’s 1939 paper and concluded with the unimpressed statement: “In the sphere of affects much research has still to be done” (Fenichel, 1942, p. 128). Those developments in ego psychology still maintained that at the centre of the theory of affects are the instinctual forces, but now the  focus was on the ego’s handling of them. Turning the spotlight

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from the instincts to the ego had begun with Anna Freud (1936). David Rapaport (1953) eventually reviewed the ego-psychology theorising of affects. He tended to dismiss Glover’s attempts just detailed, on the reasonable grounds that Glover failed to address Freud’s later structural model and its potential contribution to a theory of affects. Rapaport, as did all others, acknowledged the confused status of affect theory, and gave two reasons why it was so: The first is that we have to deal with formulations originating from all three phases of the development of psychoanalysis: the beginning phase in which the theory of catharsis and the theory of psychoanalysis were not as yet sharply separated; the middle phase in which the id was the centre of interest; and the recent phase in which interest is increasingly concerned with the ego. The treatment of the formulations of three such disparate origins is the more difficult partly because each of them persists into the later phases, and partly because most of the later formulations are to some extent anticipated in the earlier phases. The second difficulty is that the fragments to be put together are only too familiar, and culling them will thus appear to many just as superfluous as their systematization will seem unpalatable and unacceptable officiousness to others. (Rapaport, 1953, p. 177)

Rapaport goes into great detail with the theories of each phase. In the first phase, prior to 1900, Freud was concerned with the psychic energy and its misdirected flow into symptoms. This quasi-physics came, we know, from Freud’s days as a student and young doctor, and his interest in Anna O.’s traumatic experience of her father dying. Such unconscious blocking of affects led to her hysterical symptoms, speech defects, paralysis, etc., although Rapaport did not illustrate his points with such references to particular clinical cases. Thus, in this first phase, affects were connected with instinctual energy that was hampered in its discharge—these were tension effects. In the second phase, from 1900, Freud was interested in psychic energy as a general principle of human motivation. It produces ordinary and non-pathological manifestations such as dreams, as well as

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the impulse to action, speech, and the ordinary life activities. Affects were then seen especially in relation to the discharge of energy; that is, discharge phenomena. These phenomena, thought, action, speech, etc., appear as a kind of safety valve for frustrated instinctual energy and consequently substituted for the emotions of satisfaction. This second phase, characterised by id-analysis, persisted for nearly a quarter of a century, and was highly influenced by the realisation of the effects of the reality principle (Freud, 1911b). Instead of the energy being discharged simply for the pleasures of satisfaction and the associated affects, the developing respect for reality required that energy be used to make changes in the real world for the benefit of the subject and ego-development. So, affects were derived from both the successes and frustrations that reality provided. In this conceptualisation, a quantitative factor can be seen in which portions of instinctual drives are discharged or controlled to maintain a threshold level of energy. Those factors determine the discharge or frustration of instincts, in addition, of course, to an external satisfying object that will co-operate. Part of the energy (cathexis) may remain as an unconscious “affect”, even though in terms of the discharge theory it is only potential or latent. The existence of frustration in this phase is due to the lack of a satisfactory external object, that is, the lack of the external conditions for satisfaction. And it clearly contrasts with the situation when there is an internal prohibition, as in the third of Rapaport’s phases. This third phase began after Freud’s introduction of the structural model in 1923. An internal structure develops within the personality. There are multiple forms of conflict between the various agencies of the mind—id, ego, and superego—as well as conflicts with external reality. This has introduced complex and conflicted conditions for the discharge of energy. Complexity was recognised by Rapaport when he separated “affect discharge” from the discharge of instinctual drives. [PaI 28] These both have their separate thresholds apparently—of an inborn nature—against frustration, and they do not necessarily coincide. This third phase involved the reality principle being adopted as an internal controlling agent as well as the external conditions. That internal agency, the superego, forms as the introjection of inhibiting aspects of external reality, becoming a permanent structure. Aspects of the ego

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were then recognised that contributed to managing this network of conflicts—the development of thought (secondary process, in Freud’s terms), the “use” of anxiety as a signal for evaluating reality, and the “binding” of energy so that it is not immediately discharged. One interesting change is that “[I]t is not repression which gives rise to anxiety (affect), but rather anxiety which is a motive of repression” (Rapaport, 1953, p. 186). The most significant feature of this phase is that the ego achieves a control over its affects, [PaI 29] as it does over the instinctual drives. And it does so for a purpose. Affects are bound into systems of ideas and thoughts, in order to achieve a mastery of reality insofar as is possible. In this phase, guilt comes to the fore, as anxiety retreats into the role of a warning signal. With this development, affects exist in some form of layering, as Jones indicated. And the complex understanding of the defences against affects (their substitution for one another) has become quite confused, in contrast to the more abstract and clear concept of the defences against instincts. It is central to Rapaport’s thesis that the relations of affects to instincts have been different in these three phases, as one or other issue has become the dominant set of problems a personality must face. To summarise: in the first phase, affects were equated with drive cathexes; in the second theory, they appeared as drive-representations, serving as safety valves for drive cathexes when the discharge was prevented; and “In the third theory, they appear as ego-functions, and as such they are no longer safety-valves but used as signals by the ego” (Rapaport, 1953, p. 187). Rapaport (1953) was aware of literature outside the psychoanalytic— in philosophy, Spinoza (1677) and Dewey (1894, 1895) who drew from William James; he was also aware of psychologists of his time, Drever (1917) and MacCurdy (1925), citing their work on the conflict theory of affects. His abstract model of drives focused on the impulsive expression of emotions as the discharge from greater build-up, or from blocked expression. Such impulses imply affects are dynamically similar to neurotic symptoms—that is, without consent of the ego—and thus in line with the ancients’ notion of the passions. He described defences against affects as comparable to defences against instincts. [PaI 30] Affects demanding immediate satisfaction

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are ego-alien, at first traumatic, but later used healthily by the ego, or dealt with by counter-cathexes to block them. As a result, he was interested in the way the ego allowed expression/discharge of affects—(a) immature outbursts, (b) mature signal anxiety “used” by the ego, and a third (c) outbreaks of overwhelming emotion due to limited ego resources. Differentiation of these three phenomena comes from applying, as Rapaport advised, an understanding of the ego and its defensiveness. The immature ego leads to the first of these, the immature outbursts. The mature ego that has developed a strength and can deploy its defences appropriately leads to the second, mature signal anxiety; and the third is the ego that has not sufficient defences when faced with unusual emotional pressures but cracks to allow outbreaks of discharging emotions when those defences are overwhelmed. At the time of Rapaport’s account, the affects held only a secondary role. They were secondary in two senses: (a) they were derivatives of the instincts and represented psychic energy linked to ideas, and (b) they arose in relation to the functioning of the ego and its prevailing relations with the superego. Despite Rapaport’s compendious survey, he raised many questions and inconsistencies, far more than he could solve. In fact, he concluded that “[A] definitive formulation of an upto-date psycho-analytic theory of affects [is] certainly ill-advised, if not impossible” (1953, p. 193). In short, Rapaport’s position saw affects as the outcome of the conflicts between the agencies within a personality’s structure. Conflicts, however, are not inherently affective, but structural, and they are the fate of the drives within that structure. Affects, therefore, arise on the coat-tails of the instincts within a structure. As epiphenomena, [PaI 31] they are in consequence considerably less interesting in this classical ego psychology development of Freud’s psychoanalysis. Twenty years later, Charles Brenner (1974) made yet another attempt at a comprehensive theory of affects. This, however, ignored Rapaport’s sensible review of the confusion that resulted from the theories grounded in the three different historical phases of psychoanalysis itself. Or perhaps he did not ignore it but decided simply to concentrate on the most recent, the third and structural model of psychoanalysis. However, this was unfortunate as that psychoanalytic model was due to begin its slow decline over the next decade or two.

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Brenner described how the ego psychology development added to Freud’s classical view: [Ego psychology consists of] the purely economic considerations in affect theory, which have to do with instinctual discharge (gratification), by stressing the importance of the role of ego development [PaI 32] with regard to both the nature and the development of affects. (1974, p. 533)

He recast affects rather radically by emphasising their association with cognition as much as the biological: Psychologically an affect is a sensation of pleasure, unpleasure, or both, plus the ideas associated with that sensation. Ideas and sensation together, both conscious and unconscious, constitute an affect. (p. 535)

He took the sensations of pleasure and unpleasure as innate, but then regarded the ideas as added [PaI 33] from individual experience; and evolving in the course of ego development. Affects as experienced by each individual will have different qualities according to the various perceptions, memories, ideas, and so on which have filled that person’s particular life. Affects, therefore, have few general properties in themselves apart from the broad pleasure/unpleasure dimension. Brenner’s interest in the differentiation of the affects as a consequence of ego development has some correlation with Glover (followed by Brierley) who emphasised the bodily integration as instrumental in bringing together the otherwise isolated nuclei; they form increasingly complex affects on the basis of the development of each nucleus according to its experience. Brenner also placed affects within the context of the development of the ego’s advancing capacity for ideation. His system, however, has a strong emphasis on the cognitive, and the development of cognition. Today, with a decline in the interest in the ego’s mechanisms for dealing with instinctual energy, that previous more cognitive approach is in process of becoming a shadow behind other psychoanalytic approaches, notably self-psychology, intersubjectivity, and relational psychoanalysis.

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All these adopt a more experiential focus, so that affects emerge from the encounters with, or lack of encounter with, other human subjects. [PaI 34] Freud had said about the instincts, we have “terms which are used in reference to the concept of an instinct—for example, its ‘pressure’, its ‘aim’, its ‘objects’ and its ‘source’” (1915c, p. 122). It might appear therefore that there is a phase that comes after Rapaport’s third one, that is, a fourth that focuses on objects. This possible additional phase would emphasise those particular objects which provide the satisfactions and frustrations. Such an object is not a passive “thing” available for use. It is another ego, another person who possesses a fully acting and reacting range of experiences and behaviours, and seems like a rediscovery of aspects of Abraham’s theory of whole object love. Edith Jacobson (1954) focused on the instinctual cathexis of the self within the world of objects/others. She intended to set the scene for understanding the development of narcissistic disorders as the psychoses were then called, and she was therefore interested in the affects of those who eschew real relations with others. It seemed to be inevitable that she emphasised their somatic experience or motor activity, the inner sensations, as well as, or more than, the outer reality. She based her conception of affects on the instinctual cathexis of inner and outer objects, and she made an important addition in describing the narcissistic and object-related aspects of affects: Being self-expression as well as response to outside stimuli, affects and feelings appear to be predominantly induced by and composed of both; of centripetal and centrifugal processes, [PaI 35] of self-directed discharge on the inside [narcissistic] and of objectdirected discharge toward the outside. (Jacobson, 1954, p. 95)

The object world is thus some balance (or imbalance) between, on the one hand, the subject’s perception of an object, perceived on the basis of the ego’s juggling the other agencies of mind, and on the other, the experiencing of external objects. Jacobson saw affects in this two-way mode, lying snugly in the in-between, and drawing on the receptors of both bodily sensation and of external perception, both inward and outward. This bivalent model of instinctual energy rings true despite the distancing abstraction of the terminology used.

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Death instinct It is necessary to look briefly at the major revision of Freud’s instinct theory and its impact on the theory of affects, if any. Freud had recast his instinct theory in 1920 and decided that it did have some impact on the view of affects as derivatives of instinctual energy. He viewed the death instinct “which, under the influence of the narcissistic libido, has been forced away from the ego” (1920g, p. 54), and he elaborated this explicitly later: The train of thought would be something like this: It would be in the nature of Eros to turn outwards, as it seeks union with something else. Such a tendency would not be in the nature of Todestrieb, since it would only be intent on destroying its own living mass. It is therefore assumed that the direction outwards originates from Eros. The Todestrieb which is also taken along outwards would thus become Destruktionstrieb. Result: through this change the living organism protects itself against self-destruction. (Freud’s Letter 634, to Ernest Jones, 15th March 1935, in Paskauskas, 1993, p. 141)

Careful reading of this passage implies Eros is not just quantitative energy but has a quality—an intentional quality—towards life. And the different quality of the death instinct, however, meant it was never easily absorbed into the economic model. It may even suggest we should consider separate economies for the two instincts, two forms of energy which would therefore be distinct qualitatively, and independently variable quantitatively. So, the insertion of the death instinct into psychoanalytic theory has been patchy and incomplete. Perhaps it is most evident in a rather superficial understanding of affects as having opposite values, good versus bad, love versus hate. Otherwise, the specific impact of the new theory on the understanding of affects has been hard to address and was in any case dubious for many. The issue of tension- and discharge-phenomena in relation to the death instinct, comparable to the model applied to the life instinct, has not been addressed. Freud himself hesitantly mused about the death instinct as simply the discharge of psychic energy itself. In that sense, it forms a part of energy physics and compares with entropy of the organism (Freud, 1920g).

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The question that has been left is: where do the feelings of aggression and destructiveness come from? It is interesting that Abraham, one of Freud’s most trusted colleagues, never mentioned the death instinct in any publication in the five years before he died, in 1925. Instead, Abraham concentrated more on the experiential aspects, love and hate, which turns straight away to the affects and their conflict. However, Abraham kept the libidinal phases in view by studying the phases of sadism. He thus used libido terminology as the basis for the model of affects. Those experience-near descriptions appear to have been his response to Freud’s new theory of life and death instincts. As Heimann remarked about Abraham’s 1924 text: [A]lthough his book appeared four years after Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Abraham does not refer to the death instinct. It seems to me possible to conclude that Abraham did not accept or perhaps had not yet accepted the theory of the death instinct, and this to my mind would explain why he maintained the idea that the first oral stage, the sucking stage, is free from destructive impulses, “pre-ambivalent”, although in other connections he described the vampire type, i.e. the tendency to kill the object by sucking it to death. (Heimann, 1952, p. 89)

This explicitly marks Abraham’s tendency to move away from instinct theory, and to place the emphasis more on experiential affects. In summary In this classical tradition, affects seem to have specific features, picked out as in previous sections from the text: PaI 1.

Blocked-up energy resulting in painful affect

PaI 2.

Secondary phenomena arising from something else (instincts)

PaI 3.

Surface manifestations of a deeper process

Affects result from the tension of undischarged instincts

Instincts are the primary phenomenon and affects are derivatives Affects are the conscious result of an unconscious neurological process

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PaI 4.

PaI 5. PaI 6. PaI 7. PaI 8. PaI 9.

Pleasure and pain are derived from drive reduction and drive tension The polarity of painful and pleasurable feelings comes from the discharge or frustration of instinctual impulses/drives

Anxiety provoked by conflicts

An anxious feeling results from a conflict that prevents instinctual discharge

Characterised by various phases of libido development

The character of an emotion derives from an origin in a particular phase of development such as oral, anal, or genital

Unpleasure as unsatisfied desire versus pain

Frustrated instinctual desire or need differs from an active painful sensation

Pleasure in enhancing unpleasure

The pleasure of anticipation (fore-pleasure) can be enhanced before the instinctual satisfaction

Diverse distortions

Satisfaction of drives can be distorted by displacing from one aim or object to another aim or object

PaI 10. Pain vs unpleasure, two types

Painful sensations and frustration of satisfactory sensations are different

PaI 11. Plastic and inventive

Instinctual needs and the ensuing affects can be flexibly changed in imaginative ways, including sublimations

PaI 12. Narcissistic feelings about the ego

Instinctual satisfactions can be turned into self-satisfying aims, including masturbation, but also desexualised as selfpreservative instincts

PaI 13. Collateral feelings alongside satisfaction (whole object love)

Instinctual satisfaction can be accompanied by feelings for the object of satisfaction

PaI 14. Feelings about one’s feelings

Feelings can be developed about one’s own feelings, including superego guilt

PaI 15. Guilt condemning some feelings

Guilt is a second-order feeling about a feeling

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PaI 16. Feelings replace each other Feelings can be reversed, such as love for hate, or substituted, such as hate for fear

PaI 17. Ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic

Emotions may be felt as compatible with oneself, or as alien to oneself

PaI 18. Defences active against the affects

Defences may operate against affects in the same way as they operate against instinctual energy, though such defences are not necessarily the same ones

PaI 19. Tension or discharge

Affects arise from either the discharge of instinctual energy or from the prevention of discharge with an increasing tension of instinctual energy

PaI 20. Complex combinations

As developmental integration occurs, instinctual satisfactions (and frustrations) become combined to produce new complex or fused affects

PaI 21. Analyst’s emotional sensitivity

Emotions may be a valuable tool for understanding others’ experiences and feelings

PaI 22. Internal sense receptor for subjective events

Affects arise as internal perception of events in the body and mind

PaI 23. Feelings associated with an ego-nucleus

The ego develops from nuclei associated with each organ of perception and each nucleus has its own characteristic feeling states

PaI 24. Tension which will result in an explosion, bursting

The build-up of instinctual energy creates a tension which can result in the experience of the ego “bursting”

PaI 25. Unconscious phantasy associated with instincts

Biological instincts are experienced in the mind as phantasies, usually unconscious, in relation to others

PaI 26. Orgasmic time contour versus mood/tone (gratitude, grievance)

Immediate discharge of instinctual energy produces an immediate and temporary emotional state which differs from an enduring emotion known as a mood

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PaI 27. Emotions overwhelming weak ego An unsatisfied instinct may accumulate tensions experienced by the ego as overwhelming and leads to a sudden and un-judged action of discharge

PaI 28. Separate “affect discharge” from the discharge of instinctual drives The complex relations within the structure of ego, id, and superego mean that affects are not related to the discharge or inhibition of drives in any simple way

PaI 29. Ego control over its affects

The function of the ego is to control the discharge of instincts in accord with the intensity of the associated feelings

PaI 30. Defences against affects comparable to defences against instincts

Defences against affects and against instincts or drives are quite comparable

PaI 31. Affects as epiphenomena within a structure

Affects are merely epiphenomena deriving from the ego’s management of the instinctual drives and energy of the id

PaI 32. Role of ego development

As the ego develops, it has more management of the aims and objects of the drives and thus of the character of the affects

PaI 33. Ideas added from individual experience

The satisfactions and frustrations of the instinctual drives come during development to be associated with memories and ideas which give unique qualities to the ensuing affects

PaI 34. Encounter with other human subjects

Affects derive as much from the quality of relations with other persons as they do from the tension and discharges of energy in the instinctual drives

PaI 35. Centripetal and centrifugal processes

Affects arise from the combination of the inner perception of bodily states (and internal objects) with the instinctual drives towards actual external others.

These dimensions derive from viewing affects as closely connected with instincts. While no one has “seen” an instinct, affects are the visible

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evidence, or one form of “visible” evidence—that is, directly experienced evidence. There is some considerable variability between the theory of instincts as a metaphor which can model the causation of affects, through to a very concrete equation of one with the other, where affects are the visible expression of instincts no longer hypothesised as conceptions but as real energy. The conception of affects as an emergence from instincts makes a strong assumption: objects outside the human individual tend to be just material, and not personified as other beings with comparable subjective experiences of their own. With the exception of Edith Jacobson and her abstract speculation, the world of others is merely a perception distorted by the subject’s own internal dynamics. Little attention is given to the object itself as a person who also subjectively distorts perceptions of the subject because of the object’s own internal sources and inner dynamics. Such interactivity has only belatedly found its way into the remnants of the ego psychology tradition in the form of schools calling themselves “intersubjectivist” or “relational”. For ego psychology in its heyday, it was as if, with enough maturity, the distortions can be set aside and the external world considered in a positivist way “as it is”. Such an assumption gave rise to a belief the ego could operate, when free from instinctual influence, with a conflict-free autonomy, Hartmann’s so-called “conflict-free sphere of the ego apparatus” (1958, p. 136). The external material world is thus immune from being distorted by the inner one, unless pathology intervenes. In maturity, affects will become “realistic” ones. Developing in the background of this classical tradition has been an approach less in line with the realism of the ego psychology of the kind just described. In that alternative development, as Brierley typified (see above), affects are the front line, presenting as a feature of human experience in a form more akin to idealism than to realism. Before moving on to the so-called object relations school that acknowledges the object’s own reactive psycho-dynamics, it is worth considering a recent interest that, as it were, leapfrogs back over developments of the last hundred years and derives directly from theories initiated by Freud the neurologist back in the nineteenth century. This trend is now known as neuropsychoanalysis.

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Neuropsychoanalysis Freud’s neurophysiological initiation in nineteenth-century medicine has recently revived as psychoanalysts have taken an interest in the new methods of investigating the brain. Considerable interest has accumulated in Freud’s “Project for a Scientific Psychology”, written in 1895, since it was published in 1950. And since the “decade of the brain” (the 1990s) was announced by President Bush. Neuropsychoanalysis has had success as another derivative that has emerged from the ego psychology decline. “Neuropsychoanalysis”, as elaborated by Solms and Turnbull (2002), approached affects psychoanalytically by applying knowledge from experimental situations and not from clinical practice. Much inspiration has come from this neurological source. As early as 1900, Freud described the psychical apparatus as a “fiction” (1900a, p. 598), a later example of which was the structural model of ego, id, superego. It is a fiction in that it ignores the actual physical structure and functioning of the brain, leaving the emphasis on the experience of the subject. However, Freud decided to resist publishing his neuropsychological hypotheses and moved away from his unpublished “Project” of 1895. The manuscript was rediscovered in 1937 in a second-hand bookshop among Freud’s letters to Fliess, about which Freud wrote to Marie Bonaparte: It is therefore an extraordinary labor of love that you have gotten hold of them and removed them from danger. I only regret the expense you have incurred. May I offer to share half the cost with you? After all, I would have had to acquire the letters myself if the man had approached me directly. I  do not want any of them to become known to so-called posterity. (Letter to Marie Bonaparte, 3rd January 1937, in Masson, 1985, p. 7)

It was clearly of some embarrassment to Freud that his metaphor of the mind in the brain, the ghost in the machine, might become known to

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posterity. What has changed today perhaps is that the study of the brain is no longer based on post-mortem anatomy, or structure, as it was when Freud wrote his treatise On Aphasia (1891b). Today, neurological investigation is remarkable in its visual display of parts of the living brain as they function. Hitherto inaccessible, such activity can now be shown as it happens in real time. Much more accurate correlation of brain function and subjective experience can be made (Damasio, 1999; LeDoux, 1996; Panksepp, 1999; Schore, 1994). However, the essence of the debate on the relevance of neuroscience and psychoanalysis has not been resolved and has been pushed into the background to be unfortunately ignored by neuropsychoanalysis. In fact, Freud himself had turned away from neurology—why? It seems that Freud was strongly influenced by John Hughlings Jackson, the nineteenth-century English neurologist, and by Jackson’s “doctrine of concomitance” (see Strachey’s introduction to Freud’s 1915e paper on “The unconscious”, pp. 161–165). Concomitance originally meant the belief of the Catholic Church in the coexistence of the person of Christ in the material substance of the communion bread and wine, and so it resonates with the similar coexistence, or concomitance, of the mind in the material substance of the brain. In an age when materialism rejects spiritual “substance”, the relation between brain and mind is also known as psychophysical parallelism. Freud’s debt was to Jackson’s articulation of the parallelism. As a result, Freud was increasingly able to move towards the “psycho” side of the parallel, leaving neurology on the physical side. Nevertheless, when Freud’s “Project” was eventually published (in 1950, English translation 1954), it received positive responses from neuroscientists (Pribram & Gill, 1976). Today, neuropsychoanalysis aims to ground psychoanalysis back into the scientific milieu of Freud’s early work on neurology, updating it with the advances made since. This contemporary model is intended as a buttress against the widespread criticism that Freud cannot be regarded as a genuine scientist. Indeed, he has been described as a charlatan by Frederick Crews (1980), and others in the 1980s and 1990s (Forrester, 1997). By making a spirited defence of Freud’s early physiological principles, neuropsychoanalysis can claim a truly scientific objectivity.

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Neuropsychoanalysis and the affects The affects are given a prominent place in the conceptualisations of neuropsychoanalysis. In fact, the first issue of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis, in 1999, was largely given over to discussing affects. The emotions were regarded by Solms and Turnbull (2002) as another sense organ. Not a sense organ that scans the external world, but one that perceives the internal world, and in particular the inner state of well-being or discomfort: What you perceive when you feel an emotion is your own subjective response to an event—not the event itself. Emotion is a perception of the state of the subject, not of the object world. If a flash of lightning and clap of thunder cause you to feel a fright, it is not the lightning and thunder that you perceive emotionally (you see and hear them visually and aurally); it is your visceral response to those events that you feel emotionally. (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 107)

This is a subtle point, but it conveys the proximity of the emotions to the experience of the bodily self. Emotions are the sense organ of one’s self and are evaluative in a way that other senses are not. Mostly the other senses provide data which then create internal states, and then those are evaluated emotionally. Affects are therefore the very basis of an idealist approach to mind and reality. The world is not simply seen objectively, but via the internal templates of emotions. So, ironically, the defence of the scientificity of psychoanalysis is based on the distortions created by subjective emotional states! Observations of subjective distortions (the task of psychoanalysis) can be themselves subject to distortions. Despite their aim to be scientifically objective, neuroscientists must in the end rely on such reported feeling states, just as much as psychologists. Moreover, the emotions are seen definitively as the prompt to motor activity—to run when frightened, etc. And emotions quickly lead to their being expressed—running, shouting, trembling. Such a view adds to the Cannon–Bard side of the argument against

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James–Lange (see Section 2 of this chapter). A close link exists between emotion (internal perceptions) and action, and indeed those other, external senses are perceived through the emotional templates. In line with some of the other psychologies, neuropsychoanalysis has a list of basic emotions innately given: “seeking”, “rage”, “fear”, and “panic” (the last more like attachment phenomena). Each has a number of subclasses. However, this list advances on the basic emotions identified in various ways by psychologists, because neuroscientists can locate them at specific centres in the brain. Bringing together these two disciplines—psychoanalysis and neuroscience—not surprisingly draws on Freud’s earlier work but obviously prioritises those psychoanalytic theories resting heavily on biological theory, notably instinct and drive theory. Neuropsychoanalysis has been critiqued in this respect, not only by some psychoanalysts belonging to more recent schools, but by some neuroscientists as well: [T]he main problem of Freud’s (1915c) and I am afraid Solms and Nersessian’s [1999] thinking was and still is, that it is not related to biology in the form of “human ethology” and “psychological ethology” … . As a consequence of that they do not take into account the co-evolution of affect as a motoric-expressive social signal system that influences the social partner in a highly specific way. (Krause, 2000, p. 75)

Krause takes his stance on the evolutionary ground Darwin marked out, where affects are not simply individualistic occurrences, an internal sense organ, but they comprise an important communicative system for a species basing its adaptation and survival on a social existence and communal co-operation. So, clearly, the usefulness of Freud’s early “neuroscientific” work is open to debate. The second major critique of neuropsychoanalysis is the naivety of concomitance. Often it appears to be assumed there is a complete equivalence of terms, concepts, and assumptions—those from neurology equating with those from subjective experiencing. This is known as consilience (Panksepp, 1999; Wilson, 1998) or the unity of science (Neurath, 1937). It has usually involved the sciences dealing with

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material substances, the natural sciences, but when referred to psychology, it has usually been restricted to the objective behaviourist approach (C. Morris, 1938) rather than the study of mind. The philosophical issues of the mind–brain problem require some greater subtlety than is usually granted in neuropsychoanalysis (Green, 1999). For instance, in drawing together mind and brain, the conceptions of causation and of intention/purpose are equated, as if unproblematic. Most problematic is the implicit assumptions that brain activity and states “cause” mental phenomena. The consequence is that free will is ruled out. And we saw Spinoza’s problem of free will solved only by introducing the presence of God. The counter-intuitive claim is that we consistently feel that we determine in our minds what we do, rather than our intentions being determined and caused by our bodily brain (more like the James–Lange hypothesis). Clearly neuroscience and the philosophy of mind both approach the brain but from quite different perspectives, quote different determining factors. The earlier argument (Chapter 2) on the relevance of the thought experiments was an attempt to point up the question of whether a machine can fully explain the “ghost” in it—the mind in the brain. And hence can the conceptions be really equated—that is, equating information in the digital sense with meaning in the subjective sense, for instance. In today’s terms, do the processes in a computer have the capacity to actually replicate (not just simulate) the experience of handling meanings or real feelings? On the basis of the arguments in Chapter 2, there is no reason to think that a material electronic computer handles real mental activity. Meaning, purpose, and affect are the data that the mind uses; it is not what the organic apparatus in our heads uses. Our brains use the tiny electrical impulses arriving at synapses (maybe a quadrillion of them). The issue would be whether the organic system, the brain, can be more advanced than an electrical machine such as a computer. There may be a useful alternative to this naive consilience—the theory of emergence (Alexander, 1935; Broad, 1925; Kim, 1999), a kind of theory of the ghost in the machine. Although that theory, alternative to consilience, is compatible with parallelism, it will not be pursued here. And of course, there is a chance that we will in the future be embarrassed if, after all, machines which function with mental states as well as with information could be created. At present, it looks doubtful

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indeed. In the unlikely event that an Affect Machine can be created, our view of concomitance (parallelism) will then be proved to be as naive as Freud was in 1937 when Marie Bonaparte discovered his 1895 “­ Project” (Masson, 1985). The parallelism between mind and brain will then have to apply between mind and machine. So, the question raised by neuropsychoanalysis in this context is whether we can use our knowledge of brains and computers to explore properly the nature of the psychological side of the parallelism, dealing with meanings instead of information. In summary, the conflation of psychoanalysis with neurology is attractive because it gives an impression of hard (or harder) science. The subjective can be strengthened by its correlation with physical anatomy. However, it risks downplaying the actual experiencing with which analysts deal, those uniquely difficult anxieties and conflicts that patients actually feel. Though there must be some correlation between brain function and lived experience, it is not completely clear what one field of study adds to the other. In the account in this book, we accept the unresolved mind–body problem and stick carefully with Freud’s “fiction” of the structure of experiences (as opposed to the structure of the brain). The postulated characteristics of brain functioning are not therefore included in this compendium of the characteristics of emotions.

Section 3.2 Affects and object relations psychoanalysis While classical psychoanalysis was evolving its more abstract model based on instincts, an alternative line of thought was emerging at the same time in the 1930s. This was a form of object relations psychoanalysis which earlier in the chapter we posed as a possible fourth phase in Rapaport’s history of psychoanalytic concepts. For this initially less dominant strand of psychoanalytic theory, affects were central to psychoanalytic understanding and were embedded in relations with others who also have affects. There has not been unanimity among the analysts of this school; nevertheless, the emphasis on relatedness (rather than on instincts) identifies them together. Deriving affects from instincts had allowed an easy slide across the mind–brain boundary, without much attention to the problems of concomitance. Despite Freud’s emphasis on the metaphors and fictions,

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biological science and personal experience were run together in an enthusiasm to display an objectivity to the data and the discoveries. For many analysts coming to the world of psychoanalysis at the beginning of the twentieth century, the need for scientific claims may have appeared somewhat forced and unnecessary. At that time, the main technology available was gross anatomical dissection, post-mortem. The alternative would have been psychological techniques of hypnotism and interpretation of experience. Freud’s method of complex structures of thought (metapsychology) arrived at by deduction from his initial assumptions seemed sufficient, a top-down process. But as time went on, the demands for scientific validity increased. A more truly subjective method, based on the subject’s own experience of his subjectivity, had to become the hallmark of psychoanalysis, a more bottom-up approach. The object on which the instinct sought its satisfaction had been relatively neglected in classical psychoanalysis, although that had begun to change briefly with “Mourning and Melancholia” (Freud, 1917e). In that paper, the emotions felt for the lost object [PaO 1] were of central importance (the same is the case with his paper of 1919e on “A Child Is Being Beaten”—see Walker, 2021). The experiencing of the affects was as important as their biology, and the fate of the object was just as determining of the mourning process as the instinctual impulses arousing tension phenomena resulting from loss. Sándor Ferenczi, too, was one of the earliest in the object relations tradition who seemed oblivious to Freud’s concern with the criticism his medical colleagues made. For Ferenczi, the notion of intimacy was as important as instinctual charges. So, whereas Freud’s interest was the impulse, in places away from Vienna exploration in other directions seemed permitted. After Freud (1923b) published The Ego and the Id, classical psychoanalysis had concentrated on the structure and functioning of the individual ego. But the movement between minds effected by the mechanisms of projection and introjection continued to be carefully investigated by Abraham (1924) in Berlin, and later in British psychoanalysis, as well as Ferenczi (see Rudnytsky, 2000) in Hungary studying innovative methods of empathy and intimacy between analyst and analysand. There were many from Britain who had been to Budapest for their own analysis with Ferenczi, and this included Ernest Jones, the founder of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Melanie Klein, too, had first

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discovered psychoanalysis with Ferenczi when she lived in Budapest (between 1909 and 1920). It was Ferenczi’s encouragement that had prompted her to take an interest in children’s experiences. Perhaps this common link was a factor in Jones’s invitation to Klein to come to London in 1926. Whatever the reasons, the British Psychoanalytical Society had from its early days some independence from the Viennese (Hinshelwood, 1998). So Britain eventually held a unique position during the Nazi period. Psychoanalysis had been more or less wiped out on the Continent of Europe, apart from small societies in Sweden and Switzerland. The British Society was the main psychoanalytic society left. In the US, with the arrival of traumatised refugees in the alien culture with a different language, there was some confusion and conflict for several years (Kirsner, 2000). However, even prior to the Nazi disaster in Europe, British psychoanalysis had been taking a somewhat independent line. Jones collected many cultured people, including those close to the Bloomsbury group who were more literary than scientific. The evocative dramas of psychoanalysis may have assumed more importance for them than the mechanics and economics of energy. And often those medically trained had wider and more humanitarian interests beyond medicine, like Jones himself, or John Rickman, who both read widely in anthropology and social science. Such a variety in the British Psychoanalytical Society allowed more flexible views on affects, and resisted their study being sealed into an individualistic objectivity oriented to medicine. So, the British Society was less conformist. Its members did not necessarily have a biological or medical background and did not necessarily subscribe to the assumption that affects were merely biological. The ideas in Freud’s paper on melancholia were evolved with Abraham, who had already written on manic depression (1911)—now, “bipolar disorder”. Obviously, affect was important in this work, as well as the movement of the object between the external world and the interior of the mind. Objects could be introjected as well as projected. More than that, Freud described in 1921 how objects and parts of the self, the ego-ideal, could be moved from one mind to another. He noted the term “contagion” from LeBon (1895). By this, LeBon had meant that affects can move around a group of people “infecting” them with feelings [PaO 2] which spread pervasively from one person to another. This process is

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more than a communication of ideas and information, it is the arousal of affects in others, so that they literally harbour someone else’s feelings, uniting the members [PaO 3] in one common emotional state. It is in line with various social psychologists, as we saw in Section 2 of this chapter (on psychology). The art of the theatre or cinema captures the attention of the individuals in the audience by filling them with specific feelings in common. This transportation of parts of one person’s ego responses to another is a significant addition to a structural model of psychoanalysis. It can be seen to start very soon after birth with the non-verbal imitative conversations that mothers have with their babies in early infancy (Trevarthen & Delafield-Butt, 2017). Unconscious communication between minds With “Mourning and Melancholia”, Freud (1917e) had begun for a brief period to give an ascendant importance to the “object” of gratification, and the object’s own state, [PaO 4] including the object’s death. By “object” was meant the other person and their mind with whom the subject is in a relationship with. Freud’s paper focused on this personified object, the quality of the relationship with that person, and the fate of the object. And for a moment Freud set aside his first interest in the source, aims, and intensity of an instinct. “Mourning and Melancholia” signalled something in a minor refrain about the “object”, the person that was the satisfier (or not) of an instinctual impulse. Thus Freud, collaborating with Abraham, concentrated on feelings about the fate of the object, as well as the importance of mechanisms of introjection and projection that involved the object specifically. Subsequently, Freud, in passing, described the ego as “the precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes” (Freud, 1923b, p. 29; see also Sandler & A. Freud, 1981). So, the fate of the objects that accumulate in the ego gives a very different model from the discharges of energy. Had Freud continued in this direction, there might have been an earlier emphasis on feelings for the object itself, rather than simply gaining satisfactions [PaO 5] upon the object. “Mourning and Melancholia” attempted an explanation of guilt. That affect failed to be explained by blocked energy. And guilt runs a different course from anxiety. [PaO 6] Freud realised that guilt had to be different, and eventually he solved the problem of its origin by giving

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it a structural explanation—in terms of a superego (Freud, 1923b). That superego is an introjected other person which comes from giving up, and in effect losing (and mourning), the loved oedipal figures. It is a loss coped with by internalising them. This introjection of the parents depicts guilt quite differently from anxiety and depends on feelings for the object lost. Freud at first called the process “identification”, and that term indicates how, at that time, Freud was clear he was describing profound changes inside the person as he or she interacted with others—losing or gaining aspects of those others—and he had previously exemplified this with hypnosis and falling in love (Freud, 1921c). As previously recognised, Abraham had described a “whole object” love by adding something to the mere satisfaction of the libido. The affects provoked love and appreciation for the satisfaction. He did not downplay the central place of libidinal energy and, in fact, he regarded himself as elaborating the classical libido theory further. His last paper was called “A Short Study of the Development of the Libido, viewed in the light of mental disorders” (Abraham, 1924). He saw a bivalent set of affects, and he postulated the development of an aggressive attitude sometime in the first year. The latter he called sadism and described its different features in each of the three phases [PaO 7] of the libido with their component instincts (Freud, 1905d). Abraham’s focus on the development of the libidinal phases aimed to characterise the object relations in each phase: In thus tracing separately the development of the relation of the individual to his love-object we shall not overlook the close and manifold psychological connections which exist between it and the subject [topic] of our earlier investigations [i.e.—the phases of libido developmental]. (Abraham, 1924, p. 480)

So, he balanced the focus on the development of the libido, with a second section of the paper titled “Origins and growth of object-love”. Abraham was indicating his conviction that a specific development of object relations runs parallel with the development of the libido. In effect, he correlated libidinal development with the language of the affects occurring in relations with others. And he charted a new scheme of early development which placed the vicissitudes of object relations in

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high relief. He claimed: “What we have so far said about the ontogenesis of object-love does not sufficiently cover the facts” (1924, p. 480); and so he proceeded to add these object-related phenomena and processes already described. He traced the interplay of object-love (instincts) with object relations. That is, the relations between the ego and its external objects is intimately intertwined with the affects. [PaO 8] Thus, whilst attempting to advance Freud’s libidinal theory, Abraham’s schema of love and sadism towards the object as a person set the scene for a view of affects emerging from relations at least as much as from instincts. And moreover, they may be transmitted between self and other by the processes of introjection and identification. The interplay of introjection with projection at various conscious and unconscious levels has been the focus for object relations psychoanalysts down to the present, and is the reason for giving this space to Abraham’s views. The ego structure can then be viewed from the point of view of the transmission of parts of the person—and that includes their affective states. Fairbairn (1941) considered that the splitting of the relation between self and object results in two separate self-object relations. That separation underlies the more severe types of psychopathology. His division of the ego into several parts (usually three) and the identification of the self with one or other leads to various formations of the ego and of the personality, as well as the affects of excitement and frustration. [PaO 9] Fairbairn’s focus on the ego is not that of ego psychology, and the way the ego manages the inherent drives. Rather, he said the drives are not towards bodily satisfactions at all. They are focused primarily on object-seeking not instinct-satisfying. Klein and anxiety The place of the object in the subject’s mind means the object is a structural entity in itself. This was taken up especially by Melanie Klein. She refrained from energy explanations. Though she never spelled out a theory of affects, much of her theory was couched in terms of the emotional and relational attitudes towards others. Ruth Stein, who significantly was not of the Klein school, observed: “Some of the most central concepts in Klein’s theory can be profitably read as a discourse on affects and their laws of functioning” (Stein, 1991, p. 79).

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Klein said late in her life: “I still cannot answer what made me feel that it was anxiety that I should touch and why I proceed in this way, but experience confirmed that I was right” (1959, p. 24). She was not clear about the actual difference in her approach, but she moved away from the theories of instincts Freud had developed, and turned to focus on the expression and representation of feelings—and in particular, anxiety itself rather than as a product of instincts. She concentrated on identifying the anxiety her child patients [PaO 10] brought her, using it as a signpost for interpreting: “[The analyst’s] interpretation should intervene at some point of urgency” (Klein, 1932, p. 51). She also claimed that a subsequent change in the level of anxiety (as expressed in play) following an interpretation was a significant indicator of the accuracy of the interpretation. Freud also in his later work saw anxiety as a signal (1926d), and his notion of “danger situations” represented for Klein an emotional danger which she called an “anxiety situation”, where by some emotion, particularly hate, would create an internal danger [PaO 11] within the person. Children used toys to construct narratives in their play with graphic clarity. Maybe children are more openly expressive of their feelings, both pleasure and suffering, and they willingly expressed them to her, at her instigation. The anxiety they suffered became literally visible by using the toys she offered. Thus, Klein found herself confronted with intense feelings expressed as phantasies and displayed in their play as narratives between objects. She never used the scientific terms “psychic energy” or “the economic model”—fundamental to instinct theory. In spite of this, she did use some of the terminology of instincts, though it did not have the explanatory value that it had for Freud and his classical psychoanalytic colleagues. In other words, Klein did not use the easy slipping between objective and subjective or between brain and mind that had interfered with psychoanalytic thinking for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. She focused on her anxious children (Frank, 2009) who worried about the balance between their loving impulses towards others and their hating ones towards the same loved persons. [PaO 12] She was led to concentrate on that balance between their feelings because, she believed, they showed it to her in their play. Specifically, anxiety arose when the balance tipped the wrong way—towards hating—in their imagined relation with objects.

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Her focus on anxiety was simply on the mental experience of affects. This choice of the mental over the biological [PaO 13] resonated with the views of many of her colleagues in the British Psychoanalytical Society. This emphasis among British analysts may not have come from Klein’s influence, but it would have been an encouragement she found when she arrived in London in 1926. She also observed how sensitive a child is to the fact that objects too have their own feelings, [PaO 14] and some of the object’s feelings would also be painful. So, from her early observations, she gave priority to the anxiety that arises from relating to important others. The priority she gave to the child’s feelings came explicitly from their suffering as it was expressed, consciously or unconsciously, in front of her. During the first ten years that she was in London, she was strongly supported by colleagues there, especially as she was in dispute with Anna Freud in Vienna, from 1927 (A. Freud, 1927; and see the symposium on child analysis reported in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1927—volume 8, issue 4). The importance of the balance between love and hate felt by a subject towards the object was systematised in 1935, when Klein built on Freud’s and Abraham’s work with manic-depressive disorders by formulating the depressive position. Her view was that an “object”, another person, is internalised and then exists inside the subject, rather as Freud’s description in “Mourning and Melancholia”. That other is felt actually to be there, maybe talked to in one’s own mind, and looked to for support or, like a superego, it gives criticism. Moreover, it is experienced as having a state of mind of its own, which indeed may be harmed, damaged, or, as in Freud’s example, dead. So, crucially, the depressive position involves concern for the object, for the “other”. Freud concentrated on the internalisation that formed the superego, but Klein understood internalisation in a very much freer way. Perception itself was experienced as taking in the person one sees, and it is not just linked with the external loss of that person (as in “Mourning and Melancholia”). This led her to conceptualise a whole world of objects, and of relationships, experienced within, and towards whom there are felt emotions. [PaO 15] Her exposition of the depressive position (Klein, 1935) drew on the whole object love that Abraham (1924) initially hypothesised. That is to

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say, feelings are not just the satisfaction of needs, but entail the secondorder feelings such as love and gratitude. [PaO 16] The object is understood to have a subjectivity of its own. [PaO 17] The second-order feelings include self-criticism about the feelings that might hurt others. Those experiences of others created the possibility of many emotions such as concern, regret and reparation, depression and grief. Libido and object relations With the emphasis on such affective relations, elemental instincts became somewhat less central, and eroticism was less exclusively dominant. In fact, eroticism seemed to have a more versatile role. Though it can be plastic and take various forms, as Freud described, eroticism can also serve as a means for overcoming conflicts [PaO 18] from other sources. For Klein, eroticism can be a defence strategy to enhance love. The ego’s anxiety is to make good the damage done to the loved object. Reparation is just that. So, she says, “[T]he sexual act serves to restore the mother’s injured body and thus to master anxiety and guilt” (1932, p. 248). Achieving genital sexuality enhances reparation. In femininity, sexuality is associated with fertility—the power to give life. It is a compensation or reparation for lost or injured objects. As Franco De Masi succinctly wrote: “Whereas for Freud it is sexuality which organizes the psyche, for Klein it is the other way round” (2003, p. 48). Affects associated with sexuality can therefore have defensive and reparative functions. Memories in feelings Klein recognised that feelings are part of perception, and thus impregnated with memories—“memories in feelings” [PaO 19] as she put it: All this is felt by the infant in much more primitive ways than language can express. When these pre-verbal emotions and phantasies are revived in the transference situation, they appear as “memories in feelings”, as I would call them, and are reconstructed and put into words with the help of the analyst. (Klein, 1957, p. 180, n. 1)

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Such memories are not perceptual nor are they connected with ideas or words, but are purely affect. For the mind of the preverbal infant, Melanie Klein stated, the breast is not just a physical object. The desires and phantasies give it qualities that go beyond the actual physical nourishment, and what is laid down are feelings of appreciation, love, guilt, etc. These feelings come back later in their original forms. This is a view of feelings in which, in early life at least, they are relatively independent of cognition and ideation. [PaO 20] Affects have a function at this earliest stage of performing what representations do later in the realm of perception (as Green (1999) indicated in acknowledging Klein). Deeper feelings of loss of integration Later, after her descriptions of the damage, loss, and reparation of the depressive position, Klein (1946) described the paranoid–schizoid position. In that position, the ego’s destructiveness fragments even itself. Such splitting has the purpose of avoiding certain states of mind and affects. Klein had been working to understand these states of disintegration since 1934 (see Hinshelwood, 2006), when she initially called the pre-oedipal mechanisms an “early repression mechanism”. Winnicott (1945) took up the fragile structure of the ego and its propensity to come apart into separated bits. When he referred to the loss of the key affect—the loss of “the continuity of a sense of being” (1960, p. 591)—it was connected with a feeling of disintegration and is the existential crisis [PaO 21] of psychosis. This desperate feeling of losing one’s self was a part of a whole area of affects that is different from the oedipal fantasies and conflicts. The experience of losing one’s existence altogether had been opened up slowly since Jones’s description of aphanisis (see above), and both Glover and Brierley on “disruption” or “bursting”. Winnicott saw this feeling of disintegration as a primary unintegration and not due to self-destructiveness. Glover (1939) had described it as regression to the origins of the ego formed initially from a number of separate ego-functions (especially, as Freud said (1923b), the different senses, sight, sound, touch, etc.). Winnicott, however, saw the original state as one suffused with the feeling of omnipotence that covers the initial unintegration. That illusion should not be disturbed by a neglectful carer until the infant is ready—that is a primary responsibility of the

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early carer. He did not see the primal rage of infants—only their loss of a coherent self. Klein’s paper, published in 1946, one year after Winnicott’s (1945) paper, displayed their differences over the earliest state of the ego and they have never been resolved (Abram & Hinshelwood, 2018). These various conceptions of the starting point of development are not connected with the oedipal phantasies. They are a different area of emotional experience. Klein called it a “deeper layer” of the unconscious (1958, p. 87). These layers of feelings are specifically about the survival of the ego, although she did not mention Jones’s aphanisis. Klein (1946) described a set of defences she called schizoid, and Winnicott described an attempt at recovery he called a false self to take the place artificially of the disintegrated true self. A reoccurrence of this position, when the ego is felt to be not just weak but potentially unintegrated, may happen when the infant has not had a secure carer. Such a disastrous state of uncertainty in one’s own existence is a form of anxiety found by most object relations analysts of the Kleinian and British schools. Existential affects—survival, wholeness, authenticity, unintegration, fragmentation, the basic fault, etc.—arise as the earliest [PaO 22] of experiences. This point of view brings in a whole set of affects about “going to pieces” and survival. It has been regarded as closer to the underlying affects and problems of psychotic states. In itself, Klein’s splitting defences against the experience of annihilation may, paradoxically, aggravate the sense of disintegration and thus they can lead to a vicious circle that is psychosis: “The defences against the death instinct create vicious circles leading to severe pathology” (Segal, 1993, p. 61), where Segal is referring to the self-directed aggression aimed at splitting the ego. Privation and developmental failure Michael Balint came originally from Budapest and had been a prominent student of Ferenczi. Though not a follower of Klein, Balint worked in Britain from the late 1930s, and contributed his survey of affects (Balint, 1952). He took love and hate as paradigmatic and distinguished both primitive and mature forms of love. [PaO 23] He investigated the factors which held back the development of love from entering its mature form. At first, love is an all-consuming need for a parental carer’s attention of the most empathic kind:

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We call such an attempt “omnipotence” if the following conditions are present: (a) certain objects and satisfactions can be taken for granted; (b) no regard or consideration need be paid to the object, the object can be treated as a mere object, as a thing; (c) there is a feeling of extreme dependence, the object and the satisfaction by it are all-important. (Balint, 1952, p. 357)

These conditions leave aside any reality testing of the object from which the love-demand is made. But mature love contrasts with this and grants the object a reality of its own, to be observed, acknowledged, and taken into account by the subject. Hate, however, is different. It arises inherently from frustration/privation, and there is no mature form. It treats the object as a thing much as primitive love does. Primitive demands like this on an object are not always met as required, so the simple hatred of frustration results. However, Balint says, the patient also experiences this privation as connected with a personal fault: “there is a fault within him” (Balint, 1958, p. 336). Balint called this the level of the basic fault—“basic” indicating that which comes before the genital three-person situation. Such absolute dependence on the affective response of the object is comparable to the absolute dependence which Winnicott (1960) described as lying behind the illusion of omnipotence. For both Balint and Winnicott, development starts with a relation to an object that is merely a thing. That view contrasts with Klein’s acceptance that the needed object is always invested with its own feelings and intentions even if they are quite unrealistic and endowed with primitively and exclusively good or bad intentions. For Klein, the infant develops a sense of reality towards the object and can come in the long run to appreciate good, bad, and the interaction between the two. For Balint, only the loved object becomes a real person for the subject. For Winnicott, there is no hated (bad) object, only a loved one that fails. More latterly, attention has focused not only on a world of bad objects that oppose good ones. Rosenfeld concentrated on a primary confusion, that is, how the emotions of love and hate can be confused in the very early stages of development. In 1971, he showed how this can be solved by a defensive splitting of the self into a “good” ego and a “bad” one, [PaO 24] a positive ego or a negative ego, depending on their prevailing affects of love or hate. It appears that the internal struggle to

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distinguish love from hate has failed so consistently that the separation becomes organised as a wobbling balance between the two separated parts of the ego devoted to these opposing affects. The person becomes susceptible at times to being ruled by the “negative ego”, dominated by hate, which destroys not only a loved object but also destroys positive aspects of the self as well, including the capacity to respect reality and a dependence on the other/object (see also Steiner, 1993b). Affects and phantasies Susan Isaacs (1948), supporting Klein, explicitly replaced the phenomenology of instincts, as in the quote given previously, that unconscious phantasies represent instinctual impulses in the relations with other persons. An instinctual impulse becomes represented as a phantasy drama, an unconscious phantasy of an emotional relationship [PaO 25] with an object. It is a way of bracketing-out the conception of an instinct, so that, as a result, the affect of the relationship becomes the focal concept. It points us to the nature of an affect as a relationship in which one person does something to his object, or alternatively the object does something to the subject; or, of course, some mutual interaction takes place between them. Later Kleinian analysts have described certain character traits in terms of these prevailing affect-laden phantasies. For instance, Feldman (2008) carefully unpicked unconscious phantasies that sustain grievances. The painful envy, resentment, and exclusion are kept at a distance and are made morally justifiable by the indignant claim of being cheated of what one has a right to. He described it as a compulsive, almost excited commitment to having been wronged. These driven narratives are told in terms of a relationship with a corrupt other. Other personality traits can be unravelled in a similar way—for instance, Feldman (1999) on compliance, on reassurance (Feldman, 1993), and uncertainty (Feldman, 2013); Steiner (1993a) on revenge, as well as on pride and humiliation (Steiner, 2006), and on shame (Steiner, 2015); and Steiner (2018) on gender relations. These conceptualisations regard feelings as narrative phantasies representing denial, displacement, reversal, and, above all, splitting of the mind and of objects. Such phantasies involve the mechanisms of splitting, and of introjection and projection, expressed as phantasy narratives. These dramas are experienced as invasion or evacuation and

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are inevitably tinged with violence or destructiveness towards loved persons. Defences are narratives which always involve others who are invested with emotional feelings of their own. In this conception, the living world, inside and out, is dramatised as an emotional theatre. [PaO 26] The world provides a stage that evolves as much inside the individual’s mind as it does in the external world. More than that, it is felt inside the person’s body as well as in the mind, [PaO 27] and it can actually be located at the bodily site where physical sensations occur—a frog in the throat, butterflies in the tummy, and so on. External objects, to which are attributed certain feelings and motives, can come to reside at appropriate sites within the body as the physical sensations will seem to indicate. Real life is the degree to which these narratives can bring internal and external perceptions into approximate accord. It is helped by a social consensus with others in a group whose emotional narratives align with one’s own. Such dominance by unconscious phantasy leads to a fundamental philosophical idealism. Things are seen as their appearances. This contrasts with the more positivist view taken by classical psychoanalysts, where by things can be seen as they really are, a realism (although pathology will distort them). Countertransference One significant development has been the recognition of the affects the analyst feels in the course of a clinical session. This new conception of countertransference evolved during the 1950s. It was almost immediately after Freud’s death in 1939 that, with the development of an identifiable object relations tradition, the new understanding of countertransference offered a new focus of attention (Balint & Balint, 1939; Brierley, 1937; Heimann, 1950; Racker, 1948). In this view, the work of psychoanalysis involves both partners in affective contact, and so the analyst’s feelings indicate something about what the patient feels. Hence, as Heimann claimed: [T]he analyst’s emotional response to his patient within the analytic situation represents one of the most important tools for his work. [PaO 28] The analyst’s counter-transference is an instrument of research into the patient’s unconscious. (1950, p. 81)

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The material for interpretation is no longer merely verbalisations revealing unconscious conflicts and fears. The psychoanalytic situation now replicates something of the analysand’s typical pattern of relationships outside the analysis. The patient’s affective relations meet a receptive and responding other in the analyst, who accepts the function of analysing what he has received. In a way, Freud always knew this: [The analyst] must turn his own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the transmitting unconscious of the patient. He must adjust himself to the patient as a telephone receiver is adjusted to the transmitting microphone. (1912e, p. 115)

The understanding of these necessary skills involved in using one’s own personality and subjective experience has shown a slow development over more than a century. Freud’s concern was that such unconscious sensitivity could potentially overwhelm the analyst and not just the patient. Despite the possibility that such direct impact can lead analysts astray, it is important because it can give a very direct communication of those affects. [PaO 29] So, the transmission of affects from one person to another is an important focus in the analytic encounter. A co-created emotional atmosphere, or culture of a session (Balint & Balint, 1939; Ogden, 2000), may have communicative intent, but alternatively it may intend some evacuation instead. Frequently, a quarrel between spouses involves the insistence on the other person feeling guilt. And such recruitment into an affective role may occur in an analysis. It can become an “enactment” (Feldman, 1994), and, despite the emotional disturbance, this “microprocess” (Joseph, 1989) demands attention. Alternatively, if the transferred feelings are not understood, such countertransference enactments are likely to be implicated in the impasse of negative therapeutic reactions (Rosenfeld, 1987), as well as in false positive outcomes. Interpersonal containment Pre-eminent among the phantasy narratives discovered in the unconscious world are those that concern the process of “containment”, named by Bion (1959, 1962), although worked out previously by his colleagues

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during the 1950s (for instance, Jaques, 1955; Money-Kyrle, 1956) in developing the concept of projective identification. This has contributed significantly to affect theory focusing on the transmission of affect between people. It is significant as it draws on the communication of affects, and it postulates a method by which infant development takes place through engaging mother as a container of feelings [PaO 30] which the infant cannot yet contain for himself. By extension, it is a model for the clinical process: When the patient strove to rid himself of fears of death which were felt to be too powerful for his personality to contain he split off his fears and put them into me, the idea apparently being that if they were allowed to repose there long enough they would undergo modification by my psyche and could then be safely reintrojected. (Bion, 1959, p. 312)

This describes the analyst’s maternal function when aspects of affective experience, as well as the parts of the ego from which the affects arise, are dispersed into her mind. Such an infant’s mother, or a patient’s analyst, then acts to contain those bits of affect. The object has an active role in the subject’s emotional life, not merely as a satisfier of needs, but also as a container that tolerates and makes sense and meaning of affects that had not yet been tolerated or understood. And, reciprocally, feelings are not merely one’s own; our feelings may also result from containing the affects received from another person’s subjectivity. Such interpersonal transmission of intra-psychic contents is not always smooth: [A] great deal can go wrong in the projection [seeking a container]. The relation between the container and the contained may be felt as mutually destructive or mutually emptying, as well as being mutually creative. (Segal, 1978, p. 317)

When the external object is required to contain the charges of emotion that are too high, or there is a negative resistance to the container– contained link by either party, then a potential, and disastrous, disintegration and redistribution of the ego is at risk in the very early

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months before secure integration has happened, and in psychosis when reality has to be destroyed. At times, the problem is the attacks by the one needing the container. Bion illustrated this with a number of examples: These episodes have been chosen by me because the dominant theme in each was the destructive attack on a link … a stammer which was designed to prevent the patient from using language as a bond between him and me … [He feared] he was unable to control his hostile attacks, his mind providing the ammunition, on the state of mind that was the link between the parental pair. (Bion, 1959, p. 310)

These kinds of attacks on the creative couple are attributed to envy. They wreck the capacity for a smooth process of containing and therefore of psychic development. When these communicative possibilities succeed, they continue in an attenuated form for managing powerful and traumatic feelings in adult life. The vicissitudes of this container–contained relationship are problematic. And the deficiencies of communication and transmission are a source of either everyday problems or more serious mental health states. The model of container–contained has become a widespread psychoanalytic method involving attention to the countertransference of the psychoanalyst who contains. [PaO 31] Moreover, the transmission of affects is a normal part of social interaction; “sharing with” each other, or “being with”, are phrases in common use to describe this normal social function in which feelings penetrate the subjects. In summary The field of object relations has generated its own specific features of affects: PaO 1. Emotions felt for the lost object Significantly, the preoccupying emotion of mourning forms a different focus of interest from instincts, making guilt central

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PaO 2. Affects infectious in a group of people Affects are contagious, and people do not just inform each other but introduce each other to the emotional experience

PaO 3. Harbouring others’ feelings unites a group

The identifying of individuals within a group comes in part from a common emotional experience, such as a funeral or a football match

PaO 4. Feeling for the other’s own state

Feelings can be a compassion, a feeling for another’s feeling

PaO 5. Feelings for the object and not simply satisfactions

Feelings for others are affects comparable to the satisfactions or frustrations of the basic needs

PaO 6. Guilt runs a different course from anxiety

Whereas anxiety is clearly grasped in instinct theory in relation to a danger of too much built-up energy, guilt is not so directly linked to instincts

PaO 7. Sadism’s different features in the three libidinal phases

Sadism evolves with different affective qualities in the different libidinal phases of development

PaO 8. Relations intertwined with the affects

The relations of the ego with others always involves emotions

PaO 9. Formations of the ego/personality around affects of excitement and frustration The ego develops through phases of significant affects towards others

PaO 10. Anxiety of child patients

The origins of child analysis were in the observation of the feeling of anxiety in children

PaO 11. “Anxiety situations” from emotion causing an internal danger Danger situations as the threat of a build-up of instinctual energy can be seen instead as “anxiety situations” arising from a narrative of danger from others

PaO 12. Balance between loving impulses and hating

Anxiety derives from a balance of opposing emotions rather than from problems of energy management

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PaO 13. The mental over the biological Prioritising relations with others prioritises the emotions felt towards others

PaO 14. Objects too have their own feelings

Others are recognised from very early stages of development as having their own feelings

PaO 15. Internal world of objects and emotional relationships

The world of relations with others is reflected, although in an adapted form, in an internal world of others/objects for which inner sensations are evidence

PaO 16. Second-order feelings such as love and gratitude

Basic emotions—needs and their satisfaction/frustration—lead to feelings towards the person who satisfies or frustrates

PaO 17. Subjectivity of the object

The other is a person with similar emotional experiences who can be identified with

PaO 18. Eroticism as a means for overcoming conflicts

Sexual desires and needs may be in part directed towards an empathic sense of the other’s needs

PaO 19. Memories in feelings

Feelings may arise as memories of places/people which are not remembered in perceptions from the senses or in words

PaO 20. Affects independent from cognition and ideation

Affects do not necessarily have a particular connection with ideas or other cognitive entities

PaO 21. Feeling of disintegration and the existential crisis

Disastrous experience of others may be felt as a danger to one’s own existence as if faced with an annihilating persecutor

PaO 22. Existential affects arise as the earliest

Fear of loss or disintegration of self either as a result of a persecutor or the absence of a protector is one of the very earliest emotions after birth

PaO 23. Primitive and mature forms of love

The experience of love may either include a sense of the loved one as a person with their own feelings (mature form) or lacking that personhood (primitive form)

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PaO 24. Ego split into good or bad Primary experiences of good or bad apply to a divided self as well as to others

PaO 25. Unconscious phantasy as an emotional relationship

Innate unconscious phantasies are the representations of instinct that involves an emotional relationship with others

PaO 26. Living world, inside and out, as an emotional theatre

The experience of an internal world of objects derived from external others under the influence of the perception of bodily sensations creates a sense of internal narrative as a core to the self

PaO 27. Inside the person’s body as well as in the mind

Others are felt to exist, to live and relate inside the body, like butterflies in the stomach, or the menacing growth of death in a cancer

PaO 28. Analyst’s emotional response as one important tool

Emotions in the analytic setting are a direction-finder for the transference and the unconscious phantasy dramas in the patient

PaO 29. Direct communication of affects

Affects are not necessarily communicated to others, but often by a direct impact on another person’s emotional state

PaO 30. Engaging mother as a container of feelings

The direct transfer of feelings provides a developmental container–contained opportunity in the analytic process and in the mother–baby interaction

PaO 31. Countertransference of the containing psychoanalyst

The analytic situation can contain directly transferred feelings which are then modified, returned as more tolerable, and lead to an enhancement of a patient in making their own experiences tolerable.

Having extracted this list of features to put with the lists from the scoping of the other disciplines, the work of the next chapter will be to form them into clusters and eventually to produce a set of manageable dimensions as a plausible start for a more systematic theory of affects.

CH A PTER 5

Scoping and clusters

I

n this chapter, the results of the surveys in Chapter 4 will be analysed using a progressive clustering method. This will begin the production of significant dimensions for a theory of affects. The features of affects marked up in bold superscript in the text in Chapter 3 indicate the significant ones from each of the four disciplines: philosophy, psychology, instinct-based psychoanalysis, and object relations when applied to psychoanalysis.

Method of analysis These features comprise the “experimental” data. The method for analysing that data will be an inductive one, and it will be subjective as inferences inevitably are. The necessity for such subjectivity has been argued in previous chapters: 1. Those marked-up features are examined intuitively for some degree of common resemblance, and those with resemblances are gathered in clusters.

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2. This process is reiterated with the clusters to create a set of super­ ordinate clusters. 3. And those superordinates will be examined again intuitively for their relevance as significant dimensions for plotting affects in a hypothetical space, an “affective space”. Initial summary of results For the clarity of the reader, we will anticipate the result by giving a summary here. The initial inductive process took the 113 features marked up in the survey and found, on the basis of a subjective similarity: • Six clusters from the philosophy discipline: Bodily dimension, Balance, Control/suppression of emotions, Hierarchy, Materialist, and Motivators; • Then psychology added seven new clusters: Subjectivity, Social role, Evolutionary survival, Paired, Pleasure–pain dimension, Crisis of the ego, Self-reflective, and Cognition-related. Then further clusters were added from the two lists of psychoanalytic features. • The instinct-based psychoanalytic theories added four more clusters: Distortion and replacement, Appreciation, Complex and fused, and Timescale; • The object relations theories added another three clusters: Internal relations, Movement between people, and Memory in feelings. Thus, in all, twenty-one clusters emerged from the 113 features. Iteration of the clustering In effect, the twenty-one clusters represent a new data set for a further clustering process. Some clusters come close to each other, and can be merged. So, those twenty-one clusters were in turn examined for further resemblances and resulted in twelve superordinate clusters. A couple of clusters “died out”—for instance, the humours are still prevalent in

scoping and clusters   119

language, and also in certain forms of alternative medicine, yet they could not be described as strictly relevant for a contemporary theory of affects. As a result of this second step, there are two superordinate clusters in common for all affects, and eight features were found that differentiate between the affects: Common superordinates: Bodily dimension Experienced subjectively Then a further eight superordinates serve to differentiate: Plasticity Motivators Pleasure–pain/unpleasure Social role Evolutionary survival Self-reflective Relation to cognition Appreciation There were two further superordinates which were excluded on grounds to be explained later: Paired Timescale This chapter will now go over in detail the two steps in the analysis which first of all produced twenty-one clusters, and then with an iteration, twelve superordinate clusters. The details of this process are meticulous and may be scanned quickly on first reading, returning to detailed examination of these steps if necessary, and if the work of the rest of the book warrants it. In the following chapter, comments will be made on the two common superordinates—the bodily dimension and subjectivity. And when the eight differentiating superordinates are re-examined, it will be found that they could be condensed eventually to four to produce dimensions

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for practical purposes. Those four will provide a manageable structure for a dimensional model of the nature of affects for consideration in subsequent chapters. The reader has already been warned at the outset of one proviso to bear in mind. The estimates of the iterative clustering is personal and subjective, and the reader may or may not agree. In fact, I suggest that complete agreement is not necessary at this point in time because the intention is to establish a method from which new and informed debate can be developed further, or in another direction if appropriate. Developing this method is as important as the results. Moreover, the survey in Chapter 3 can be used by the reader, if you so wish, to mark up again for your own purposes in your own way. You may then form a revised set of clusters more akin to your own intuition. Indeed, it might be a success of this whole work if it did prompt re-examination of this kind by other researchers. A range of comparable qualitative meta-analyses of this kind would itself be a set of dimensions for extracting the systematic elements of affects. We will now go over the detailed analysis starting with the 113 features.

Features from philosophy The scoping text for the survey of the philosophy discipline yielded nineteen relatively prominent features in Section 1 of the last chapter: Ph 1. Ph 2.

Ph 3. Ph 4.

Medical doctrine of the humours The four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—in the right proportions constitute physical and mental health

Emotional states have bodily reference

The emotions are connected to the state of the body and the humours derive from bodily organs—the heart, lungs, gall bladder, and spleen

Balance indicates bodily health as well as emotional

Imbalance of the bodily organs and humours causes specific emotions/moods, such as melancholia from too much black bile

Intrusion of emotions into ethical and political life Emotions interfere with sound judgement in public life

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Ph 5. Ph 6.

Ph 7. Ph 8. Ph 9.

Ph 10.

“Blowing out” of passion and sensuality, hate, and ignorance Conscious eradication of emotions leads to a calm, contemplative life

Appetites (passions) versus noble virtues

The basic bodily needs are countered by civilised (moral) virtues to constrain those personal needs to reasonable levels and occasions

Reason to prevail over passion

In the conflict with the basic passions/needs, reason should prevail against emotional impulsiveness

Golden mean, or happy medium

In the conflict between reason and passion, the ideal state is a compromise allowing moderated and appropriate satisfactions

Catharsis

To control emotional impetuousness, the excessive passions may be discharged in harmless ways, such as watching a tragic drama in the theatre

Humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile

The humours from the several bodily organs need to be balanced in correct proportions

Ph 11.

Repudiating the desire for pleasure (original sin)

Ph 12.

Passions flow through body structures

Ph 13.

Single substance, physical matter

Ph 14.

Basic passions need to be repudiated and suppressed The soul flows through the body as compelling passions Emotions, like the existence of the body, arise from physical matter alone and there is no spiritual substance

Motion circulating from the awareness of perceptions

Emotions are part of a form of motion (i.e. stimuli) arising from perceptions

Ph 15.

Motivating imagination and action

Ph 16.

Passions as passive/unbidden

Ph 17.

Emotions motivate thought, imagination, and action The basic emotions and needs (or passions) arise unbidden and are inflicted upon the passive individual without choice

Emotions as partner and motivator of reason

Emotions motivate thought and reasonable action

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Ph 18.

Romanticism—imagination, aesthetics, and sentiment

Ph 19.

Utilitarianism and happiness

Emotions are the origins of an impelling, meaningful life The basis of an ethical life is to calculate the number of happy feelings one’s actions generate in others as well as oneself.

Clustering Some of these features go together and therefore form a cluster. • Ph 1 clearly goes with Ph 10. But also, the body humours place affects close to the physical substance of the body, and thus we can include Ph 2 and Ph 12. All four of these together we can cluster as a Bodily dimension to affects. • The balance of feelings with bodily states indicated in Ph 3 implies a delicate mixture; it goes along with Ph 8 and the idea of a happy medium without excess of one or other state. This suggests a cluster we could call Balance. • Then we can take Ph 4 in which emotions are felt to intrude or overwhelm some other aspect of mind. That connects with Ph 7 indicating a required secondary place for emotions lest they obtrude in the wrong place where reason should take precedence. • This implies a need for “control of emotions”. • Another cluster, perhaps related to “control”, would include Ph 5 and Ph 9 in which emotions are somehow discharged from the mind or they are repudiated, Ph 11. This cluster could be called “suppression”. But as these two appear to coalesce, they will be joined together as Control/suppression of emotions. • A further cluster concerns the way emotions can be categorised as belonging to one or more levels, Ph 6, where passions are passive (Ph 16) and the virtues active. The latter need to be cultivated in relation to, or instead of, the passions. This defines two levels of feelings. The level of the virtues interacts with the basic feelings. So, the virtues are thus feelings about feelings (i.e. feelings about the basic ones). We can call this cluster Hierarchy.

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• Philosophy after the medieval period tended to move towards a monism, that is to say, the previous separation of mind and body was closed up, so that body and mind are of a whole (Ph  13), a cluster which could be called Materialist. However, it is a cluster not so distant from the “Bodily dimension” where in affects and body are different substances but with intimate connections. In other words, those two clusters—“Bodily dimension” and “Materialist”—could together form a dimension running between monism (only material substance) and dualism (two substances, spirit and body). But, for the moment, we will leave them as separate. • Finally, these features from philosophy yield one more cluster in which the emotions may be motivators of imagination (Ph 15) or of reason (Ph 17) or perhaps promote a meaningful or ethical life (Ph 18, Ph 19). This cluster may be called Motivators. This examination reveals six clusters: I Bodily dimension II Balance III Control/suppression of emotions IV Hierarchy V Materialist VI Motivators We can take these forward as we identify the cluster from next list of features—from psychology.

Features from psychology The psychological approach is much more objective and experimental, and this is reflected in the nature of the features and, to a degree, they supplement those from philosophy. There are twenty-eight features from psychology which may or may not fit the six clusters from philosophy. Where a feature cannot be accommodated in these six, we must consider adding a further cluster:

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Psy 1. Psy 2. Psy 3.

Experimental objectivity and subjectivity The emotions can and should be observed objectively as well as statements by subjects

Social role of affects

Affects have a role in social relations and dynamics

Priority to the appetites

The most basic affects (needs or appetites) are the fundamental building blocks of emotional life

Psy 4.

Motivations to action

Psy 5.

James–Lange theory

Psy 6.

Affects arising via the autonomic nervous system

Psy 7. Psy 8. Psy 9.

The emotions motivate action in a reflex-like way The feelings follow on the reflex actions elicited in the body Feelings are channelled via the autonomic nervous system (the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves)

Cannon–Bard theory

Bodily reactions follow on from emotional states of the brain

Affects located in the brain

The affects arise from the function of locations in the brain, and especially the limbic system and the “primitive” level

Affect is animal-like

Affects, being a function of the basal levels of the brain, represent the animal inheritance of human beings

Psy 10. Secondary to the physical (biological) events

Felt emotions originate as biological events in the brain/body

Psy 11. System for alerting

Emotions are a system for alerting the complex brain to what is most urgent to attend to

Psy 12. Reflex-like manner (passive)

The emotional system alerts as a kind of reflex influence in the brain

Psy 13. Lists of basic emotions

The biological inheritance primes the human animal to start with a restricted set of innate affects

Psy 14. Advantageous for evolutionary survival

The biological development of innate emotions promotes survival

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Psy 15. Arranged in pairs The emotions can be arranged as complementary pairs forming a “wheel”

Psy 16. Pleasure–displeasure

Pleasure–displeasure is the most common pair, but oppositional rather than complementary

Psy 17. Arousal–sleepiness (an activation dimension)

Emotions serve to create an arousal when appropriate

Psy 18. Self-categorisation (identity)

Sequences of emotions from physiological and behavioural factors create group and individual identity

Psy 19. Arouse emotions in other people

Emotions are not just signals but they arouse emotional states in others

Psy 20. Emotional function regulated

Emotions have to be regulated in the context of other people

Psy 21. Feelings plus associated ideas

Emotions gain a specific character from being consistently associated with cognitive ideas

Psy 22. Emotional labour

Options may be consciously willed or simulated as an element of a work responsibility

Psy 23. As if simulations were real

Simulated emotions can become authentic in the context of others, for example acting on stage

Psy 24. Imitative kinds of “conversation”

The infant can imitate an emotional expression in responding to mother’s equivalent expression

Psy 25. Empathic attunement (mirror neurons)

Adults attune to others’ emotions, to the degree that the neuronal activity corresponds between the two people

Psy 26. Social management of emotion

Emotions are managed in social company as if from a book of etiquette

Psy 27. Affects deriving from cognition (inconsequential spin-off)

Cognitive attention triggers appropriate emotional responses as derivatives

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Psy 28. Determining the cognitive functions Cognitive functioning triggered by emotional responses.

Looking now at the clusters to be found here: • It is of interest that the Subjectivity of affects, Psy 1, was not a prominent feature of philosophy, and appeared to be taken for granted. So, subjectivity is an addition to the six clusters already identified— a new Cluster VII. • Looking further, Psy 2, Psy 19, Psy 24, and Psy 25 would contribute to a cluster that again does not arise from the philosophy list, the Social role of affects (Cluster VIII). In addition, this should also include the aspects of emotional labour, Psy 22, and affect “simulation” like acting, Psy 23. • Moving down the list, Psy 3 regarding the appetites would appear to come under Cluster IV, “Hierarchy” which we already have. • And Psy 4 is about affects as motivators, and therefore under Cluster VI. • Psy 5, Psy 6, Psy 7, Psy 8, and Psy 10 all concern the bodily processes giving rise to affects in the body or the brain via biological processes, and they therefore come under Cluster I, “Bodily dimension”. • Psy 9 concerns the view of affects as animal-like, by which is meant the appetitive or basic emotions, and therefore they cluster under “Hierarchy” (Cluster IV). Much psychological work has been devoted to making lists of these basic emotions at the most bodily level, Psy 13, and this implicit recognition of basic versus complex emotions will again come under Cluster IV. • Affects as a system for alerting brain/mind function, Psy 11 moves beyond the origins of affects and concerns their functions; it connects with Psy 14, a biological survival function which can be regarded as an evolutionary advantage, and with Psy 17, an arousal–sleepiness function. This cluster may be termed Evolutionary survival (Cluster IX). • Psy 12 goes back to the basic feeling, passion, Cluster IV (“Hierarchy”). • One novel feature was that the basic emotions can be arranged in pairs at opposite ends of a set of dimensions like the spokes of a wheel, Psy 15. This appears to be a complex set of dimensions and cannot really be accommodated under the most obvious pair,

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“pleasure–pain”. It can at this stage claim to be a cluster itself, Paired (Cluster X). • Pleasure–displeasure/pain, Psy 16, is not an explicit feature of the philosophical writing (Cluster XI) and is therefore another new cluster. • Another solitary feature is Psy 18, concerning self-categorisation, or affects which appear to arise from observation of self and group identities. This is potentially a further cluster, Self-reflective (Cluster XII). • Psy 20 concerns the regulation of affects, which assigns it to ­Cluster  III (“Control/suppression of emotion”), and Psy 26 will come into the same cluster as well. • Psy 21, Psy 27, and Psy 28 concern the relations with cognition which may give quality to affects or may relegate affects to an inconsequential spin-off of ideas. This Cluster may be termed Cognitionrelated (Cluster XIII). Features from both philosophy and psychology now comprise thirteen clusters: From philosophy: I Bodily dimension II Balance III Control/suppression of emotions IV Hierarchy V Materialist VI Motivators From psychology: VII Subjectivity VIII Social role IX Evolutionary survival X Paired XI Pleasure–pain dimension XII Self-reflective XIII Cognition-related

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It is worth noting in Table 5.1 (below, for a summary of all the clusters of features) that of the clusters from philosophy no further features were added to Cluster II or Cluster V. That is to say, these do not overlap between philosophy and psychology, and so it may be that eventually these clusters should be either dropped or absorbed into other clusters. Such adjustments will, however, be left till a later stage. Also, Clusters X and XII contain only one feature each, and may need further evidence of real significance.

The next step: psychoanalysis As noted earlier, psychoanalysis addresses affects as the priority phenomena presented by patients in clinical practice. And though in second place, well behind metapsychology, affects have been a continuous focus in the literature for more than a century. Psychoanalysis has been divided into two branches: one based on instinct/drive theory; and one based on the unconscious dynamics of object-relating. The scoping was therefore divided into two more sets. First, the instinct/drive-based psychoanalytic approach, where thirty-five features were elicited. The psychoanalytic instinct features will be identified as PaI: PaI 1.

Blocked-up energy resulting in painful affect

PaI 2.

Secondary phenomena arising from something else (instincts)

PaI 3.

Surface manifestations of a deeper process

PaI 4.

PaI 5.

Affects result from the tension of undischarged instincts

Instincts are the primary phenomenon and affects are derivatives Affects are the conscious result of an unconscious neurological process

Pleasure and pain are derived from drive reduction and drive tension The polarity of painful and pleasurable feelings comes from the discharge or frustration of instinctual impulses/drives

Anxiety provoked by conflicts

An anxious feeling results from a conflict that prevents instinctual discharge

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PaI 6. PaI 7. PaI 8. PaI 9.

Characterised by various phases of libido development The character of an emotion derives from an origin in a particular phase of development such as oral, anal, or genital

Unpleasure as unsatisfied desire versus pain

Frustrated instinctual desire or need differs from an active painful sensation

Pleasure in enhancing unpleasure

The pleasure of anticipation (fore-pleasure) can be enhanced before the instinctual satisfaction

Diverse distortions

Satisfaction of drives can be distorted by displacing from one aim or object to another aim or object

PaI 10. Pain vs unpleasure, two types

Painful sensations and frustration of satisfactory sensations are different

PaI 11. Plastic and inventive

Instinctual needs and the ensuing affects can be flexibly changed in imaginative ways, including sublimations

PaI 12. Narcissistic feelings about the ego

Instinctual satisfactions can be turned into self-satisfying aims, including masturbation, but also desexualised as selfpreservative instincts

PaI 13. Collateral feelings alongside satisfaction (whole object love)

Instinctual satisfaction can be accompanied by feelings for the object of satisfaction

PaI 14. Feelings about one’s feelings

Feelings can be developed about one’s own feelings, including superego guilt

PaI 15. Guilt condemning some feelings

Guilt is a second-order feeling about a feeling

PaI 16. Feelings replace each other

Feelings can be reversed, such as love for hate, or substituted, such as hate for fear

PaI 17. Ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic

Emotions may be felt as compatible with oneself, or as alien to oneself

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PaI 18. Defences active against the affects Defences may operate against affects in the same way as they operate against instinctual energy, though such defences are not necessarily the same ones

PaI 19. Tension or discharge

Affects arise from either the discharge of instinctual energy or from the prevention of discharge with an increasing tension of instinctual energy

PaI 20. Complex combinations

As developmental integration occurs, instinctual satisfactions (and frustrations) become combined to produce new complex or fused affects

PaI 21. Analyst’s emotional sensitivity

Emotions may be a valuable tool for understanding others’ experiences and feelings

PaI 22. Internal sense receptor for subjective events

Affects arise as internal perception of events in the body and mind

PaI 23. Feelings associated with an ego-nucleus

The ego develops from nuclei associated with each organ of perception, and each nucleus has its own characteristic feeling states

PaI 24. Tension which will result in an explosion, bursting

The build-up of instinctual energy creates a tension which can result in the experience of the ego “bursting”

PaI 25. Unconscious phantasy associated with instincts

Biological instincts are experienced in the mind as phantasies, usually unconscious, in relation to others

PaI 26. Orgasmic time contour versus mood/tone (gratitude, grievance) Immediate discharge of instinctual energy produces an immediate and temporary emotional state which differs from an enduring emotion known as a mood

PaI 27. Emotions overwhelming weak ego

An unsatisfied instinct may accumulate tensions experienced by the ego as overwhelming and leads to a sudden and un-judged action of discharge

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PaI 28. Separate “affect discharge” from the discharge of instinctual drives The complex relations within the structure of ego, id, and superego mean that affects are not related to the discharge or inhibition of drives in any simple way

PaI 29. Ego control over its affects

The function of the ego is to control the discharge of instincts in accord with the intensity of the associated feelings

PaI 30. Defences against affects comparable to defences against instincts

Defences against affects and against instincts or drives are quite comparable

PaI 31. Affects as epiphenomena within a structure

Affects are merely epiphenomena deriving from the ego’s management of the instinctual drives and energy of the id

PaI 32. Role of ego development

As the ego develops, it has more management of the aims and objects of the drives and thus of the character of the affects

PaI 33. Ideas added from individual experience

The satisfactions and frustrations of the instinctual drives come during development to be associated with memories and ideas which give unique qualities to the ensuing affects

PaI 34. Encounter with other human subjects

Affects derive as much from the quality of relations with other persons as they do from the tension and discharges of energy in the instinctual drives

PaI 35. Centripetal and centrifugal processes

Affects arise from the combination of the inner perception of bodily states (and internal objects) with the instinctual drives towards actual external others.

We will now go through these features with the list of thirteen clusters already identified from philosophy and psychology, and add further clusters if necessary. • The initial impetus for psychoanalysis being the biological theory of instincts as energy, many of the initial features derive directly from

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biological instincts and are relevant to Cluster I, “Bodily dimension”—PaI 1, PaI 2, PaI 3, PaI 18, PaI 28. • PaI 4 and PaI 19 refer to the pleasure and pain from tension and discharge, and should go within Cluster XI. • PaI 24 and PaI 27 refer to some “Crisis of the ego”, a new cluster (Cluster XIV). • PaI 5 concerns the central role of anxiety arising from conflicts that occur between affects, or between an affect and a social demand (internalised or external), and this points towards Cluster III, “Control/suppression of emotions”. This will also include those conflicts arising in the course of development, PaI 6 and PaI 32. • PaI 7, PaI 8, and PaI 10 referring to the experience of pain and pleasure point towards Cluster XI. • PaI 9 and PaI 11 describe the plasticity and distortions, including perversions, that human affects demonstrate, and they can mutate into, or replace, each other, PaI 16—these suggest a new cluster “Distortion and replacement” (Cluster XV) which we do not already have. • Narcissism, PaI 12, is parallel to the redirection back towards the self and can be included in Cluster XII (“Self-reflective”), as are the qualities of ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic, PaI 17. (The latter is rather in parallel to Cluster IV, “Hierarchy”, and maybe to be amalgamated at a later stage.) • We need a new dimension to accommodate PaI 13, PaI 14, and PaI 15, which acknowledge the subjectivity of the satisfying object, seen therefore as a whole object; we might call that cluster “Appreciation” (Cluster XVI). • Affects can combine in various ways including fusion or complexity, PaI 20, PaI 23, and this implies a new cluster, “Complex and fused” (Cluster XVII). Into this cluster we can also put PaI 31 concerning the coming together (in fusion) of affects within the structure of different ego-nuclei. • PaI 21 points towards emotional social connections (Cluster VIII, “Social role”). PaI 22 points again to “Subjectivity” (Cluster VII). • PaI 25 describes affects as having a narrative content of unconscious phantasy, such as the Oedipus complex. That feature

scoping and clusters   133

• • • •

should enter a cluster in which objects are sentient beings in their own right, and might appropriately be included in “Social role” (Cluster XVI). A further new cluster is the variable timescale, and contour of affects, PaI 26, Timescale (Cluster XVIII). Cluster III, “Control/suppression of emotions”, should accommodate PaI 29 and PaI 30. Affects are again associated with cognitive ideas with feature PaI 33 which lies within Cluster XIV, “Cognition-related”. PaI 34 and PaI 35 are both concerned with affects in relation to others as well as the self, and can be included in Cluster VIII, “Social role”.

In this examination of instinct/drive-based psychoanalysis, five new clusters have emerged:

XIV   Crisis of the ego XV   Distortion and replacement XVI  Appreciation XVII   Complex and fused XVIII   Timescale

The fourth and final list is that from object relations psychoanalysis: PaO 1. Emotions felt for the lost object Significantly, the preoccupying emotion of mourning forms a different focus of interest from instincts making guilt central

PaO 2. Affects infectious in a group of people

Affects are contagious and people do not just inform each other but introduce each other to the emotional experience

PaO 3. Harbouring others’ feelings unites a group

The identifying of individuals within a group comes in part from a common emotional experience, such as a funeral or a football match

PaO 4. Feeling for the other’s own state

Feelings can be a compassion, a feeling for another’s feeling

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PaO 5. Feelings for the object and not simply satisfactions Feelings for others are affects comparable to the satisfactions or frustrations of the basic needs

PaO 6. Guilt runs a different course from anxiety

Whereas anxiety is clearly grasped in instinct theory in relation to a danger of too much built-up energy, guilt is not so directly linked to instincts

PaO 7. Sadism’s different features in the three libidinal phases

Sadism evolves with different affective qualities in the different libidinal phases of development

PaO 8. Relations intertwined with the affects

The relations of the ego with others always involves emotions

PaO 9. Formations of the ego/personality around affects of excitement and frustration The ego develops through phases of significant affects towards others

PaO 10. Anxiety of child patients

The origins of child analysis were in the observation of the feeling of anxiety in children

PaO 11. “Anxiety situations” from emotion causing an internal danger Danger situations as the threat of a build-up of instinctual energy can be seen instead as “anxiety situations” arising from a narrative of danger from others

PaO 12. Balance between loving impulses and hating

Anxiety derives from a balance of opposing emotions rather than from problems of energy management

PaO 13. The mental over the biological

Prioritising relations with others prioritises the emotions felt towards others

PaO 14. Objects too have their own feelings

Others are recognised from very early stages of development as having their own feelings

PaO 15. Internal world of objects and emotional relationships

The world of relations with others is reflected, although in an adapted form, in an internal world of others/objects for which inner sensations are evidence

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PaO 16. Second-order feelings such as love and gratitude Basic emotions—needs and their satisfaction/frustration—lead to feelings towards the person who satisfies or frustrates

PaO 17. Subjectivity of the object

The other is a person with similar emotional experiences who can be identified with

PaO 18. Eroticism as a means for overcoming conflicts

Sexual desires and needs may be in part directed towards an empathic sense of the other’s needs

PaO 19. Memories in feelings

Feelings may arise as memories of places/people which are not remembered in perceptions from the senses or in words

PaO 20. Affects independent from cognition and ideation

Affects do not necessarily have a particular connection with ideas or other cognitive entities

PaO 21. Feeling of disintegration and the existential crisis

Disastrous experience of others may be felt as a danger to one’s own existence as if faced with an annihilating persecutor

PaO 22. Existential affects arise as the earliest

Fear of loss or disintegration of self, either as a result of a persecutor or the absence of a protector, is one of the very earliest emotions after birth

PaO 23. Primitive and mature forms of love

The experience of love may either include a sense of the loved one as a person with their own feelings (mature form) or lacking that personhood (primitive form)

PaO 24. Ego split into good or bad

Primary experiences of good or bad apply to a divided self as well as to others

PaO 25. Unconscious phantasy as an emotional relationship

Innate unconscious phantasies are the representations of instinct that involve an emotional relationship with others

PaO 26. Living world, inside and out, as an emotional theatre

The experience of an internal world of objects derived from external others under the influence of the perception of bodily sensations creates a sense of internal narrative as a core to the self

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PaO 27. Inside the person’s body as well as in the mind Others are felt to exist, to live and relate inside the body, like butterflies in the stomach, or the menacing growth of death in a cancer

PaO 28. Analyst’s emotional response as one important tool

Emotions in the analytic setting are a direction-finder for the transference and the unconscious phantasy dramas in the patient

PaO 29. Direct communication of affects

Affects are not necessarily communicated to others, but often by a direct impact on another person’s emotional state

PaO 30. Engaging mother as a container of feelings

The direct transfer of feelings provides a developmental container–contained opportunity in the analytic process and in the mother–baby interaction

PaO 31. Countertransference of the containing psychoanalyst

The analytic situation can contain directly transferred feelings which are then modified, returned as more tolerable, and lead to an enhancement of a patient in making their own experiences tolerable.

Again, most features will fall within the clusters already identified (see Table 5.1 below for a summary of all the clusters of features). • Origins of the emphasis on relations to objects in psychoanalysis commenced with Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” and the feelings about the lost object, PaO 1. • Affects themselves move from one mind to another, PaO 2, and so, together with PaO 3, PaO 28, PaO 29, PaO 30, and PaO 31, they form a new cluster “Movement between people” (Cluster XX). • The experience of the other as also being a subject is a feature of the object relations approach, PaO 4, so indicates the “Social role” again (Cluster VIII), as do PaO 8, PaO 14, and PaO 17. • PaO 5 is fundamental for “Appreciation” (Cluster XVI). And this is reflected again in PaO 16. • PaO 6, concerning guilt, is a response to “bad” feelings and belongs to the “Hierarchy” of feelings (Cluster IV).

scoping and clusters   137

• PaO 7 goes back to the bodily processes of libido development, Cluster I (“Bodily dimension”). • PaO 9 touches again on the place of affects in the development of self and personality, Cluster XIII, “Self-reflective”, and goes along with PaO 24; it also accommodates PaO 11 and the indication of internal danger. • PaO 10 where the felt anxiety is the object of focus in play rather than the biological instincts is reiterated in feature PaO 13 and represents a new cluster, Internal relations (Cluster XIX). Such an internal world of objects and relations suggests we can add PaO 15 and PaO 26. This personal world might be close to “Subjectivity” (Cluster VII). • Then, PaO 12, being the balance between love and hate, belongs to Cluster II (the “Balance” of feelings). • PaO 18 addresses specifically the sexual feelings, not as a basic appetite but as part of “Controlling/suppressing emotions” (Cluster III). • PaO 19 and PaO 20 address feelings that are disconnected from ideation/cognition or from perception, and they form a specific new Cluster XXI (Memory in feelings). • PaO 21 will belong to Cluster XII (“Crisis of ego”), as well as existential survival PaO 22 as the earliest affect. • The development of feelings in the general course of development is indicated in feature PaO 23, and would fit Cluster XVII (“Complex and fused”). • Feelings experienced as unconscious phantasy PaO 25 can be assigned to Cluster XVI, “Appreciation”, where the object plays out a role with their own subjectivity. • Finally PaO 27, suggesting that at the earliest levels body and mind are not differentiated, points to Cluster I, “Bodily dimension”. In this final step, we have generated three further clusters: XIX XX XXI

Internal relations Movement between people Memory in feelings

We have generated twenty-one clusters from all the 113 features identified.

XIII Cognition-related XIV Crisis of the ego XV Distortion and replacement XVI Appreciation XVII Complex and fused XVIII Timescale XIX Internal relations XX Movement between people XXI Memory in feelings

I Bodily dimension II Balance III Control/suppression of emotions IV Hierarchy V Materialist VI Motivators VII Subjectivity VIII Social role IX Evolutionary survival X Paired XI Pleasure–pain dimension XII Self-reflective

Table 5.1  The clusters of features 1, 2, 10, 12 3, 8 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 6, 16 13, 14 15, 17, 18, 19

Ph

21, 27, 28

1, 11, 15, 26 2, 3, 28, 29, 30, 31 19, 20

5, 6, 16, 25 23

21, 22

9, 24

4, 7, 8, 10, 19 12, 17 33 24, 27 9, 11, 16 13, 14, 15 20, 23, 31 26

10, 12 4, 8, 14, 17

7, 27 13 18

PaO

22 21, 25, 34, 35

5, 6, 29, 30, 32

20, 26 3, 9, 11, 15 4 1 2, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25 12, 14, 17 13 16 18

1, 2, 3, 18, 28

PaI

5, 6, 7, 8, 10

Psy

scoping and clusters   139

Reviewing the clusters The next step in the analysis is an iteration, a repetition of the induction which generated the first clusters. Twenty-one sets of clustered features is unwieldy, so for practical purposes, we will review these clusters again to generate a number of superclusters from which we will generate the major dimensions for a model of affects. Despite the potentially confusing risks of overgeneralisation, we will consider the degrees of overlap and possible amalgamation. We will strike a balance between making a manageable combination and oversimplification. This balance is offered on the grounds that some systematisation of affects is better than none—a view which of course can be disputed. The further clustering produces the following: • Bodily dimension: First of all, I and V might be amalgamated into I, since a non-materialist or dualist approach is very rare and unconventional in contemporary experience. • Subjectivity: Cluster VII is close to the sense of an internal world where affects “happen” (XIX), and so these may also be amalgamated. These then constitute two features which seem to be general for all affects. They share the fact they are all sensed in terms of a material body; and they are experienced subjectively. There are two more of these clusters that stand out as they only occur once and might therefore be deleted: • Timescale (XVIII) does indicate a degree of difference among feeling states, satisfaction, mood, personality trait, etc. It may be possible to delete this cluster as it occurs only once among all the 113 features identified in the text of the survey. • Also Paired (X) might be withdrawn. It is an idiosyncratic occurrence (only once) so that a pairing of affective qualities does not exist as a consensus in the literature.

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The rest of the superordinate clusters appear to be dimensions on which affects do vary: 1. Cluster II “Balance” implies a management of the intensity of the feelings, and so together with Cluster III, “Control and suppression” they appear to occupy a position opposite to Cluster XIV, “Crisis of the ego” which is a catastrophic event such as Jones’s violent suppression of all feelings. This he called “aphanisis”, at the opposite end of the dimension to Cluster XIV. In addition, this spectrum could reasonably include three further clusters: II, “Balance”, XV, “Distortion and replacement”, and XVII, “Complex and confused”. With these characteristics concerning the changes possible, we can group them together as the superordinate cluster to be called Plasticity. 2. Cluster IV, Hierarchy might include, XVI Appreciation which is seemingly a secondary feeling about a feeling; both included in a superordinate to be labelled Appreciation. 3. There is then the cluster of Motivators, VI, which can become a superordinate. 4. Social role, VIII, can also become a superordinate, and include XX, “Movement between people”. 5. Also Evolutionary survival, IX, becomes a superordinate. 6. And Pleasure–pain, XI can also become a superordinate. 7. As will Self-reflective, XII, also. 8. A superordinate, to be termed Related to cognition would include: XIII, “Cognition-related” and XXI, “Memory in feelings”. Leaving aside the two that are now excluded—Paired and Timescale, i.e. X and XVII—there are two common characteristics of affects, bodily and subjective, that all affects have in common. The final eight superordinate clusters will now be re-examined.

scoping and clusters   141

Table 5.2  Superordinate clusters

I Bodily dimension II Balance III Control/suppress emotions IV Hierarchy V Materialist VI Motivators VII Subjectivity VIII Social role IX Evolutionary survival X Paired XI Pleasure–pain dimension XII Self-reflective XIII Cognition-related XIV Crisis of the ego XV Distortion and replacement XVI Appreciation XVII Complex and fused XVIII Timescale XIX Internal relations XX Movement between people XXI Memory in feelings

Excluded

8. Related to cognition

7. Self-reflective

6. Pleasure–pain dimension

5. Evolutionary survival

4. Social role

3. Motivators

2. Appreciation

Differentiating dimensions

1. Plasticity

Subjectivity

Bodily dimension

Common properties

X X X

X

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

142  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

The final iteration This leaves eight superordinate clusters as dimensions of difference, displayed in Table 5.2: 1. Plasticity 2. Appreciation 3. Motivators 4. Social role 5. Evolutionary survival 6. Pleasure–pain dimension 7. Self-reflective (or “self-evaluation” as we shall refer to it in the next and subsequent chapters) 8. Related to cognition At the risk of oversimplification, we can reduce the number of superordinate clusters. This balances the manageability of the number dimensions with the overgeneralisation implied in the simplification. To start with “Plasticity” (Superordinate Cluster 1—Table 5.2), this implies a variation in the individual quality of experience, as it represents the possibility of distorting the affective quality of a feeling. Such distortions are highly determined by idiosyncratic individual psychodynamics, and those specific distortions in individuals are not the issue in the present work—it may of course be the work of therapy for that individual. This is not a dimension of the general nature of affects, and at this stage will be excluded. Similarly, “Motivators” and “Evolutionary survival” (Superordinate Clusters 3 and 5) are more to do with the possible consequences of affects rather than their nature. Hence, these will also be left aside from a systematic description. This is a simplifying exercise to assist in further analysis. We can consider too if the cluster concerning relations to other mental contents—ideas, cognition (Superordinate Cluster 10)— may not fit at this stage with the issue of the nature of affects themselves. I propose to leave this dimension out also. These now excluded dimensions—“Plasticity”, “Motivators”, “Evolutionary survival”, “Related to cognition”—remain significant, and they will need to be considered elsewhere.

scoping and clusters   143

Then we have something more manageable left in our hands—four fundamental dimensions of variation: 1. “Satisfaction–frustration”, the pleasure–unpleasure/pain dimension of the basic affects 2. “Self-evaluation”, of one’s own emotions as acceptable or not (egosyntomic or -dystonic) 3. “Social role”, and 4. “Appreciation”—the whole object experience of having appreciation for the other’s ability and willingness to provide the satisfaction. These are not the different qualities themselves, but the dimensions on which the different affects can vary. For instance, some basic emotion such as a blind rage can be satisfied by, shall we say, giving someone a punch on the nose. This could be very satisfying on the pleasure dimension, and restraint will yield a powerful sense of frustration. That experience can then be plotted on the first, Satisfaction–frustration, dimension. Similarly, we can also place, on that dimension, sexual desire, hunger, and so on. Any such affect can also be plotted on the other dimensions, in a manner to be discussed in the next part of the book. The progressive process of clustering has enabled us to reach a manageable four dimensions with which to explore a “space” for affects. Readers may quarrel over the particular focus on these dimensions, and so they are not intended to be permanent and definitive, only to show what can be done. Being a form of meta-analysis of data which is freely available, the method developed here is hopefully sufficiently open for other analyses to be performed. In this postmodern age, subjective reflections are in fashion; nevertheless, these results need to be read with caution to hand. What other form the results of different analyses might take is a matter for the future; the present account is for a start. These results show that a method is possible and conveys that a systematic view of affects is not restricted to a particular discipline.

CH A PTER 6

A 3D space

T

he reiteration of the clustering process continued until we reached a manageable array of dimensions. Next, there are a few comments on the two general features “Subjectivity” and a “Bodily dimension”.

The two general features of affects Research into our feelings relies especially heavily on reports by “subjects”, but the researcher too is probably at risk of bias, and that may include the present researcher who is now writing up the results. But the nature of the field is such that we could not use other than a method based on subjectivity in working with feelings (Holmes, 2019). First, the connection with biology, with the body and with the brain, as well as the inference that the emotions are a relic of our biological evolution, points to a very prevalent connection with the body. And second, we can say that the subjectivity comes from internal perception, the perception that attends to the state of the body. But

145

146  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

internal perception also attends to the state of the self, the sense of the interiority of feelings. Affects straddle the divide between the mind and the body, a divide not crossed by the more cognitive faculties. Affects have a very close connection with the sense of self, and, via the identity of a particular self with a particular body, affects comprise a complex of experiences which now seem to be linked. There may, in fact, be no affect which does not have a reference point in a bodily sensation. This is likely to be true of the basic affects, the passions or appetites such as hunger, sex, etc. It may also be true of the second-order affects including the appreciation of others who provide good experience, where a sense of warmth from them may be palpable in a bodily and actual way. And the heart-sinking sense of finding oneself guilty of some hurt to someone is similarly felt inwardly within the body. Such a three-cornered complex—appetites, self-evaluation, and an appreciation of others—may be regarded as the anatomy of the felt “identity” a person has. However, to take this further would spread beyond the focus of the book.

A psycho-algebra At this point, we will leave aside for the moment one of the discovered dimensions, “Social role”, and return to it in the next chapter. Here it is of interest to develop the first three dimensions—basic “Satisfaction– frustration”, “Self-evaluation”, and “Appreciation”. Taking these three dimensions, it is possible to consider a potential three-dimensional “affective space”. These assessments are all evaluative—of a satisfaction, of self, and of another. One of these, “Satisfaction–frustration”, refers to the basic needs, wishes that hover around at a bodily level. But then there is another level of assessment, which we can say is a secondorder level, and which comprises feelings about the basic feeling of Satisfaction–frustration. Those second-order feelings assess the ego-syntonic versus ego-dystonic quality of a feeling, that is, Selfevaluation, and then there is the experience/feeling for the other person who is the social object the basic feeling is aimed at. This is laid out in Table 6.1 below:

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Table 6.1 Dimensions of difference First-order affects 1. Satisfaction/frustration (Superordinate Cluster 6) Second-order affects 2. Self-evaluation—internal judgement/regulation of virtue (Superordinate Cluster 7) 3. Appreciation of other’s feelings (Superordinate Cluster 2)

The first-order dimension (Figure 6.1) refers more or less to the lists of basic emotions proposed by various experimental psychologists. Though they vary as to exactly which basic emotions they list, this dimension refers to those seemingly innate givens in human experience. We could draw a horizontal line (the x-axis) as is conventional in an algebraic graph. Satisfaction runs from negative (frustration) to the left through zero to positive satisfaction on the right. x-axis Frustration

Satisfaction

Figure 6.1  Satisfaction–frustration, x-axis

That line represents the degree of satisfaction. Those basic satisfactions are, too, the bodily appetites, or the passions of classical philosophy (although later we will elaborate on this a little). They are unwilled and give rise to the subject as someone who experiences them “passively”. Perhaps this is the area in which humans are most like our relatives in the animal kingdom. Then, there is the second-order level of ‘feelings about feelings’, where the appetites (x-axis) are evaluated (y-axis). They can be felt as positively virtuous or negative and disapproved of. One’s own needs/desires, agreeable or shameful, may be ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic. We approve or disapprove of ourselves for the basic feelings and needs, and whether we choose to satisfy them or not. We award ourselves virtue for the egosyntonic appetites and their satisfaction. This is a vertical line running from negative self-evaluation below, through a neutral point to high evaluation above; this vertical line is the y-axis.

148  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

Our emotional reactions towards others are similarly evaluated as the third dimension, running from negative at the front through neutral to positive appreciation of the other at the back, and this will be the z-axis. In considering the feelings that we actually experience, a particular self-aware quality usually emerges early in development, for instance for the happy little girl of the Prologue. Human beings possess the capacity to observe themselves. That has given rise to a greatly enhanced capacity to manage reality for our own purposes. It also gives us the capacity to manage internal reality and our emotional states and to regulate them, a function vital for living in communities. Recognising our feelings means, for humans at least, we have feelings that judge our basic feelings in terms of ourselves and of others. The human mind has advanced to the point where we can observe and reflect on our experiences, and our emotions. These dimensions frame a structure in which we can order and plot our affects as a three-dimensional space. Though the affects vary in their emotional quality, we can distinguish between affects that show different degrees of intensity on each dimension, from negative to positive. Each dimension is not measured quantitatively, but only as (i) positive or negative, or (ii) by comparing affects with each other. With those second-order feelings, we judge the virtue of seeking satisfaction or giving it, which makes of us social animals as opposed to being merely herd animals. It is an assessment of the appetites as appropriate or inappropriate at a given moment. Thus, I may criticise myself for having the “wrong” feeling for someone. If I say, “I hate that man”, it may be appropriate in some contexts—when at war, for instance— but not in the context of being at a dinner with him and friends. These affects are a specific invention of human interaction and society. As illustration, let us imagine a strait-laced young man who has sex with a woman he meets at a party, and this may be very satisfying for him, showing to the right on the horizontal axis (Figure 6.1). However, he may then judge it as not a good act as it seems promiscuous. That is a negative evaluation of himself, of his behaviour in treating her as a somewhat depersonalised object, simply a source for his own satisfaction. That will score low on the vertical y-axis. So, we can

a 3d space   149

place the value low down on the y-axis. His emotions are then a composite of satisfaction and low moral value—in Figure 6.2 shown by the black dot. High value y-axis

x-axis

Low value

Satisfaction

Frustration

Figure 6.2  Self-evaluation 1

Now, moving on to the third dimension, Appreciation, the z-axis, his lack of appreciation of her as a person will place his feelings near the front of that dimension (near zero), Figure 6.3. High value y-axis

Low value Frustration

Figure 6.3 Appreciation 1

x-axis

Satisfaction

150  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

Then, we could suppose, that on reflection next day and during the week, he may find himself thinking of the woman in terms of her beauty and her kindly passion towards him, and so will find himself appreciative of the satisfaction he received from her. That is, he appreciates his satisfaction as her gift to him; and so, now the dot will move further back on the z-axis (Figure 6.4). High value

y-axis

Low value Frustration

x-axis Satisfaction

Figure 6.4 Change of heart

This change of heart is represented by the arrow in Figure 6.4, where the original position is represented by the hollow dot. Using these three dimensions, it has been possible to plot this particular man’s feelings arising from this incident in his life, and how the plot changes as his feelings evolve over a week. The illustration has been able to capture systematically the dimensions of his feelings in the three-dimensional space, and how on one occasion his experience is in one place but a week later it could move to another. To take a contrasting example, we could now consider a man who is more hedonistic, maybe a little older and worldly-wise. He is less troubled by his moral conscience and about the freedom for sexual satisfactions but does not seem to get the satisfaction he used to when younger. In fact, he is beginning to wonder if some age-related hormone changes are beginning to limit his abilities. We can take his feelings and plot them in the same affective space.

a 3d space   151 High value y-axis

Low value Frustration

x-axis

Satisfaction

Figure 6.5 A hedonistic man

In this case, Figure 6.5, the man’s set of feelings will be plotted so that it shows a position more to the left on the x-axis (and thus frustration). That is, he feels less satisfaction than the man in the previous example. Then he values himself and his sexual needs higher on the y-axis than the previous man did—neither really bad nor good. And with his sense of a declining satisfaction, he appreciates his partner more—further back on the z-axis. The position of the black square in this case (Figure 6.5) is distinctly different from the positions of the strait-laced young man. It indicates an identifiably different feeling location according to Satisfaction/ Self-evaluation/Appreciation. The first-order and two second-order feelings define a point that can be compared with the feelings experienced by some other person. Let us take that first man again. He is keen on football and follows his favourite team, shall we say Arsenal. When he went to watch them win a key match in the championship, he had a specific set of feelings. They can be displayed in Figure 6.6. Here, there is a high level of satisfaction—to the right along the x-axis. As well, there is a strong sense of this football sentiment being a good one—high on the vertical y-axis. His team won, and so he feels warmly appreciative of them, despite not knowing them personally at all—so, moderately far back on the z-axis.

152  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

These sets of feelings are visibly different from his affective experience of his sexual encounter described above, a difference indicated by the relative positions of the black spots in Figure 6.3 and Figure 6.6. High value

y-axis

Low value Frustration

x-axis

Satisfaction

Figure 6.6 A football fan

Body and identity This last illustration is of some interest as more than just an illustration. It tells us something about the basic emotions which have become apparent from using this 3D affective space. It implies that the x-axis is more than just basic bodily needs. Winning a football match is not an instance of bodily needs requiring satisfaction, in the way his sexual desire does. In this case, the satisfaction is a win in a competitive sport. That seems to equate with an appetite that is comparable to an explicitly bodily one. This is still a first-order affect, the football passion to win. It is a feature of his identity—an Arsenal fan—even though it is not explicitly bodily. He has an identity which needs satisfaction just as he needs bodily satisfaction. The identity that occupies the mind comes close to a sensation in the body—as Freud said the ego is at first a bodily ego, before it develops as a sense of self. Now the second-order affect, his Self-evaluation, still arises from the basic passion (now a part of his identity rather than of his body). We could call this an identity-satisfaction and note its equivalence to a bodily satisfaction. Then, the appreciation dimension also refers back to the identity-satisfaction of the x-axis, as it did with his sexual satisfaction. The important conclusion here is that aspects of identity can give satisfaction located on the x-axis just as bodily sensations are. This corroborates the observation made in Chapter 4 that affects

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connect the body and the sense of self; or in other words, that the body and the affective self are intimately linked. There is therefore a powerful connection between the self and the body in which it is located. The internal awareness of self and the internal awareness of bodily sensations have a strong equivalence. This internal configuration is strongly confirmed by the use of the affective space. It is a discovery that could perhaps be apparent from ordinary introspection, and indeed from much of the literature. But the use of the affective space gives a confirming influence.

Reflections on the affective space With this model, it has been possible to locate uniquely complex emotional experiences in this three-dimensional space. It demonstrates the important issue—feelings are not experienced in isolation, there is a tripartite combination—the basic feeling accompanied by a self-evaluation and by a degree of appreciation. These three compose the essential elements of an affect. We can also unpack the classical idea of a virtue as a double aspect of emotion—both an evaluation of self, and then an evaluation of the other person, as orthogonal dimensions. The organisation of feelings as sets of three dimensions brings out several points that become more distinct, and direct attention to further investigation and research. Not only have there been so many theories of affects, but the surprise is that they missed so much of the character of affects. There seems to have been a reductionist aim at work, reducing an affect to some singular thing, when in fact affects occupy a space, and a variety of dimensions to encompass their complexities. The location of feelings in this affective space gives a unique fingerprint for each of an individual’s emotional experiences. The vectored distance between an individual’s affects is probably a unique property of that individual’s experience and is one direction in which research might go. The passions One modification to be introduced is the basic unbidden passions. They come from the body, but (considering the football fan) they also come from identity and the emotional identification with other persons and particularly with a group of others such as the supporters of a

154  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

football team. It is the identity inhabiting a body which is the locus of the passions—both body and identity. It leads to important issues. Recognising that satisfactions of the body (the basic needs and passions) must include the needs of the sense of identity prompts the equation of identity with the body. The identity is clearly not purely psychological. If the basic passions are psychological as well as bodily, we can say that the links between them are emotions. Emotions are concerned with the body and with the self, and the survival of both. A note on morality It is of some interest that Self-evaluation introduces the social order into the experience of affects. The moral evaluations come, in part, from social demands, and are probably one of the strongest of pressures to develop the capacity for self-observation. The y-axis, the second and vertical dimension, is the one particularly concerned with ethical and moral judgements. Not all affects at the satisfaction end of the first dimension are morally good, though they may feel emotionally good. And similarly, at the other end of that dimension, not all at the frustration end are morally bad. Moral considerations are not just restricted to behaviour but include the more internal experience of having the “right” feelings (y-axis). The virtuous, “active” affects are demanded by the affect-regulating society normally activated by an internal self-judgement (a conscience, or a “superego”). Much of the criminal justice system is connected with attempting to ensure that the guilty feel their guilt within themselves.

Plotting emotions Different feelings exist at different points in the affective space. And not just different for an individual at different times. As a simple example, we could take a couple of feelings at more or less random and plot them for the average person. For instance, “generosity” is usually felt as a satisfying feeling, as in “I am a generous person”; it is higher on the y-axis. But it remains fairly neutral on the Appreciation of others, z-axis, either way (Table 6.2).

a 3d space   155

Table 6.2  Generosity in the 3D space Plotting Generosity x-axis (Satisfaction)

++

y-axis (Self-evaluation)

++

z-axis (Appreciation)

±

We can do much the same for, say, “curiosity”. In terms of satisfaction, it is a somewhat restless, unsatisfied feeling (x-axis), but on the whole is usually valued as an attribute of the self, in general, or for the moment; and it also has a neutral value in relation to others (Table 6.3). Table 6.3 Curiosity in the 3D space Plotting Curiosity x-axis (Satisfaction)

−

y-axis (Self-evaluation)

+

z-axis (Appreciation)

±

Table 6.4  Feeling cheated in the 3D space Plotting Cheated x-axis (Satisfaction)

−

y-axis (Self-evaluation)

±

z-axis (Appreciation)

−

An emotion on the negative side would be, say, feeling “cheated”. It is a strongly frustrating feeling, and puts one in a slightly bad light, and leads to a strong negative feeling of anger towards the person who has done the cheating (Table 6.4). Incidentally, the several dimensions can designate even the emotions involved in owning pets. The keeping of a pet and the feeding and petting that is characteristic of this kind of relationship on the x-axis is felt as love (or aggravation) by their owners. They then impact on the owner’s Satisfaction and Self-evaluation and their own Appreciation (high or low) of what the pet makes them feel.

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Priorities of the axes Thus the affective space has the capacity to compare feelings in relation to each other. However, as we have seen, the placing depends on individual experiences. So, the space is to some extent idiosyncratic for an individual person. It can therefore give some indication of that person, and the degree to which dimensions are prioritised by individuals. Specific zones defined within the space could perhaps be identified with specific individuals. Or later, we will see that specific zones within the space may be indicative of certain social contexts. Personality “spaces” The three axes may not always have the same priority. So, under certain circumstances, the shape could become distorted. That could result from specific personalities who habitually have feelings that slot into one end or another of one or other dimension. Some personalities could tend to eliminate the second-order dimensions (y- and z-axes), with a simple concentration on the x-axis. Such people are called antisocial, and their apparent lack of evaluation of their own feelings, and of their appreciation of others’, would distort the space right down to a single dimension, the Satisfaction–frustration x-axis. It might be exemplified in the reduction of humanity to depersonalised entities, perhaps as represented by Scrooge in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Perhaps a more narcissistic person emphasises the self-evaluative y-axis with constant focus on themselves. In this case, the z-axis is reduced, with little interest in the other who has served to provide satisfaction. As the z-axis is reduced, the space tends towards two dimensions, and just the front plane rather than the whole space. Another instance might be someone committed to ascetic practices and religion. They appear to demand an abolition of desire. So, in that case, under the influence of the religious demands (y-axis), the x-axis has significantly shrunk, and the space is again distorted. It too might become just the two y- and z-axes remaining as a two-dimensional plane at right angles to the previous example. However, this is a little more complicated as the two second-order axes exist as reflective processes on the satisfaction–frustration x-axis. And so, if the x-axis

a 3d space   157

is squeezed right down, then what do the other two dimensions reflect on? One could say, for the ascetic religious person, that the y-axis is a self-observation of how short the x-axis is kept. In other words, the shorter the x-axis becomes, the higher the position on the y-axis (and vice versa). The z-axis, Appreciation of the other, would tend to disappear as the x-axis shortens because as satisfaction–frustration disappears, there is less for the person to appreciate in another person. So, with the achievement of the ascetic practices, both the x-axis and the z-axis tend to shrink towards a zero midpoint of each scale, leaving not a plane but a single vertical line of self-observing approval. It has a similar restricted space in the same position as the “space” of the narcissistic personality. It is therefore a feature of this model that the shape of the space used for someone’s affects can become an expression of that personality’s characteristics. We might also express a view of development in this way, and describe maturity as a move from emphasis on the x-axis towards an increasing balance between the three dimensions Contextual “spaces” One might also think of Freud’s description of someone in love and their overvaluation of the other (described in Section VIII of Freud, 1921c). There, the vastly exaggerated assessment of the other person concentrates attention on the z-axis in relation to satisfaction–frustration. So, the space is again shrunk towards a plane—the bottom plane. In this case, it is not just the personality, but the context the person is in at a particular time, the context being the lover. Consider another example—the transactions in a shop. The satisfaction of a need is a complex of giving and taking in a two-way process of acquisition, exchanging an item for money, together with the appreciation of the other with whom the transaction is made. For instance, going into a shop to buy a bottle of milk involves the exchange of money for the milk. It may attract an exchange of mutual thanks, but that affective exchange of thanks is much less dominant than the intimate sentiments of people well known to each other. The segment of the space that comes into use is much smaller. It would appear to be a miniature cube somewhere around the centre of the space, close to where the dimensions

158  THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

are all zero. The size of that space then compares with the much greater range of the dimensions in a close personal relationship. Then, thanks to a shopkeeper for the satisfaction of buying a bottle of milk will be very different from the thanks to a marital partner for making a cup of tea. Then, if the shop assistant, for instance, is serving customers all day, he or she may lose interest in the repetitive transactions—the exchanges lose their significance as an emotional process. And the dimensions may all sink to the zero point in the middle of each dimension. He or she can be said to have become indifferent altogether to the several dimensions, and the space becomes more or less a point at the zero of the dimensions. So, satisfaction becomes minimal, and the evaluation of one’s emotions becomes indifference, as does an interest in customers. Such shop workers could be said to be bored, carers to become “burned-out”. Thus, contexts have an impact on the way affects appear and compare in the space. Defensive reduction of dimensions That shrivelling of the axes in indifference describes a state where experience can fall to a zero midpoint on all three axes, and it may be termed “athymia”. It is the loss of all feelings, or the sense that nothing matters at all. Without affects, in effect, there is indifference. This may be cultivated as a form of defence against possible frustrations which an object could cause—the “don’t care” attitude commonly expressed in childhood. Such a state of indifference is not so uncommon as a means of abolishing frustration and disappointment. In applying this model, we can therefore generate a number of possible results: 1. A space for comparing affects with each other, and over time; 2. Distortion of the affective space can indicate long-standing personality dynamics; 3. The use of restricted areas of the space can be assigned to specific features of the social context; 4. The restricted use of certain dimensions may indicate the deployment of psychological defences (such as indifference).

a 3d space   159

The features of the three-dimensional space are thus complex. However, the complexity can be graphically represented and thus graphically conceptualised.

An alternative to the x-axis A hint was given in Chapter 4 that another system could perhaps be built around a different first-order satisfaction, not the dimension of bodily satisfactions at all. Ronald Fairbairn stated that instead of bodily appetites, the basic instinct is to seek objects: “[L]ibido is not primarily pleasure-seeking, but object-seeking” (Fairbairn, 1946, p. 27). He proposed this drive as a new model of human development: [I]t would appear as if the point had now been reached at which, in the interests of progress, the classic libido theory would have to be transformed into a theory of development based essentially upon object relationships. (Fairbairn, 1941, p. 253)

The replacement of satisfaction of bodily libido by the satisfaction of seeking and finding other persons would provide an opportunity to construct a different set of dimensions and a different geometric space. I do not propose to do that here, but to put an argument against this redefinition of the basic axis. It was acknowledged above that the x-axis represents satisfactions in both a bodily direction and also an experiential sense of self. The view of Fairbairn, however, would be restrictive, moving the satisfaction dimension merely to those satisfactions that can be achieved in relation to others. Hunger, for instance, might be only, or mostly, an experience of the feeder, without much attention to the satisfaction of feeding. At best, if a person is fed by someone, he will have feelings to plot on a z-axis, with the x-axis of little significance. It seems to collapse the space by identifying the x-axis with the z-axis, leaving a two-dimensional graph. Of course, this may be a valid reduction in the space, but it restricts it to two dimensions instead of three. There is a consequent loss of differentiation among feelings. And in addition, a loss of the bodily dimension in the experiencing of feelings.

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Conclusions The way three dimensions can determine the essential features of an affect is a model to bring affects into relation with each other, along primary dimensions. We can locate any particular affect conceivable (or experienceable, I should say). It is a significant step in what a systematic theory of affects could look like. We can now move to a fourth dimension as listed in the conclusion to the analysis in the previous chapter. This is the social role of affects. It will be an investigation of the plotting of an emotion as it is exchanged between people, and between each person’s affective space.

CH A PTER 7

Congruence and complementarity: the “Social role” of affects

T

he analysis in Chapter 5 identified a fourth dimension, “Social role”. So, beyond the second-order dimensions (Self-evaluation and Appreciation), there could be an additional, and third order, of feelings. It arises from the recognition of the crossover of feelings between persons. Two affective spaces are in connection. It is a form of communication that serves also to connect people into a social association with each other. It becomes a form of identification with each other. We not only appreciate the other, the z-axis, but we can assess the internal state of the other for whom appreciation is felt. The understanding of someone else’s feelings seems the almost inevitable occurrence of feelings occurring in the context of others. It is the “psychological ethology” that Krause (2000) mentioned (see Chapter 4, Section 3.1). We do not just know that someone has a feeling, we feel it in them. The feelings that the other has towards the subject are almost as much an integral part of having a feeling oneself. Whereas the z-axis represented the appreciation of the other for some satisfaction he supplied, this fourth dimension is a recognition that the other has his own affective space in connection with our own. There is therefore a kind of social space in which two individuals’ 161

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affective dimensions interlock (the phenomena of groups of more than two individuals can be considered only in passing). For the z-axis, Appreciation, the other person is represented in the subject’s mind. However, the social engagement with others also allows this leakiness in which feelings are exchanged more directly. The object’s feelings are replicated (not represented) in the subject’s experience. In fact, there are two categories of the “leaked” emotions that are directly exchanged. One is “concordant” and the other is “complementary”. These terms come from Racker (1948, 1957): 1) Concordant—the same feeling is transferred from one to another, forming an empathic link. Mostly we recognise the feeling as arising in the other, and we empathise with them (although there may be times when we “absorb” the penetrating emotion as if it were our own). 2) Complementary—a different feeling is aroused in pairs of people such as rage–fear. When one person expresses a generosity, the receiver feels gratitude; then there is forgiveness–apology, and so on. These are matched pairs, and they will mostly be pairs of benign feelings, or pairs of malign ones (though not always). The concordant emotional transfers are rather more straightforward. Two persons share the same feelings (Iacobini, 2009), and we will start by considering this state of affairs.

Concordance Emotions, as Darwin claimed, are for expressing to others. And of course, they are for the receipt of such expression from others, as well. There is a two-way process, which forms a cycle. It is perhaps typical of animal communication. The alarm call of a vervet monkey is received as alarm when others in the group hear it. When a herd of antelope run, they are fleeing together with a common urgency. A pack of wolves will hunt together. Even in pets, the tendency for a cross-species mutual affection or excitement occurs between the pet and its owner, which is a large part of the attraction for owners. It is as LeBon (1895) noted

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when he wrote of “contagion” in groups and was implicitly conveying a concern that humans are not much beyond the animals when in a herd. Actors will always talk of the quality of an audience’s reaction coming through to them as they perform on the stage. They can recognise the receipt of the emotions they portray. There can be a cycle of responsiveness between the internal states of one or more people. As mentioned previously, Hochschild (1983) described how the crew member on a plane who smiles at a passenger will not only feel herself in some way a nicer person, but there is a good chance that she will get a smile in response from the passenger she smiled at. That smile from the passenger will add to the crew member feeling good—and similarly for the passenger. As Greenberg and Mitchell noted at one point about object relations: “[L]ove for one object does not limit, but increases love for others” (1983, p. 144)—it is the old saying: “Smile and the world smiles with you!” That affective build-up includes telephone conversations, real-time video links, and to some extent the currently fashionable social media, tweeting, blogging, etc. However, at the same time, there can be a comparable cyclical buildup of negative feelings. Typically, a punch-up outside a pub on a Saturday night is the outcome of a crescendo of challenges and threats till violence breaks out on both sides. Another example is the aggravation of guilt, shall we say after two drivers bump their cars; a blame-game flares into a rebound of accusation and counter-accusation as each touches on the other’s guilt for the accident, with immediate retaliation. Friends When we make more ordinary friendships, or even between colleagues, our common interests resonate through each other. Joining a chess club enthuses each member. However, even with a common interest people make friends with selected others. Friends who meet at a photographic society might enjoy a similarity of interest all round, but there are those who become more friendly with certain others (or dislike certain others), which is not altogether explained by the common interest. Colleagues working in the same office will discriminate who they would like to have lunch with in the canteen, yet they all do much the same work

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towards the same ends. What brings about that extra, mutual interest in each other? The common interest of, say, members of a photographic society provides the contents for good conversations that take place via conscious thoughts and experiences. But also, we can understand that over time “something” grows between them. It may emerge very quickly, and sometimes it can go wrong very quickly. But there can also be a draw towards each other, a kind of magnetism that attracts. Or it may be absent and each week at the lecture on cameras, printers, or whatever, people can sit side by side with not much of a spark between them. When a spark does occur, what is it that takes off? Side by side with a common interest in photographic composition, there develops a common interest in each other. And, we might ask, how much is that common interest akin, in a mild and non-physical way, to the odd phenomenon of falling in love? In love One of the most intense occurrences is when two people fall in love, often simultaneously. It is a reciprocal process with a quick crescendo. A love relationship is not a rational “act”, entered into on the basis of semantic discussion at the level of an overt contract. Well, partly it is, and the state and the church wish to emphasise that side of it with a binding marital legal agreement. But it starts with a very different kind of highly emotional impulsion. It is an unconscious emotional contract. From an objective point of view, the commitment someone makes to a partner is not merely based on the personal satisfaction of beauty or expert sexual technique, and so on, but the interactions at a different level. Each partner responds at the level of the Appreciative dimension (z-axis) as well. This is not a rational choice. To believe one has found exactly the right unique partner for oneself is just that, a belief. It is not based on a sensible survey of all the possible partners. They are too numerous. One cannot properly make a selection of one unique person from all the seven or eight billion or so people around the world. Of course, considering only the right gender and age range might limit the number for

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Person A’s (z-axis)

selection to say half a billion, but that is still far too numerous. There is no rational choosing here. Tellingly, Freud described: “The ego becomes more and more unassuming and modest, and the object more and more sublime and precious, until at last it gets possession of the entire self-love of the ego” (1921c, p. 113). This overwrought perception cannot but impact, however implicitly, on the object of fascination. So, in fact, there is one possibility that might work after all. If I choose a unique partner for myself, someone I uniquely love, there is one criterion which could make that the unique one. The unique thing about her must be that she uniquely loves me. And then the one thing that makes me a uniquely lovable partner for her is that I uniquely love her. We are “right” for each other on the basis that we have met to swap that uniqueness. This is not just a coincidence. As two people’s appreciation of each other increases, there is a symmetrical tendency for the emotions to move in accord together, represented in Figure 7.1 by the dotted line. The line is at 45 degrees, indicating that as each person moves along the z-axis of their affective space, a negotiation occurs with the other person to move along their axis too, at much the same rate.

Person B’s (z-axis)

Figure 7.1 Persons A and B in love

In more ordinary parlance, Nat King Cole’s smooching had it in his song “Unforgettable” (written by Irving Gordon): That someone so unforgettable Thinks that I am unforgettable too. (https://genius.com/Nat-king-cole-unforgettable-lyrics)

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We are each unforgettably unique for the other, because the other sees me as uniquely in love with her. It is that transmission into me, right into my identity—and equally from me into her (the dotted doublearrow in Figure 7.2). But it is not that my bodily attractiveness has to be unique (thank goodness), or the mental traits of personality. And her appeal is not what she objectively “is”. Our co-ordination of uniqueness is barely conscious. High value

High value y-axis

y-axis

z-axis

z-axis

Low value

x-axis

Frustration

Satisfaction

A

Low value

x-axis

Frustration

Satisfaction

B

Figure 7.2 A and B in love

This is a cyclical process, a positive feedback system between us, confirming the unique love for each other. Narcissism is rampant. But it has a purpose—it is the fuel for a profoundly impelling cycle—a narcissism feeds another’s narcissism. This is a concordant feedback cycle based on the exchange of the same emotion between the two. The intensity on the z-axis of A feeds the x-axis of B. And simultaneously vice versa. There is a deep narcissistic co-ordination along the z-axes of each. Our feelings traverse the affective space in a symmetrical dance. Falling out of love The special relationship built up by this cycle of mutually affirmative sentiments requires continuity. The unique lovableness in the other has to be constantly reaffirmed and re-inserted by each one into the other. If one party refrains from the reaffirmative sentiment, the other may be tempted to hold back, even temporarily, and that is the beginning of

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a process in which the more one withholds, the more the other does— this is another cycle, this time a malign one. So, falling out of love is not so difficult to understand on the basis of a cycle of attributed uniqueness. So long as the compelling mirage of uniqueness is constantly recycled and reaffirmed, the relationship will endure perhaps for a long time, a lifetime. However, that mirage may not last. In living together, which this cycle will lead to, the rough edges sooner or later begin to assert themselves. The lack of narcissistic perfection becomes apparent with the threat of great disappointment and the brutal removal of the bliss, and also of course the removal of that hope that everything will last for ever and ever. Many couples give up in despair, usually blaming the other for the failure—which is in fact realistic, on both sides. It does take two to keep the cycle going. A love relationship is a kind of heavier-than-air machine which needs to keep going in order to keep itself up in the air and on its way. It flies only by going forward, and the cycle needs to be constantly turned. If the partners tire of the task of reaffirmation, the cycles wear thin and the machinery cannot keep airborne, so the heavier-than-air contraption falls to the ground, usually with a devastating crash for both parties. Love inevitably means a lot of other things—waiting, frustration, jealousy, loss and mourning, rage and guilt. These are difficult things, and they are the absolutely direct consequences of loving another person. It is difficult to hold the difficult things to one side in order to allow the supreme mutual admiration to endure. If the difficult things are not held in abeyance then the disastrous slide into the viciousness of the malign cycle looms inevitable. Falling out of love can therefore be represented in Figure 7.1 as a slide back down the dotted line towards the negative point, often very rapidly. We can note one asset that can come into play. That asset is another and different cycle, one that involves forgiveness and apology. One partner may attempt to rescue the situation with a heroic attempt at forgiving and promoting the affirmation of uniqueness again. If this does not convert back into a sustained mutual reaffirmation quite quickly, it must inevitably lapse into the malign cycle once more. The cyclical pattern provoked by forgiveness is not concordant since it involves different

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affects in the two parties—forgiveness in one, apology in the other. And we will return to that shortly. Avoidance Several methods come to mind as the means to avoid this risky pattern of mutual idealisation, and de-idealisation. One method is to forgo loving other human persons altogether and establish in one’s mind a mutual love with an unreal imaginary figure instead. A god is a good candidate, and it is perhaps one of the less creditable reasons for religiousness and for the commitment to celibacy which may go with it. Another candidate for the loved and imagined object is a domestic pet kept more or less under total control by the owner. A second method, perhaps more common, is to displace the hatred onto quite different others, a phenomenon Freud called the narcissism of minor difference: “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness” (1930a, p. 114). That applies to the group of two, as much as larger groupings. The two cycles—the benign and the malign—run side by side but are kept insulated from each other by being directed to different others—“I love you because I hate the mother-in-law”. Love and the body A further method for giving some protection against the emotional crash from the sky can be maintained by the physical relationship. Giving sexual satisfaction (x-axis) to each other and receiving it from each other provides possibilities for the second-order quality, Appreciation (z-axis), to spark up again. And then to translate back into the benign cycle—“I love you because your body loves mine”. Being such a powerful bind for human beings, sexual relations have a big impact on these cycles. They involve satisfaction of both bodies, and therefore it has a form that is suited to the affective cycles. Affective interchange of satisfaction and appreciation at the mental level can go hand-in-hand with mutuality of satisfaction at the bodily level. It is important, too, that there is a similar benign cycle to be celebrated in the emotions set up through bearing children. Each of the

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partners feels giving and feels given to, and in response each feels appreciation and appreciated. This affective mutuality is rehearsed with birthday presents, Christmas presents, and significantly with the mutual celebration of anniversaries of the initial meeting, engagement, weddings (silver, golden, etc.) or moving in together, childbirth, and all its subsequent stages. The same goes for other, more simple, less climactic events: cooking meals, driving the car, and the countless little actions and contributions to the joined lives every day. These are mutual moments and actions that give opportunities for rescuing the original benign cycling. Ownership When one person tells of their bereavement to another, the experience crosses over into the other person as a feeling of a bereavement too; but that other person knows it is not their own bereavement. The feeling is in each other, though the origins are different, and the person identified as the one to whom the feeling “belongs” is only one of them. However, one form of concordance is where we confuse the origins of the feelings. The receiver can experience the feeling as originating in the receiver him- or herself. And the projector can deny such emotions. In that case, the exchange of feelings from one to another person does not always preserve the identity of the person in whom the feeling arises. Then, the crossover occurs without truly recognising whose it was initially. This is particularly applicable to groups, where a “contagious” feeling circulates with everyone owning it as their own. In a football crowd, each person shouts as one when the team scores a goal. Or a lynching mob in which the whole group becomes focused as if one. At times, and more exaggerated in a psychiatric practice, the exchange is actually intended to leave someone else with the feeling, by intention, and the projecting person loses it with some relief. The receiving person may then feel as if it is their own feeling, however distressing it is, and has been for the transferring person. In this case, the ownership of the feeling is transferred with the affect itself. Perhaps an example from a psychiatric service is the compulsory admission of a patient who is deemed lacking in capacity to manage their own lives, etc. Then the service, the ambulance crew, the admitting doctor,

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the ward staff are perfused with the feelings of responsibility for the patient which the patient himself no longer owns (see, for instance, the mentally ill patient in the paper by Conran, 1985). It is significant that the identity of the transferring, projecting person is changed, and actually diminished, by the loss, and the identity of the receiver is also changed, and enhanced in some way, even though it may be distress that is acquired. This is all a strange process of emotional exchange and identity change, but it is not so foreign to ordinary observation. Marital “harmony” The following is a description of a dynamic observed in a married couple. In this case, there is a swapping not only of two emotional experiences, but of aspects of each person (each person’s ego-function) and thereby a change in the identities of each other. Two experiences, one from each partner, are located in the other: A wife, for instance, may force her husband to own feared and unwanted aggressive and dominating aspects of herself and will then fear and respect him. He in turn may come to feel aggressive and dominating towards her, not only because of his own resources but because of hers, which are forced into him. But more: for reasons of his own he may despise and disown certain timid aspects of his personality and by projective identification force these into his wife and despise her accordingly. She may thus be left not only with timid unaggressive parts of herself but having in addition to contain his. (Main, 1975, p. 101)

Each partner adjusts their own identities by exchanging parts of their personalities with each other—they are relieved of aspects and experiences they do not accept in themselves—emotions that are ego-dystonic. It is convenient for both, but each loses an element of their own self and identity, whilst enhanced in the opposite respect. The wife’s aggressive impulses are deeply unsatisfying and can be plotted at the left end of the x-axis (Figure 7.3). Then also, on the y-axis,

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she would value herself negatively, for being aggressive. And further, she would have a low appreciation towards the other person who makes her aggressive. This then transfers into the husband where the placing of the black spot rises up the y-axis as he judges his aggression as strength and a good. High value

High value y-axis

y-axis z-axis

Low value

z-axis

Low value

x-axis

Frustration

Satisfaction

Wife’s aggression

x-axis

Frustration

Satisfaction

Husband’s aggression

Figure 7.3  Marital dynamics

This is a concordant transfer from one to another. A comparable figure could be drawn for the husband’s soft side. It would be initially low (ego-dystonic), and to the left. And then, after the projection into the wife, it would appear to rise on the y-axis as a character trait that is now good in the wife. In this way, both enhance their own self-evaluation by the exchange. There are two exchanges, each is concordant: the wife’s aggression becomes the husband’s, and the husband’s tenderness becomes the wife’s. This is an instance of a concordant exchange. In this case, and unlike the interaction between the z-axes of A and B in love (Figure 7.2), here there is a strong contribution from the y-axis, that is the self-evaluation of aggression or of tenderness. The interpenetration of people whose emotions enmesh in this concordant way, the “Social role” of affects, is the basis for stable social relations on which families and groups depend. It is not quite the same as the in-love uniqueness. This enmeshed change of identity via these links is something most of us grow up with, if we can bear to see it, with our mother in infancy and when we witness it between our parents in childhood, and eventually an element of the relation with a marital partner.

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We can note, incidentally, that this arrangement with advantage to both gaining on the y-axis helps to lock the pair together. It is therefore some protection if the in-love cycle fails. Both need each other for exporting something of themselves. It can compensate for a tiring of the mutual uniqueness, and a reinvigorating of that cycle. The exchange of emotions between people such as the married couple involves an emotion moving up the scale of one of the dimensions. Where that condition is not met, as in the blame game between two drivers, the result is not stable. In that case, the receiver usually re-transfers the feeling back again—or possibly into a third person. To summarise, concordant feelings are simply shared with others. In a concert hall, we are swayed in much the same way as others; and when we watch a horror film, we feel our horror at the alien’s menace. We have a taste of their pleasure at getting engaged, winning at the races, or sadness at losing a loved one, and so on. We empathise with others. Although at other times, we adopt the feelings of others as if the feeling were our own. Then we are suffused with some experience which feels like our own, but in fact derives from someone else. These are two distinct concordant exchanges.

Complementarity and its complexity Having discussed the concordant, we now move to the second, the complementary. Whereas in the concordant interaction, two people exchange the same emotion, in complementary exchanges two people meet with feelings that differ but match as a pair of emotions that are linked by their quality. The second category in its intricacies becomes very complex. A beginning is made here to unravel some of these in detail. The complementarity of affects between two people invariably takes the form of feedback cycles which, like the concordant ones, may be of two forms, benign or malign, but can, unsettlingly, swap between those forms. There is a particular fragility to the complementary interactions which can, however, be followed with the help of the four-dimensional model of affects. This kind of affective interaction is also apparent in animals and seemingly less complex. First, attack in one—strong negative Appreciation—provokes fear and flight in another, indicating the complementarity between attack and fear. Then the second main

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complementary exchange is sexuality, which involves a penetrative urge in one and a receptivity in the other. For humans, however, there is much more complexity between sets of paired feelings and thus pairing people together. The increase in complexity is due to our having opened up the affective space by introducing the y-axis and the z-axis—the secondorder feelings—creating a three-dimensional space. The second-order dimensions are very limited in animals, although perhaps a qualification for being a domestic pet is that there might be some degree of restraint applied via the y-axis­, and some positive affection on the z-axis.

Gratitude and generosity But we will dwell on human beings and start with the familiar interaction of gratitude and generosity. I feel gratitude for a generous gesture someone else has made towards me. Thus, generosity in one person is paired with gratitude in the other. Each feeling arises in one of the two people and is felt as belonging to that person. There is not a concordant empathic know-how-you-feel quality as with the concordant exchange of the same feeling. Crucially, gratitude first of all comes from a straightforward satisfaction, x-axis. But not only. The gratitude is not simply towards the other person as a satisfier, the z-axis measure. It comes also from recognising that the other person has their own feelings—including a generosity. The other person feels a willingness to bring about the satisfaction—that person has given satisfaction because they feel generous. This is the complementarity between generosity in the one person and gratitude in the other. Generosity in one engages gratitude in the other. Of course, there are those who frustrate rather than gratify with generosity. They are then attributed the feelings of meanness and selfishness, leading to a similar interaction although with opposite value to the feelings—that is, a malign cycle. As with the concordant form, this sensitivity to the other person’s affective space is a step beyond the appreciative dimension, the z-axis. It concerns the actual interaction of the emotions of both individuals as they impact upon each other. Then this psychosocial space formed of two interacting affective spaces resembles the figure drawn for the marital couple in Figure 7.3, where feelings are passed between the couple. However, in the case of complementary feelings, it is not the same

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feeling which appears in the other person’s affective space, but a feeling that is complementary. Gratitude for some satisfaction is felt when another person acts in a benevolent way towards me—this is the straightforward z-axis of appreciation. But, the complementarity involves that person giving me a gift which feels benign and which elicits a benign receiving. When my child gives me a present for my birthday, I feel pleased, not just with the present. I give her a kiss on the cheek. I don’t give the present a kiss; I kiss her. I am pleased with the gift—x-axis—and also I appreciate her—z-axis. So, I not only appreciate her gift itself, but I can also respond to the generosity I see in her. I see some feeling located in her affective space.

Figure 7.4 Plot for gratitude (and generosity)

In Figure 7.4, gratitude is a benign feeling and will be located at the top right—high on the x-axis (satisfaction), and on the y-axis (selfevaluation), and highly appreciated (z-axis), indicated by +. Interestingly, the generosity will also tend to have a similar placing. There may be some minor variations on the axes for different personalities, but they will both plot with a degree of similarity. Moreover, I am not just pleased at receiving, not just grateful. I give in return; in gratitude, I feel generous towards my daughter for her present and give a moment of personal affection, a kiss on her cheek. My appreciation, my kiss, also becomes a gift, a generosity. And then that generosity, in the kiss is appreciated, and she feels gratitude. There is a

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complex correlation of feelings around the material gift. It is important in itself, but it triggers a complex reciprocal exchange of feelings. Both parties feel the warmth of gratitude and of generosity. If we think again of the strait-laced man in Chapter 5, this commonplace story might find him seeking from an acquaintance the contact details of the girl he had bedded after the party. And he and the girl arrange a date for the next weekend, when the emotions turn out to blossom further. At this point, he becomes aware of her, not just as another human being engaged on her own pleasures, but he realises that his appreciation of what she has done for him meets a corresponding set of feelings in her—that is, her interest in his pleasure. He then feels the warmth of her attention and the gift of her passion for him. His grateful appreciation has thus complemented her generosity towards him. His feeling moves further along the scale on the z-axis (towards the back). Of course, we can take the other perspective, and describe from her point of view how her generosity meets his gratitude. A similar progress of reciprocal processes occurs for her. And indeed, if the occasion was a satisfactory one, then it is likely they could find a reciprocity in which her gratitude meets his generosity in pleasing her. A reasonable chance of a reciprocity of these complementary emotions may lead to the falling in love described previously, so that the complementarity can lead to a concordant cycle. Generosity

Gratitude

Gratitude

Generosity

Figure 7.5 Generosity–gratitude cycle

This complex can then become a cycle, but not as concordant feelings did in the previous description. Here the emotions aroused are alternate in each partner. Each feeling complements the other. Although it is true that both parties have a pair of feelings, it is not a simple transfer. Each person feels the same two feelings, but the process is an alternation of the two different feelings (Figure 7.5). The cycle consists of feelings that

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alternate on either side—generosity arouses gratitude in the other, and then the gratitude arouses generosity. It is a benign feedback cycle, in which generosity and gratitude appear to be inevitably linked. The two kinds of cycles, concordant and complementary, are not always separate; they may both occur. The empathic smiles of the flight attendant and the passenger which are concordant may also be infused with a complementarity as well. The passenger can feel a warmth of gratitude for the welcome because it feels a generous one. And then the flight attendant can feel the passenger’s gratitude is a generous appreciation, so the complementary cycle can go around as well as the concordant one. By identifying the dimensions of affective space, it has been possible to follow this intricate, double process of feedback between the matched pair, generosity and gratitude.

Forgiveness In the example, previously of two people in love, it was argued that a falling out of love could occur due to one person dropping the baton, as it were. One person interrupts the benign cycle out of some form of resentment at the dependency (or guilt, or for any other reason), and the whole love relation threatens to crash. The cycle slips into a malign one. One person stops presenting to the other the feeling of being uniquely special, and then this hurts the second person, who is tempted (and often succumbs to the temptation) to also interrupt the supply of uniqueness to the first person. The risk then is of a cycle in which the hurt done to the second person prompts them to retaliate against the hurt by hurting the first person. Such a concordant cycle of hurt provoking hurt can become instituted in place of the benign loving cycle; it is a malign hurting cycle. However, it can still be possible to pull things back, provided the persons will take stock of what has happened to them. The influence of the y-axis (self-evaluation) may click in at some moment, entailing a self-observation of themselves, and what they have done. The rescue is a necessary act of forgiveness for the hurt. As the hurtful malign cycle is concordant and the intention to hurt motivates both, then the attempt to recover could be initiated by either of the two people. In the act of forgiveness, the hurt is put aside in an attempt to reconstitute the reassuring uniqueness of the loving cycle. The other

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person can then decide to respond to this rescue operation in one of two ways. They may respond to the forgiveness and feel and express an apology, or they could continue with the cycle of hurt in retaliation. So, forgiveness intercedes in the retaliatory cycle of hurt-for-hurt such that the hurt cycle has some chance of abating, but with no certainty. Forgiveness

Apology

Apology

Forgiveness

Figure 7.6  Forgiveness–apology cycle

In the instance of an apology, there is the potential for a new benign cycle to arise with feelings of forgiveness and apology operating as another matched pair, another complementarity. Forgiveness leads to a reciprocity that is not quite the same as gratitude–generosity (Figure 7.5) but it is similar (Figure 7.6). Forgiveness—as the word “forgiveness” in English partially implies—is generous, a giving. The giving is a kind of tolerance of a mistake. Apology in response to forgiveness is then an appreciation of, or gratitude for, that tolerance. But the apology is then appreciated by the forgiving person. And the apologiser will feel a “generosity” towards the forgiver. Therefore, when apology meets the forgiving, the outcome is a cycle that returns to generosity meeting gratitude. Each of the pair stimulates in the other person an increase in the other matching feeling. Forgiving is a somewhat contradictory feeling as it is a benign one in response to malign hurt. It is not easy, and it depends completely on the other person joining in with a benign response, an apology, so that both agree to forgo the malign cycle. The forgiving person will find it taxing to keep up their benign initiative if apology is not forthcoming fairly quickly. It needs to happen sooner rather than later. Forgiveness without apology will of course fall back into a further episode of the malign hurt–hurt cycle. A related variant of this kind of rescue reverses the order. Instead of forgiveness followed by apology, a person may initiate an apology

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and seek forgiveness. However, it entails acknowledging a responsibility for contributing to something going wrong. Apology, then, is an attempt at a generosity as a form of recompense for some harm. This involves another intricate interaction involving guilt and restitution. In this eventuality, it may also be taxing to sustain the apologetic feeling beyond a brief period of time before forgiveness can eventually emerge. Apology, like forgiveness, is benign, though difficult, because it too is a paradoxical feeling—a benign one in the midst of a malign cycle. A person offering forgiveness must remain uncertain until receiving an apologetic response (as must an apologiser awaiting forgiveness). The attempt to struggle back to a benign cycle offers no certainty, and that might convince some people to avoid forgiveness. Better protection seems then to be offered by continuing the negative option, as if preventing the possibility of a risk of failure of the generous offering before it can occur. It may be felt that one has more control over the malign cycle than over the benign one. The generosity of forgiving may then be met without an apology, but with a negative dismissal. Generosity

Gratitude

Forgiveness

Apology

Figure 7.7 Parallel cycles

An offer of forgiveness has a further message. There is a sort of secondary message that says that the other person feels the subject to be so valuable and worthwhile, it is worth tolerating something painful. It is as if the forgiver were saying, “I will tolerate you and forgive because you are valuable and important to me. I want to get back to an affirming cycle with you.” So, the apology to the object who forgives conveys a message of appreciation that he or she is valued on that z-axis (Figure 7.7). This can then merge back again to some form of the reciprocating (concordant) love/friendship relationship. Perhaps the ability to sustain ongoing community and social life depends heavily on the rescue operation of the forgiveness–apology

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interaction. Emotional life, emotional relations, and certainly family (and social) structures depend on instituting these kinds of forgiving alternatives to prevent the concordant hurt–hurt cycle becoming too frequent or too entrenched. Superiority These complementary interactions that rescue a relationship are subtle, difficult, maybe unreliable, involving many other kinds of feelings, satisfying or painful, that we cannot fully go into here. However, one obvious turbulence is when, instead of feeling forgiven, grateful, and then apologetic, the forgiven person experiences being patronised. The forgiver has taken the moral high ground. In fact, some forms of generosity may indeed be suffused with a superior elitism, so that the generous or forgiving person can assume the other is weak, powerless, and helpless. Generosity is, in this case, combined with an experience of a relation of power and weakness, and of strength or vulnerability. It is likely then to be experienced as condescending and belittling. Thus structured, the relationship then becomes a moral and powerful hierarchy. To initiate that power cycle, or to perceive it as such, pushes back towards the malign cycle. Gratitude and envy Forgiveness is paradoxical in that it is a benign feeling in the face of a malign one. There is another, and opposite, paradoxical feeling. That feeling is envy, a malign hate in the face of a benign generosity, and often described as biting the hand that feeds you. This follows from the last case when generosity or forgiveness is felt as a patronising put-down. Then instead of gratitude in response to generosity, there is resentment at being patronised, and therefore a refusal to accept what generosity offers. It is absolutely not the case in general that generosity exerts power and patronage, though it may do so at times and in certain relations. If such a paradox does exist, there is then a complicated feedback system that is no longer a self-perpetuating benign cycle. The generous person may evaluate, that is, the y-axis, and evaluate their own benign feelings as good. But they are then confronted by an unexpectedly malign response to their generosity by the recipient on the z-axis. Envy cannot

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be felt as a benign complement to their own generosity. It demands some resilience on the part of the generous person to sustain generous feelings, and often they do not. They become retaliatory in some way, critical or dismissive of the envious one, who is then confronted by their position of dependency from which support, affection, and generosity have now been removed by the unappreciated one. Bitter recriminations may then flow back and forth as the potential for the benign cycle converts into the malign one. The hurt–hurt interaction grows up, as described above. It can then so easily become a self-sustaining malign system in place of the generosity–gratitude cycle that had once been promised. So, the complementarity of the generosity–gratitude system is risky, and generosity can be located unpredictably in relation to both positive and negative emotions in two different feedback systems. So, the potential complementary cycle of gratitude–generosity risks failing in a number of ways, resulting in the eruption of a negative cycle instead.

Zones of complementarity These exchanges are complex and intricate. There is a whole network of complementary pairs. From the discussion above, gratitude is not the only pairing for generosity. For instance, we can see a web of links with others, spreading out, with various complementarities (superiority– inferiority, power–weakness). These are links between emotions on the basis of matched pairing (Figure 7.8). Gratitude

Generosity

Patronising

Envy

Hurt Hurt

Hate Forgiveness

Apology

Guilt

Figure 7.8  Zone of some complementary feelings

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The feelings adjacent to generosity and forgiveness are therefore multiple, including hurt, apology, and even guilt, as well as appreciation and gratitude. In this zone of interpenetrative affective space, there are many complementary pairs as in Figure 7.8, and we could construct similar zones around many other emotions. It is probable that all zones interact with each other and generate a continuous spatial network of affects. Fragility Benign feelings and malign ones complement each other in several ways, stamping a fragility on benign pairs. When a benign cycle of generosity and gratitude converts into a malign one of envy and retaliations, it is a moment not easily foreseen or managed. The generous other can arouse inferiority in the person they are generous towards, arousing in them feelings of dependence, or inadequacy, or even a lack of separateness. The reaction to that state of humiliation, or of a weak neediness, constitutes the hatred known as “envy” (Segal, 1993). Such a spectrum of negative responses is startling but may feel all too real. Not only envy, but there are other possible interruptions. They may arise from genuine reality conflicts, or there may be stress from other sources that aggravate those malign feelings of dependence and inadequacy. One possibility is depression with its core of guilt and a sense of not being worthy to receive generous attention. All these sources contribute to benign cycles being unpredictable. Hurt and hate may induce fear in others. Then, certain other responses like compliance, avoidance, submissiveness, and even an acceptance of punishment, complement the hate. A network forms a zone for hate, similar to the one for generosity. I do not set out that zone, as the general idea of a network or an affective zone is clear from Figure 7.8. In fact, there are zones around most complementary pairs where positive and negative possibilities exist. As a result, the emotional states arising from forgiving, from generosity or apology can be fragile, and create many opportunities for the faltering of the benign cycles. The consequent resort to the malign nevertheless allows some possibilities for eventually rescuing the situation. This unpredictability can be intolerable, and even when things go well, there is always a possibility the cycle can flip back suddenly into a malign one.

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Moreover, as a person’s identity is so suffused with the affects they feel, this fragility of emotional states must lead to a fragility in the sense of identity and of self-evaluation. It can result in a permanent sense of self-instability. Some people will have had, from accumulated circumstances, the repeated experience of a flip between these cycles, and so they may develop an inherent potential for the malign affects. A continuous uncertain dependency can lead to other unsatisfactory interactions that may aim at security rather than an authentic involvement in these risky cycles. Perhaps the complexities and uncertainties of this complementary pairing make the human being the most unpredictable of animals. We are not just the most sophisticated, but the most vulnerable to our sophistication going wrong.

Indifference Social enmeshment can mean, at times, an involvement without feelings at all, that is, a state of indifference. It may be a reaction to the fragility of human affective life, which makes it preferable to conduct human relations without feeling. At those times, appreciation (z-axis) is at the negative end. At other times, individuals can be seen in robotic terms, and at the zero point of the z-axis, without any of the I-see-what-youmean empathy and sensitivity. Despite modern communication, the possibilities of concordant and complementary engagements between affective spaces seem reduced. Those others far away cannot easily be graced with the acknowledgement of their affective space, and this may happen on a mutual basis. Rights and obligations Connected with this anonymisation is a kind of exchange system which operates similarly to the systems discussed, but which lacks something. This is when a system of rights and obligations takes the place of generosity and gratitude. It has considerable advantages in that it avoids much of the emotional fragility and vulnerability of the social space of this last, fourth dimension. It unfortunately has a major disadvantage in that it tends to dehumanise others. That is, they are no longer players in the emotional exchanges. Finding someone with an obligation to

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provide a right ensures an exchange can take place without the “handshake” of intimate sentiment. Affective spaces do not meet and interact. Rights–obligations focuses down on the basic Satisfactions needed, the x-axis, whilst Appreciation on the z-axis is more or less forgone. The other person is reduced so that appreciation tends to be disregarded. A kind of mechanical quality takes over, a legal contract as opposed to an emotional generosity. To quote an anthropologist writing about social exchange systems: [There is a] logical opposition between gifts (relations between non-aliens by means of inalienable things) and commodities (relations between aliens by means of alienable things). (Gregory, 1997, pp. 52–53)

This is, strictly speaking, concerned with the exchange of physical goods and the contrast between gift-based societies and commercial ones (Carrier, 1997; Gregory, 1982; Hyde, 1983). But it can be seen to apply to emotional exchanges where the feeling of having a right or an obligation seems to reduce down to sending or receiving a commodity. In other words, the persons involved in the exchange become anonymised, or in Gregory’s terminology, they are alien to each other. One might think of the applicant going to a social benefits office to negotiate some right that he has. To claim his benefit, he meets an official who may be one of many, and nameless, and usually through a glass screen. The capacity for a meeting enriched by generosity and gratitude is severely reduced. Emotions can be excluded, and at the extreme completely blanked out in a state referred to previously as “athymia” (Chapter 6), with only sterile, unemotional exchanges between the persons. Alternatively, the demand for rights can be fiercely felt, or performing obligations may be greatly resented. It does not always entail the complete exclusion of the personal emotions, including generosity–gratitude. But the more benign of emotions tend to be in the background. These exchanges exist in the context of power relations, and the power here inevitably falls back on the power to hurt, arouse fear, and to coerce. In many ways, the rights–obligations exchange is an attempt to reverse power relations by offering the rights-seeker the opportunity to threaten moral condemnation or to engage in legal process. Whilst

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it may fit appropriately in a society that has become highly commercial and “alienating”, there are also other aspects which may bring rights– obligations to the fore. Most significant is that it can protect against the vulnerability that comes with neediness and feeling helpless, and against the common risk of a benign cycle flipping into a malign one as described. The risks which bring about that flipping are much reduced with rights–obligations. The demand for one’s rights does not rely on gratitude and generosity, but seeks a moral power. It moves the “Social role”, the fourth dimension, from the z-axis of emotional appreciation (positive or negative) and emphasises the y-axis of moral rectitude. As we have noted, an easy recourse to a negative feedback cycle of recrimination, hate, and grievance is a protection against disappointment. It is better not to aspire to a benign cycle in the first place, and thus avoid disappointment. A system of rights and obligations therefore has more to do with the patronising power–weakness complementarity. There are engagements on the three dimensions of the affective space: 1. For the rights-seeking partner, it emphasises the first dimension, x-axis, satisfaction–frustration, brings in the second dimension (selfevaluation, y-axis) as a kind of moral coercion as a balancing and recriminatory power, and neutralises any positive assessment on the appreciative dimension, the z-axis. The fourth social dimension may easily move away from the benign cycle of gratitude–generosity, so that the complementarity tends to be a threat–fear exchange. 2. From the other point of view—the view of the one obliged—the interaction demands a negative on the x-axis with no satisfaction, nor even an appreciation on the z-axis. But self-evaluation, on the y-axis is high while the obligation is being satisfied. Whereas the above might describe a welfare set-up in a social democratic system, another example may be the frowned-upon sex-for-money relationship. It rests mostly on the first dimension, x-axis, where the partners each get their primary satisfaction—bodily or financially—as an unsentimental bargain. It is therefore without second-order feelings, neither y-axis nor z-axis. The primary emotions become impersonal and mechanical, and eschew the relations of the fourth social dimension.

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This may be convenient, of course, so long as the convenience of the impersonal engagement is mutual. It becomes painful for a partner if he or she has not decoupled the second and third dimensions as well as the fourth concordant–complementary cycles. The implication of this view is that the second-order affects are detachable in an almost voluntarist way and, as in Chapter 6, the affective space is distorted in such social contexts. The motivations for this voluntary disconnection of the second-order and third-order dimensions are the advantages of avoiding the vulnerability of the flip from benign to malign cycles described above. Indifference and politics Many political issues arise from this decoupling of the second-order dimensions. The resulting indifference leads to an alienation, as indicated. A kind of giving is sustained but that “generosity” is converted into a very different form. It becomes an alienating obligation. Instead of an ethical responsibility, the transaction is governed by a legalism. Typically, “the law is blind”, and thus the depersonalisation through blinding to being persons reduces ethical responses. Commodification of this kind leads, for instance, to the use of the planet in ways which may ultimately be destructive of the civilisation that has produced the technology of exchange and commodification. Some extraordinary psychology experiments—now deemed unacceptable—have demonstrated this capacity for humans to lose their sense of others on the second-order dimensions. I can mention only very briefly the coercion involved in Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience (Milgram, 1974), where under duress, subjects, out of their attitude to authority, could be induced to endanger others as if no longer persons. Similarly, Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment (Zimbardo, 2007) was a simulated prison situation with psychology students playing out roles of prisoners and prison guards, with an alarming drift towards the enactment of an actual oppressive and punitive authority. The experiment had to be terminated early. There is little in fact to be surprised at in the amputation of the second-order feelings which have been such a new evolutionary acquisition by the human species.

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In summary, this important fourth dimension recognises the affective space of the other. It is not the z-axis which is merely Appreciation for the other’s satisfying oneself. In this fourth dimension, the other’s whole affective space is recognised and affected. There is a necessary proximity and interconnectedness between the affective spaces of more than one person. The social dimension is a mutual engagement of each person’s three-dimensional space. So, all the axes—the levels of Satisfaction, of Self-evaluation, and of Appreciation—are implicated in an empathic connection. This fourth dimension is connected with the human capacity for a deep observation of others. It is a deeper social sensitivity and not a herd instinct. It is something especially human, a highly nuanced and complex involvement with each other’s affective world. We live inside each other to some extent, as well as within ourselves. We can conclude that the fourth dimension, in its two forms, concordant and complementary, provides a model of emotional experience and interaction which is demonstrably capable of coherent explanations of a wide variety of experienced affective situations. This “Social role” dimension is captured in the distinction between, “I’ve heard what you say” (cognitive), compared with, “I know how you feel” (affective). The first represents the intellectual acknowledgement, but the second indicates an experience of knowing the other’s emotion from feeling it as well. Each person achieves some direct knowledge of what the other’s feelings are. It is so direct, it is a recreation within oneself—an empathy. It has been possible not only to identify feelings in relation to each other, but also to give a systematic understanding of the zones of emotional interactions which are so complex, troublesome, but engaging for the human race.

CH A PTER 8

Exchange and being

A

t an abstract level, the relations of the emotions to the body could be investigated in terms of the correlation with brain location and function. But here, we will instead reflect on the social implications of the exchange of feelings between individual people. It has seemed important to link up this system of exchanging affects with an other with similar social systems, including gift exchange and commercial trading. Affects as described in the literature (Chapter 4) have a strong presence in the social domain of life, starting with the classical notion of the virtues, leading to LeBon’s “contagion”, to emotional labour, and affect regulation. Here, we will examine the relation with social exchange theories of other disciplines. This will entail some consideration of both economic game theory based on the trading of goods, and also social exchange theory. In both, the primary principle is profit and loss, win or lose. This will point to the importance of exchange for its own sake. There is a question whether affect exchange itself initiated the impetus for the human activity of trading of goods and commodities as well as psychical goods. The relation between the personal and impersonal exchange of 187

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material goods noted by anthropologists such as C. A. Gregory, quoted in the last chapter, bears on the historical development of human societies. The evolution of trade has diverted towards an impersonal and commercial form, and it may in fact have inspired a kind of depersonalising of emotions over recent centuries. The fate of feelings is that they will inevitably have to carry into the future the personal quality of human living and being.

Win–win exchange The political and economic aspects of trading and exchange of material goods between individuals, organisations, and nations came to prominence in the eighteenth century. Early economists such as Adam Smith and David Riccardo had been struck by a counter-intuitive phenomenon of free trade. They saw trade as a bilateral arrangement by which both parties benefit and, conducted between two countries, it helps both. For example, a country specialising in agricultural products trading with an industrial country may benefit each. The agriculture in the first will be stimulated by economies of scale, investment, and production by supplying both countries, and the same applies to the manufacturing industry in the second country. Both experience economic development through trading with each other, each in their specialised ways. This goes beyond a simple exchange. It allows both economies to expand. It is not a simple in–out balance as in bookkeeping. Game theory evolved as a mathematical calculation of these counterintuitive gains and losses in market trading of material goods (Poundstone, 1993; von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944). In contrast to a simple profit–loss system in domestic bookkeeping, trade can realise a profit to both parties, and so game theory adopted the terms win–win and win–lose as designations for the benefits of trade, or for the balancing of the books. Those economists of the eighteenth century also wondered what came before the commercial systems of Europe. The exploration of the world at that time had shown commercial trading was not a feature of all societies. They conjectured that people had previously traded according to a barter system, and without money. More recently, this has been seriously questioned by anthropologists, who have shown from observation that a gift economy has been the precursor (see the quote from

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Gregory in the previous chapter; also, Bollier, 2002; Malinovski, 1923; Mauss, 1925), and that money developed only when there was loss of trust in the reciprocating of gifts (Graeber, 2011). Emotional exchange compares much more closely to the nature of a gift economy than a commercial economy (Hinshelwood, 1982, 1989). Anthropologists often think of the form of trade in a gift economy as primitive. But, in the present reading, that form, as briefly characterised by Gregory, may in fact have been simply parallel, and to have survived in some form in the most human and personal forms of exchange up to the present. It is characteristic now of more private exchanges among friends and family rather than the more commercial forms. Social exchange theory (Heath, 1978; Homans, 1958, 1961) derived from game theory and stuck closely to the win–win and win–lose profit accounting. A kind of “social credit” was conceived to conform to these patterns seen in social engagements. Moreover, not only is there the introduction of gain and loss, but also a significant process of depersonalisation. Similar to the move from a gift economy to a commercial one, social exchange theory seems to invite a loss of an enchanting intimacy in personal exchange. Perhaps it is naive to consider a profit and loss accounting as the fundamental motivation, and that we might somehow want to restore personal attachment and affective pleasure back into the heavy work of freighting transport around the world. The possibility seems remote and challenging, and yet it may be a real element residing unseen and unfertilised behind all the physical and cognitive labour involved in economic trading and its accounting.

Affect exchange theory Astonishingly, we could make a claim that this personal and affective exchange has a primacy in both our personal developmental and the development of human cultures. Mother and baby In the second section of Chapter 4 on experimental psychology, we noted the way a baby and mother exchange facial expressions with each other. Vocal (though not verbal) noises and hand, arm, and body

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movements may also be exchanged in an imitative fashion to the delight of both (Trevarthen, 1979, 1998). Another comparable development takes place from seven to nine months (at a time when language first starts). The baby passes objects into the hand of another (sometimes into the mouth) and then receives them back again. There is clearly a very primitive form of material exchange going on at this stage of development. And we observe an emotional correlate of the physical exchange that delights both baby and mother (and even paediatrician). And if the movement to and fro with the other is interrupted and the other person keeps the object, the baby becomes emotionally distressed. There then appears to be a sense of loss. The retrieval is an essential closure of the infant’s mental event similar to the fort-da game (Freud, 1920g). There has to be an intuited acceptance of the whole cycle of giving and receiving by the adult who must collaborate with it to completion. The delight for both is to complete the cycle—giving, receiving, and giving back. It seems to be an exchange that is not clearly motivated by material gain. And, at this early age, an interplay between a baby and carer operates with feelings on the z-axis. At this stage, exchange of verbal symbols and representations also begins as early conversation is attempted and then responded to by parents. Goods exchange We can also observe, very commonly, a similar exchange activity in a mental hospital ward (Hinshelwood & Skogstad, 2000). There, long-stay patients in those old-fashioned, and now long-gone, mental hospitals exhibited a central aspect of the “society” of such a ward, the exchange of cigarettes, and lighting them. Similarly, any infringement on the completion of the exchange resulted in distressed reaction, usually marked by angry displays—sometimes (though rarely) leading to physical violence. Returning the offer of a cigarette may be delayed but the reciprocating to and fro even over a longer timescale is a necessary part of the event. Of course, the exchange of cigarettes in like manner has been common enough in society in general. It is reflected too in the turn-by-turn exchange in a pub when each person “buys a round” of drinks. The reciprocation of rounds may also be delayed over days or possibly weeks. In these cases, there is a development from the baby’s exchange activity

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to a similar, though more memory-dependent activity, in adults—both with ordinary and with mentally ill people. It too appears to be the completion of a cycle of personal giving and receiving. Indeed, just ordinary conversation between adults is itself a turn-by-turn exchange. And after some display of generosity, it is a common token of gratitude to say, “I owe you one”. Attachment to each other appears to involve more than just presence. It is an attachment evoked by putting some material thing into someone else’s hand or some experience into someone’s mind. Moreover, in the observations of the early imitative conversations just referred to, the attachment of one mind to another appears to occur before the movement of objects between each other’s hands. It appears that a psychical intercourse is primary, although that provenance may be illusory and appears only because facial expression is mastered by the baby before manual manipulation is mastered. It is entirely speculative whether the first interaction of all is the reciprocal insertion and reception of mother’s breast and nipple into the baby’s mouth. This may be the initiating experience for us all. These indications of exchange enrich the understanding of the relational dimension of affects. They colour in a background sense of melody—delight or distress according to the completion of the cycle. Social intercourse becomes vibrant on the basis of this emotional exchange. The point, however, is that certain primary features are necessary: the completion of the exchange; there is not a motive to gain something; and there is a movement of something to inside the other person (their mind or hand). Representation In the process of development, the movement from the mutual benefit of the exchanges for the baby obviously evolve into an exchange of more than feelings. Then eventually and extremely importantly, it becomes an exchange of representations—talking of feelings themselves and of cognitive and other mental phenomena. This exchange is one of symbols, of the representation of mental “things”. It too has the element of reciprocation, and also of completion. For instance, an ordinary conversation, from the heart to heart of a couple of old friends to the brief

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repartee with a taxi driver, there is the element of reciprocation. Verbal exchange is not just enjoying a good chat of experiences and emotions over a pint in the pub, it also includes serious interchanges—those between, say, a research student and his supervisor. Profound cognitive elements, ideas, theories, arguments, mathematical equations, and proofs are generously exchanged and gratefully received. Or, in other circumstances, proponents of rival schools of thought contend and denounce each other in ways that, intentionally or otherwise, exchange hurt with each other. Exchange for its own sake has various forms of value, expanding from affects to cognition and knowledge and then to material “things”. Material gifts of monetary or aesthetic value can also be exchanged as acts of generosity and not just of monetary value. The gift has, primarily, an affective value as well as our contemporary developed commercial exchange. Money is not only commercial as it can be a significant component of generosity. Its value may in fact be a prominent aspect of a gift, at least in Western cultures. Usually, a large monetary value of a gift is translated immediately into an intensity of the feeling of generosity as the receiver experiences it. For instance, a receiver might say about an expensive gift, “That’s very generous of you”. Of course, there do exist “gold-diggers” where indifference ensures that monetary value outweighs the emotional value.

Gifts and commerce So, it appears that in the development of the individual, and also in the development of human society, there is an important transition from the cycle of exchange for its own sake, to engaging in exchange for the purposes of gain outside the affective space. World commerce, and technological supremacy for the purpose of material and especially monetary gain, has built spectacularly on this developmental move. Change from an emotional exchange into a commercial exchange of commodities such as money and physical goods is significant and has given rise to the mountainous development of the commercial world in recent centuries. It does, however, remove emotions and their subjective quality from the human context so that exchange between people becomes modelled on the commercial exchange of goods and services.

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One can say that there can be a serious underemployment of the z-axis which would indicate the recognition of others and their giving or taking, as well as the interruption of the fourth, “Social role” dimension, between affective spaces. One could say there is a human propensity to engage in exchanges in one of two forms—generosity–gratitude for its own sake giving an affective gain, and a rights–obligations commercial type of exchange where the gain is monetary. However, a very basic dimension of interpersonal and social life is the exchange of emotions. Benefits and profits Therefore, trade for financial profit appears to be only one sideline of an inherent need we have to engage in exchanges with each other, physical and psychical. There is an irony that social exchange theory has viewed human social activity as a form of exchange arising out of the marketplace. That is to say, it is based on the conceptualisation of how the marketplace works—through the profit motive and the win–win attraction. However, the detailed exploration of the fourth affective dimension tends to confirm that the exchange of the “goods” is an exchange of emotional goods (and emotional bads), and it has been the precursor of the marketplace. We can support Simmel (1900) who turned Marx on his head (Moscovici, 1981) by saying that trade is not for the sake of gain; instead, trade is in pursuance of exchange. That reverses things. The new conception which is supported by the investigation of the Social role of affects places our feelings back in the activities we are all engaged in at the outset of our lives, and of our societies. Emotional interaction between people and between groups appears to have a significance that takes priority over trading of financial goods. Thus, the commercialisation of exchange has been the major transformation that has taken place in historical times (Polanyi, 1944). If the personal exchange of affects is a primary intercourse, then we can argue humans have always knitted themselves together in social groups through exchange of material goods representing psychical ones. And such personal exchange pre-empted those social forms that have an impersonal quality such as money, commercial trade, etc. for financial gain. So, two forms of exchange have gradually differentiated: first, exchange reinforcing personal connection derived from

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early emotional exchange, epitomised in the exchange of emotions; and second, impersonal exchange that has prioritised material gain, especially exemplified by monetary goods. Alternatively, we might of course consider the development of emotional and material goods as interlocking. Each form of exchange, personal/emotional and commercial/financial, both developed in parallel, side by side. It would be a form of co-evolution. So, the exchange of personal psychological experiences has enhanced coming together in groups which were stabilised by exchanges of material entities. Then that stability enabled the further development of the economic exchange of goods for technological and financial benefits. Perhaps the model is inherent in the nature of our bodily existence. Not only the initial feeding, but in sexual activity, the parties engage with each other out of a mutual exchange of love. The physical satisfaction constitutes a mutual and personal giving, so that for both there is a move along the x-axis towards satisfaction together. It can be a personal and emotional win–win “game”. The link with the imitative conversations described above between mother and her baby is a remote moment in our development in the long course of our maturation. Of course, there are deviations. Sexual activity occurs in contexts other than the mutual exchange of love. One can conceive of a win–lose situation when one of the partners experiences the exchange as negative, as an exploitation by the other, with a loss of a gratifying exchange of emotional satisfaction on the two x-axes. Or even a lose–lose situation is possible in a case such as rape when both parties come off badly— abused, dead, or convicted.

A “technology” of being Early on in this discussion, we considered the technology of computing, and tried to compare it with a potential technology of affects, an Affect Machine (Chapter 3). It seemed that such a technology is unlikely to be possible. But there is a technology of trade and exchange. In the starkest terms, Fromm (1976) saw something of this bifurcation of the exchange of being with the exchange of having—personal connections versus material possessions. And perhaps the two forms have today become

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out of balance, with the ensuing threat to planet Earth and ultimately to the civilisation we have created on it. If an imbalance in the exchange of personal goods compared with commercial goods for profit has occurred, then the sense of a completed life has to move back again from the path the industrial revolution has taken us down. It may be that the ultimate satisfaction in life is not what and how much I possess, but how much I can engage in a personal give and take. It is not that the extraordinary technological developments are irrelevant to that give and take, but the commercial pursuit may need to be balanced up again with the emotional “technology” of gift exchange, especially in public life. The most important thing is that emotions form such a significant part of everyone’s life and sense of being. And that is not because of anything emotions do for us. It is more the other way—that we are motivated to do things in order to have feelings. It is a difficult situation if I put someone in the position where I ask them “Why do you want to be happy?” It is self-evident. Happiness is what I want—whatever it is. This has led some to say that the nature of feelings is that they motivate us. But why? We know why—it is good to feel happy. The more relevant question may be how much is “happiness” about what I have in the commercial gains I can make, and how much is it connected with my mental and emotional exchange with others.

EPILOGUE

What are our results?

This book has not achieved everything that a formal dimensional model might give, but it would be useful if it is a step in the direction of providing predictions about emotions and their sequences, of pointing to gaps that prompt a search for a more comprehensive theory, or that generate hypotheses that could be tested in experimental and clinical ways. If we humans are astounded and fascinated by our creation of the cognitive sciences and the technology that imitates human functions, I hope the book can be a little balance to that overwhelming forceful advance of technicalism. This book tries to celebrate the fact that we feel therefore we are human. Although the success of our species has been due to the capacity to represent thoughts in our minds and express them so they become representations in other minds, we are still deeply involved in direct emotional interchanges without representation or symbols. Indeed, it was the lesson of the thought experiments that we are still more human because of this non-symbolic activity of being a person than because of our special capacity for cognitive representation. Affects have often seemed, from an academic point of view, to be like a junk heap of whatever is left over after other, more respectable mental 197

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contents—wisdom, reasoning, judgement, and solid memory—have been distilled. In fact, our feelings are more seriously significant. They may in fact be what give wisdom meaning, give a purpose to reasoning, give a sense of being to the self, and which make memories less solid but give them a new vibrant life in the moment when remembered again. I suggested we must respect the fact that the most essentially human aspects of ourselves, our identities and our social being within our cultures, depends on our idiosyncratic feelings, however muddled and fraught. Without that specifically personal quality, the fate of humanity and its specific values sink into a doubtful wilderness. Then the stiff upper lip of the computer will seal the fate of our emotional life, and perhaps life itself. But, should computers eventually supplant us, selfobservation of the human kind is unlikely to be realised in a machine. Even if it were one day possible to construct such an experiencing machine, it is we humans that got there first, and machines could not have done it without us. It is ironic, but also telling, that despite the hugely impressive rational technology evident in social media communication, nothing is more emotional than the use we put that technical achievement to! We started with the general question: what is the nature of the affects? Here are some of the main conclusions: • Our emotions are the most personally close but understood with the least certainty. • Affects are deeply connected with biological functioning of the body, and at the same time important in the social context of an individual. It is not one or the other. • Very probably, an emotion starts developmentally with an interior perception of bodily sensation (good or bad) which then provokes the external receptors to “see” the out-there coloured in similar terms. • The role of the body not only provides the sources of sensations experienced internally, such affects strongly convey the sense of personal being, even though transitory. One is one’s feelings in the moment. • Affects not only relate to the internal and external perceptions; they relate to other mental entities, not least cognition, but also memories and judgements, especially self-judgements, and thus the experience of self and identity.

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• Cognitive ideas and memories are representations, but essentially an emotion is not a representation, but adds colour to representations (and to all experiences and memories). • The relation of an affect to judgement is also very important as the beginning of a good–bad dichotomy, first in terms of Satisfaction– frustration, but almost immediately it develops as a moral sense though the two dimensions do not coincide. • Such a development of good/bad morals is the beginning of an ethical self-reflection in which affects themselves can be identified as morally good or bad, with a possibility of good satisfaction becoming bad ethically. • The specific human capacity is for a second-order of feelings—feelings about feelings. • There is therefore a typology of one set of basic emotions or satisfactions, and two second-order emotions that ride on the first-order basic ones. A basic satisfaction gives rise potentially to two other feelings—one a self-judgement about the gain of that satisfaction, and the other an appreciation of some other who has been instrumental in bringing the satisfaction about. That co-related dyad of feelings about a satisfaction produces a three-dimensional space, an affective space. • Beyond this, interactions exist between one person’s threedimensional space and another person’s. That is, a social dimension connects two affective spaces. • Social interactions are evocative penetrations, rather than communications which rely on symbols. • The affective spaces of two or more individuals connect by having feelings in common (concordant), or different but paired together in different persons (complementary). We can know a lot about emotions in very direct ways that are as down to earth as you can get, and as comprehensible it seems to a very young baby (maybe even a newborn). And growing-up involves a capacity for reason and respect for the reality of the actual world without diminishing the life of the feelings. Handling the balance is the trick. It is a lifelong programme of inquiry for everyone—to try to understand our own feelings—certain aspects of the work reported in this book could

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be absorbed by more or less any individual who actually has emotions, in other words everyone. It is the result of the thought experiments referred to at the outset, to insist that what we are is more than mechanical reasoning. We have our unique capacity as humans for self-observation. We know each other’s emotions because they leak between us, concordant or complementary. That knowing across the divide between us is has been regarded as spooky. From the early days of experimental psychology in the latter half of the nineteenth century, there was a considerable interest in these unwilled kinds of interactions. At that time, one approach was to regard them as arising in the realm of spiritual “substance”. Experiments in listening in to these spectral communications were called séances. Francis Galton, an eminent psychologist of the time, experimented with what was called automatic writing, and Ferenczi persuaded Freud at one point to go to a spiritualist séance (Letter to Ferenczi, 23rd November 1913, in Brabant et al., 1993) which failed to impress Freud. In fact, it is not a spooky supernatural world, as later psychologists have asserted and taken the risk to objectify as far as possible the psychical qualities they study. Instead of the semi-spiritual angle on psychological communication, more latterly we understand there to be an implicit secondary messaging, a non-verbal communication (Argyle, 1972; Austin, 1955). Though the term “communication” is used, emotions are not representations, although, like meanings, they can be represented. They are more fundamentally evoked directly as their psychical qualities can be passed from one person to another. We exist too in a world of directly experienced meanings (as Searle argued in 1980) as well as emotions; we exist as a world of meanings and emotions. This does not in any way diminish the capacity to represent which is itself an extraordinary human achievement. But it is an achievement that leads away from subjectivity to an objectivity. And the danger of that movement away is a risky possibility of the kind of indifference discussed in Chapters 7 and 8. Nevertheless, there is no way in which the model evolved in the book is not a cognitive representation. It follows in the wake of, say, Mendeleev’s periodic table placing chemical

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elements on dimensions indicating the relations between them. Or, I have wondered, should we make comparisons with the notion of the semantic space (Osgood et al., 1975)—given that a persistent experiential closeness of feelings and meanings keeps emerging. As Green and Stern (1991) debated that in research there are clinical subjects (listened to introspectively) and experimental subjects (observed objectively), with a resulting problem of integrating two domains of knowledge arising from different underlying assumptions of what knowledge must be based upon. We have an onslaught of knowledge from two directions, a blending of knowledges, an ecology perhaps. Perhaps we will always experience a consistent pull to conceptualise and theorise. So, our wholeness as human beings requires that we bring cognition and affect back into the same room, into the same mental arena. And we need to acknowledge the difficulty in doing so in our technical world that has moved us so far beyond our biology, for good and bad. So, writing about affects must be one of the most risky undertakings. Inevitably, we are writing about the very things that bias our writing. And indeed, this writing no doubt will have exposed my biases; yet hopefully, it will not have distracted the reader too much in the assessment of this model of internal experiences. The journey through this book has not been easy—for writer, and probably for reader. We have been constrained to rely so heavily on subjectivity. It has been a concern that the reliance on introspection and subjectivity will be held to justify an impatience with the flaws. There are no doubt many possible quarrels over the omissions and misrepresentations, especially in connection with the scoping and its analysis (Chapters 3 to 5). Such problems will then justify throwing down the book with an irritation and a resistance to any wish to improve on the effort made here. It has been a personal project which took many years to bear fruit. Psychology is the science of the personal and cannot forgo that. Despite the relative neglect of our feelings, and how helpless serious study has been to get to grips with them in a systematic way, affects are the elements which make life personal and liveable. Our personal idiosyncrasies have been such a difficulty. So, maybe systematising feels like it is anti-personal. Better to remain spontaneously anti-personal.

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So, perhaps, for this topic, it might have been better to remain spontaneously authentic than to invade the personal with rigid mathematised graphs and dimensions. I have wondered sometimes if it might have been best to allow that spontaneity! As my mother used to say about the delicate balance of nature, “Leave well alone”.

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Index

affective space, 118, 146, 150, 153, 156, 160, 161–162, 165, 166, 173, 174, 176, 181, 182, 183, 186, 192–193, 199 see also psycho-algebra; 3D space dimensions of, 184 distortion, 158 morality, 154 passions, 153–154 Self-evaluation, 154 self-judgement, 154 Affect Machine, 25, 27–30, 96, 194 affects, 8–9, 11, 14, 35, 54, 59–60, 131, 187, 197 see also affect theories; emotions; feelings arising via autonomic nervous system, 124 basic, 146 and behaviour, 47, 56 being, 22 classifications and characteristics of, 74

Abraham, K., 67–68, 97, 98 collaboration with Freud, 99 and death instinct, 86 libidinal phases, 100–101 sadism, 100 “whole object”, 100 whole object love, 84, 103 Abram, J., 106 affect exchange theory, 187, 189 see also exchange goods exchange, 190–191 mother and baby, 189–190 representation, 191–192 affective attunement, 53 communication, 20 connection, 22 cycles, 168–169 experience, 54, 75, 111, 152 interaction, 172 matrix, 76–77 relations, 104, 110

217

218  inde x cognition and ideation, 135 and cognitive ideas, 20 defences, 81–82, 130, 131 deriving from cognition, 125 direct communication of, 136 discharge, 80, 89, 130, 131 ego control over, 131 as emergence from instincts, 90 as epiphenomena, 131 existential affects, 135 infectious nature, 133 innate, 49–51 instincts and, 61 investigating, 38 list of, 64 location in body, 15–17 nature of, 198–199 as outcome of conflicts, 82 and phantasies, 108–109 properties, 22 as psycho-evolutionary phenomenon, 50, 57 reductionist view of affects, 76 and secondary role, 82 simulation of, 52, 58 social role of, 124, 161 and theories of psychoanalysis, 69 two general features of, 145–146 unconscious, 79–80 affect theories, 37, 38, 68–78 adaptationist view, 51–52 affective matrix, 76–77 aphanisis, 70, 76, 105, 106, 140 bodily dimensions, 47–51, 56–58 classifications and characteristics, 74 cognitive epiphenomenon, 54–55, 58 control and manipulation of emotions, 54 “disruption”/“bursting”, 75 ego defences, 71 “ego-experience”, 72 ego-nuclei, 73, 88 ego psychology, 78–84, 86–90 ego-system, 75

“emotional labour”, 52, 58 emotions, 38 empathic attunement, 58 Freud, 59–60 guilt and hate, 70, 87 “imitative conversation”, 53, 58 instinct-stress, 77 instinct theory, 60–64, 88 “isopathic principle”, 70 Jones’s substitutions, 69 “mirror neurons”, 53 neuropsychoanalysis, 90, 91–96 objective psychological investigation, 46–47 object relations psychoanalysis, 77, 78, 96–115 pain and unpleasure, 64–68, 87 phantasy, 77 philosophy of mind, 39–44 psychoanalysis, 59, 69 psychology, 55, 56–59 reductionist view, 76 “return to feelings”, 72 simulation, 52, 53, 58 social and cultural dimension, 51–54 systematic studies, confusion of, 59–60 transference, 74 unconscious, 68–69 unconscious phantasies, 77–78, 88 unknown feelings, 72 “vector”, 71 aggression, 13, 14, 21, 68, 171 Ahmed, S., 5 AI (artificial intelligence), 26 akrasia, 40 alerting, system for see attentionalerting system Alexander, F., 71, 95 ancient philosophers, 8, 39, 52, 81 Andrews, L., 53 anxiety, 63–64 of child patients, 134 conflicts and, 128 felt, 62

inde x   219 and guilt, 134 Klein and, 101–104 repression and, 81 signal, 64 situations, 134 toxicological theory of, 62 aphanisis, 70, 76, 140 apology, 178 see also forgiveness appetites see also passions vs. noble virtues, 45 priority to, 124 Aquinas, T., 42 archetypes, 67 Argyle, M., 200 Aristotle, 40–41 arousal–sleepiness, 58, 125 Asprey, W., 25 “athymia”, 158, 183 attention, inward, 13 attention-alerting system, 50, 56, 124 Augustine, St, 41–42 Austin, J. L., 200 automatic writing, 200 autonomic nervous system, 124 avoidance, 168 see also concordance Balint, A., 109, 110 Balint, M., 106–108, 109, 110 Bard, P., 47 Barrett, L. F., 51 basic emotions, 50–51, 56, 124 basic fault, 107 Bentham, J., 44 Bergson, H., 18 Bion, W. R., 74, 110–111, 112 bipolar disorder, 98 bodily component, 15–17 bodily dimensions see also affect theories affects and behaviour, 47, 56 affects as psycho-evolutionary phenomenon, 50, 57 arousal–sleepiness, 58 attention-alerting system, 50, 56 brain localisation, 49 Cannon–Bard theory, 47–48, 49, 57

common-sense view, 47 emotional episodes, 51 innate affects, 49–51 James–Lange theory, 47, 48, 57 pleasure–displeasure, 58 primary emotions, 50–51, 56 self-categorisation, 58 body and identity, 152–153 see also psycho-algebra Bollier, D., 189 Brabant, E., 200 brain, 31, 50, 57, 92, 124 see also neuropsychoanalysis activity, 18–19, 53, 55 localisation, 49 mind–, 38, 51, 92, 95–96, 102, 126 primitive, 48, 49, 63 Brain, P., 41 Brasil-Neto, J. P., 53 Brenner, C., 82–83 Brentano, F., 13 Breuer, J., 61, 68, 72 Brierley, M., 60, 71–74, 75, 109 see also affect theories Broad, C. M., 95 Bruner, J., 26 Buddha, 39 bursting, 75–76, 88, 105, 130 calculus of happiness, 44 Cammarota, A., 53 Campbell-Kelly, M., 25 Cannon, W. B., 47 Cannon–Bard theory, 47–48, 49, 57, 124 Carrier, J., 183 catharsis, 41, 45, 121 Chinese Room, 25, 26–27 clusters, 117, 122–123 cognition, 22–23 cognitive attention, 58 functioning, 126 powers, 14 cognitive epiphenomenon, 54–55, 58 see also affect theories cognitivism, 46, 54

220  inde x Cohen, L. G., 53 Collins, S., 39 communication, 19–21, 200 between minds, 99–101 complementarity, 161–162 see also concordance; forgiveness; gratitude; indifference benign feelings and malign, 181 and complexity, 172–173 fragility, 181–182 hurt and hate, 181 zones of, 180–182 concomitance, 92, 94, 96 concordance, 162–172 see also complementarity; concordant; forgiveness; gratitude; indifference avoidance, 168 emotions, 162 falling out of love, 166–168 feedback cycle, 166 friends, 163–164 in love, 164–166 love and the body, 168–169 marital “harmony”, 170–172 marital dynamics, 171 narcissism of minor difference, 168 object relations, 163 ownership, 169–170 symmetrical tendency for emotions, 165 concordant, 21, 162 see also concordance; hurt–hurt cycle –complementary cycle, 185 cycle, 175–176 exchange(s), 171–172 feedback cycle, 166 congruence, 161 see also complementarity; concordance; forgiveness; gratitude; indifference Conran, M., 170 consciousness, 13, 71, 74 consilience, 94–95 see also neuropsychoanalysis contagion, 18, 98, 163, 187

containment, 110 contextual “spaces”, 157–158 see also 3D space conversion symptom, 16 countertransference, 74, 109–110, 112, 115, 136 see also transference Crews, F., 92 Damasio, A., 49, 92 Dancy, J., 40 Darwin, C., 12, 46 Davidson, R., 49 Deacon, T., 20 death instinct, 85–86 see also ego psychology defences, 109, 158 against affects, 81, 88, 89, 130, 131 ego, 63, 71, 78, 82 splitting, 106 Delafield-Butt, J. T., 53, 99 De Masi, F., 104 Denham, A. E., 40 Descartes, R., 6, 22, 42 de Sousa, R., 5 Dewey, J., 81 “disruption”, 75, 76, 105 diverse distortions, 65, 87, 129 Dixon, T., 42 Drever, J., 81 drive(s), 62, 81, 82, 101, 129 instinctual, 80, 81, 89, 131 model of, 81, 159 reduction, 63, 65, 67, 87, 128 theory, 94, 128 economists, 188 Edelson, M., 60 ego, 66, 75, 129, 134 control over affects, 131 crisis of, 132, 137 defences, 71 development, 131 -experience, 72 Freud, 165 good or bad, 135 negative, 107, 108, 115

inde x   221 -nuclei, 73, 88 psychology, 78–84, 86–90 -system, 75 weak, 78, 89, 106, 130 Ego and the Id, The, 97 see also Freud, S. ego psychology, 78, 86 see also affect theories abstract model of drives, 81 “affect discharge”, 80, 89 affects and secondary role, 82 affects as emergence from instincts, 90 affects as outcome of conflicts, 82 “conflict-free sphere of the ego apparatus”, 90 confused status of affect theory, 79 death instinct, 85–86 defences against affects, 81–82 developments in, 78 feelings of aggression and destructiveness, 86 id-analysis, 80 instincts, 84 instinct theory, 85 instinctual cathexis of the self, 84 object world, 84 psychic energy, 80 relations of affects to instincts, 81 repression and anxiety, 81 superego, 80 unconscious “affect”, 80 unconscious blocking of affects, 79 Ekman, P., 49, 50 Ellenberger, H., 68 emergence theory, 32, 95 emotional balance, 39, 44 episodes, 51 exchange, 189 interpenetration, 21–22 labour, 52, 58, 125 states and bodily reference, 44 temperaments, 41 emotions, 3–4, 11, 38, 162, 199 see also affects; feelings adaptationist view, 51–52

affective communication, 20 affects, 8–9, 14, 20, 22 aggression, 14 in analytic setting, 136 basic, 124 bodily component, 15–17 body, mind, and social, 6 brain location, 19 communications, 19–21 concordant and complementary, 21 consciousness, 13 conversion symptom, 16 emotional interpenetration, 21–22 evocative transmissions, 21 expression of, 12 feelings, 8 felt location, 19 for Greeks, 39 human experience, 20 intensity, 14 inward attention, 13 location in body, 15–17 location in time, 17–18 manipulation of, 54 minds, 13 moods and traits, 18 neuro-location, 18–19 observation in neurology and personal experience, 19 ordinal, 14 overwhelming weak ego, 131 personal knowing, 6–8 personal knowledge, 12 plotting, 154–155 primary, 50–51, 56, 124 psychoanalytic priority, 7–8 psychologising, 16 recognition of, 12 reflection and cognition, 22–23 representation and authenticity, 19–21 sexual obsession, 14 simulated, 53, 125 simulated and true, 53 social management of, 125 somatisation, 16

222  inde x symmetrical tendency for emotions, 165 theories and confusions, 5–9 true, 53 empathic attunement, 53, 58, 97, 125 see also concordant empathy, 12 Enlightenment, 43 envy and gratitude, 179–180 erogenous zones, 62 eroticism, 104, 135 evolution, 13 evolutionary survival, 51, 57, 118, 119, 124, 126, 127, 138, 140, 141 exchange affect, 189–192 emotional, 189 social, 189, 193 win–win, 188–189 existential affects, 106 experimental academic psychology, 46 survey of, 56–59 Fairbairn, W. R. D., 101, 159 Falzeder, E., 200 Fechner, G., 60 feelings, 8, 11, 13, 22, 125, 129, 133–134 see also affects; emotions of aggression and destructiveness, 86 associated with ego-nucleus, 130 and biological origins, 62 of disintegration and existential crisis, 135 engaging mother as container of, 136 harbouring others’, 133 location in body, 15–17 memories in, 104–105, 114, 135 objects, 134 observing, 12 rational and irrational, 55 return to, 72 reversals of instinctual, 61–62, 88 second-order, 135, 148 unknown, 72

Feldman, M., 108, 110 Fenichel, O., 78 Ferenczi, S., 97–98, 200 Fichte, J. G., 43 Fine, B. D., 8 forgiveness, 176 see also complementarity; concordance; gratitude; indifference apology, 177, 178 gratitude and envy, 179–180 hurt–hurt interaction, 180 offer of, 178 parallel cycles, 178 reciprocity, 177 superiority, 179 Forrester, J., 92 Frank, C., 102 Freud, A., 71, 79, 99, 103 Freud, S., 59–60, 61, 62, 68, 72, 99, 190 see also affect theories anxiety, 63–64 ego, 66, 165 Ego and the Id, The, 97 eroticism, 104 felt anxiety, 62 fiction, 91, 96 “identification”, 100 instincts, 84 Instincts and their Vicissitudes, 61 instinct theory, 85 instinctual energy, 63, 64, 88 Jung vs., 66–67 list of affects, 64 medical training, 68 “Mourning and Melancholia”, 99 narcissism of minor difference, 168 oedipal phantasies, 64 pleasure, 65 primary narcissism, 66 “Project for a Scientific Psychology”, 91 psychic energy, 61, 80 “reality principle”, 64 reversals of instinctual feelings, 61–62, 88

inde x   223 Schreber’s memoirs, 66 sexual instincts, 66, 87 signal anxiety, 64 structures of thought, 97 symptoms analysis to character analysis, 63 unconscious, 68–69 unpleasure, 64 friends, 163–164 see also concordance Friesen, W. V., 50 Fromm, E., 69, 194 Furtak, R. A., 5 Gabbard, G. O., 59 game theory, 188–189 generosity–gratitude cycle, 175–176 see also gratitude Gergely, G., 53 Giampieri-Deutsch, P., 200 gift(s), 174, 175, 192 benefits and profits, 193–194 and commerce, 192–194 and commodities, 183 economy, 188–189 Gill, M., 92 Glover, E., 72–73, 74–75, 77, 105 Gombrich, R., 39 Graeber, D., 189 gratitude, 88, 104, 114, 130, 135, 162, 181 see also complementarity; concordance; forgiveness; indifference and envy, 179–180 and generosity, 173–176, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, 191, 193 Green, A., 59, 95, 105, 201 Greenberg, J. R., 163 Gregory, C. A., 183 Grigg, M., 5 guilt, 99–100, 113, 129 anxiety, 134 and hate, 70, 87 happiness, calculus of, 44 Harnad, S., 26 Hartmann, H., 90

Heath, A., 189 Hegel, G. W., 43 Heimann, P., 74, 86, 109 Hinshelwood, R. D., 13, 59, 98, 105, 106, 189, 190 Hippocrates, 39 Hobbes, T., 42–43 Hobson, P., 53 Hochschild, A., 52, 163 Holmes, J., 13, 145 Homans, G. C., 189 Homo sapiens, 13 human experience, 20 Hume, D., 43, 56 humours, 41, 45, 120, 121 theory of, 39, 41, 44 hurt–hurt interaction, 180 Hyde, L., 183 Iacoboni, M., 53, 162 id, 62, 71, 77, 78, 79, 89, 91, 131 -analysis, 80 identification, 100, 101, 161 emotional, 153 projective, 111, 170 “imitative conversation”, 53, 58, 125 indifference, 61, 158, 182. See also complementarity; concordance; forgiveness; gratitude and politics, 185–186 rights and obligations, 182–185 instinct(s), 84, 128 see also psychology and affects, 61, 81, 90 cathexis of the self, 84 death, 85–86 sexual, 66, 87 -stress, 77 theory, 85 unconscious phantasy, 130 Instincts and their Vicissitudes, 61 see also Freud, S. instinct theory, 60–64 see also affect theories analysis of symptoms, 63 anxiety, 62, 63–64

224  inde x classical psychoanalytic model, 62–63 drive tension and drive reduction, 63 feelings and biological origins, 62 felt anxiety, 62 instincts and affects, 61 instinctual energy, 61, 63, 64, 88 instinctual impulse, 108 physics, 60 psychic energy, 61 “reality principle”, 64 reversals of instinctual feelings, 61–62, 88 signal anxiety, 64 integration, loss of, 105–106 intensity, 14 interpersonal containment, 110–112 introjection, 80, 100 and projection, 97, 99, 101, 108 inward attention, 13 Isaacs, S., 76, 77, 108 affective experience, 54 isopathic principle, 70 Jacobson, E., 84 James, W., 47 James–Lange theory, 47, 48, 57, 124 Jaques, E., 111 Jenkins, J. M., 5 Jones, E., 69, 70, 75 see also affect theories Joseph, B., 110 Jung, C. G., 66–67, 68 Kahneman, D., 38 Kant, I., 43 Keltner, D., 5 Kim, J., 32, 95 Kirsner, D., 98 Klein, M., 68, 97 and anxiety, 101–104 “anxiety situation”, 102, 113 depressive position, 103–104 “early repression mechanism”, 105 eroticism, 104, 114 love and hate, 103, 113 memories in feelings, 104–105, 114

paranoid–schizoid position, 105 schizoid, 106 splitting defences, 106 Krause, R., 94, 161 Landauer, K., 62 Lange, C., 47 Lazier, B., 50 LeBon, G., 98, 162–163 LeDoux, J., 49, 92 Lewis, M., 38 libido, 61–62, 64, 66, 71, 100, 159 development, 87, 129, 137 ego-syntonic, 70 narcissistic, 85 and object relations, 104 terminology, 86 location(s), 15–17 felt, 19 function in brain, 57, 124 neural, 19 in time, 17–18 Locke, J., 43 love, 164–166 see also concordance and body, 168–169 falling out of, 166–168 and hate, 134 making, 65 whole object, 67–68, 129 Luppino, G., 53 MacCurdy, J. T., 81 Main, T. F., 170 Malinovski, B., 189 marital see also concordance dynamics, 171 harmony, 170–172 Masson, J. M., 96 Mauss, M., 189 Mead, M., 50 memories, 18 in feelings, 104–105, 135, 137 Mendelsohn, G. A., 51 meta-analysis, 35, 120, 143 metapsychology, 60, 62, 97, 128 Milgram, S., 185 Mill, J. S., 44 minds, 13

inde x   225 communication between, 99–101 as machines, 25 mirror neurons, 53, 58, 125 see also empathic attunement Mitchell, S. A., 163 Money-Kyrle, R., 111 moods and traits, 18 Moore, B. E., 8 morality, 154 Morgenstern, O., 188 Morris, C., 95 Morris, D., 14 Moscovici, S., 193 “Mourning and Melancholia”, 99 see also Freud, S. Murdoch, I., 40 Murray, L., xiv, 53 narcissism, 132, 166 disorders, 84 feelings, 87, 129 libido, 85 of minor difference, 168 personality, 156, 157 primary, 66 negative ego, 107, 108 Nersessian, E., 94 Neurath, O., 94 neuro-location, 18–19 neuropsychoanalysis, 90, 91–96 see also affect theories and affects, 93–96 consilience, 94–95 critique of, 94 “doctrine of concomitance”, 92, 94 fiction, 91, 96 parallelism, 96 “Project for a Scientific Psychology”, 91 psychoanalysis and neuroscience, 94 psychophysical parallelism, 92 theory of emergence, 95 Nguyet, D., 53 Oatley, K., 5 objective psychological investigation, 46–47 see also affect theories

survey of experimental psychology, 56–59 object(s), 77–78, 84, 90, 98, 99, 137, 146, 148 see also object relations external, 80, 109, 111 feelings, 113, 114, 134, 162 internal world of, 114, 115, 134, 135 lost, 97, 112, 133, 136 love, 66, 107–108, 163 movement of, 190, 191 part, 68, 98 seeking, 159 subjectivity of, 114, 135 whole see whole object object relations, 96, 100, 109, 118, 136, 163 see also Fairbairn, W. R. D.; Ferenczi, S.; Klein, M.; object(s) and affects, 96–115 libido and, 104 object-love and, 101 scoping and clusters, 133–136 summary of affects, 112–115 tradition, 77 obligations, rights and, 182–185, 193 oedipal phantasies, 64. See also Freud, S. Ogden, T. H., 110 Olds, D. D., 49 “ordinal”, 14 original sin, 42, 45, 121 Osgood, C. E., 201 ownership, 169–170 see also concordance pain, 64, 128 pain and unpleasure, 64–68, 87, 129 see also affect theories analysis of Judge Schreber’s memoirs, 66 archetypes, 67 ego, 66 enhancing, 65 enjoyment and anticipation, 65, 87 Jung vs. Freud, 66–67 making love, 65 masochistic suffering, 65–66 “paraphilias”, 65 primary narcissism, 66, 87

226  inde x sexual instincts, 66, 87 whole object love, 67–68 Panksepp, J., 49, 92, 94 parallelism, 96 paranoid–schizoid, 105 paraphilias, 65 Pascual-Leone, A., 53 Paskauskas, R. A., 85 passions, 40, 43, 44–45, 153–154, 121 painful, 41 vs. noble virtues, 121 phantasy, 77 affects and, 108–109 theory of unconscious, 77 unconscious, 130 Piaget, J., xv Pick, D., 5 Plamper, J., 50 Plato, 40 pleasure, 65, 121, 128, 129 –displeasure, 58, 125 in enhancing unpleasure, 65 of enjoyment, 65, 87 Plutchik, R., 50, 51 Polanyi, K., 193 Poundstone, W., 188 Pribram, K., 92 primary emotions, 50–51, 56, 124 narcissism, 66, 87 “Project for a Scientific Psychology”, 91 projection, introjection and, 101 projective identification, 111 psychic energy, 61, 80 psycho-algebra, 146 see also affective space; 3D space body and identity, 152–153 dimensions of difference, 147 emotional reactions towards others, 148 “Satisfaction–frustration”, 146, 147 Satisfaction/Self-evaluation/ Appreciation, 149–152 second-order feelings, 148 Self-evaluation, 146, 149 psychoanalysis, 128–137 see also Neuropsychoanalysis; object relations

classic model, 62–63 instinct-based, 133 instinct features, 128–131 internal relations, 137 and neuroscience, 94 theories, 69 psychologising, 16 psychology see also ego psychology approaches from, 55 social dimension in, 56 survey of experimental, 56–59 psychophysical parallelism, 92 Quinodoz, J., 72 Racker, H., 109, 162 Rapaport, D., 59, 79, 81–82 reality principle, 62, 64, 80 reasoning, 17 repression, 105 and anxiety, 81 rights and obligations, 182–185 Rizzolatti, G., 53 Roberts, A., 5 Rolls, E. T., 49 Romanticism, 43–44, 45, 122 Rosenfeld, H., 110 Rousseau, J.-J., 43 Rudnytsky, P. L., 97 Russell, J. A., 51 sadism, 100, 113, 134 Sandler, J., 99 “Satisfaction–frustration”, 146, 147 see also psycho-algebra Satisfaction/Self-evaluation/ Appreciation, 149–152 see also psycho-algebra Schachter, S., 54 Schelling, F. W. J., 43, 44 schizoid, 106 Schmideberg, M., 75 Schore, A. N., 51, 52, 54, 92 séances, 200 Searle, J., 25 Segal, H., 106, 111, 181 Seigworth, G. J., 5 self-categorisation, 58, 125

inde x   227 Self-evaluation, 146, 149, 154 see also affective space; psychoalgebra self-judgement, 154 Seligman, M. E. P., 54 sexual instincts, 66, 87 sexuality, 104 sexual obsession, 14 Simmel, G., 193 simulated emotions, 53, 125 simulation of affect, 52, 58 Singer, J., 54 Skogstad, W., 190 Smith, T. W., 5 social and cultural dimension, 51–54. See also affect theories adaptationist view, 51–52 cognitive attention, 58 control of emotions, 54 “emotional labour”, 52, 58 empathic attunement, 58 “imitative conversation”, 53, 58 “mirror neurons”, 53 simulation of affect, 52, 53, 58 social exchange theory see exchange “Social role”, 46, 54, 57, 118, 119, 124, 126, 127, 132, 133, 136, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 161, 171, 184, 186, 193 Solms, M., 91, 93, 94 somatisation, 16 Spinoza, B., 43, 81 spiritual dimension, 40–42, 92, 200 Stein, R., 59, 101 Steiner, J., 108 Stern, D., 53, 201 Strongman, K. T., 5 Suci, G. J., 201 superego, 62, 68, 70, 78, 80, 82, 87, 100, 103, 129, 131, 154 superordinate clusters, 119, 141, 142 system for alerting see attention-alerting system Tannenbaum, P. H., 201 “technology” of being, 194–195 theory of affects see affect theories

of emergence, 95 of humours, 39, 41, 44 of psychoanalysis, 69 toxicological of anxiety, 62 of unconscious phantasy, 77 thought experiment, 25, 30–32, 200 medical thinking, 41 structures of, 97 3D space, 145, 160 affective space, 153–154 affects features, 145–146 alternative to x-axis, 159 contextual “spaces”, 157–158 curiosity in, 155 defensive reduction of dimensions, 158–159 feeling cheated in, 155 generosity in, 155 personality “spaces”, 156–157 plotting emotions, 154–155 priorities of axes, 156–159 psycho-algebra see psycho-algebra Tompkins, S. S., 49, 50, 51 Toubiana, M., 5 transference, 74, 104, 115, 136 see also countertransference Trevarthen, C., xiv Trevarthen, C. B., 53, 99, 190 Turing, A., 26 Turnbull, O., 91, 93 Turner, J. H., 5, 54 two-factor theory, 54 see also cognitive epiphenomenon unconscious, 68–69 affect, 80 blocking of affects, 79 communication between minds, 99–101 “deeper layer” of, 106 object relations, 77 phantasies, 77–78, 88, 115, 135 unknown feelings, 72 unpleasure, 64, 87, 129 see also pain and unpleasure pain vs., 129 Utilitarianism, 44, 46, 122

228  inde x “vector”, 71 Vervey, G., 60 von Neumann, J., 188 Voronov, A., 5 Vygotsky, L., xv Walker, G., 97 Watson, J., 53 Weiss, A., 51 whole object, 100 love, 67–68, 129

Wilson, E. O., 94 Winnicott, D. W., 105–106 absolute dependence, 107 Wollheim, R., 5 Young, R. M., 61 Zietsma, C., 5 Zimbardo, P., 185

‘R. D. Hinshelwood has a distinguished place in psychoanalysis and related fields. Deeply rooted in clinical practice, he has, over many years, encouraged a respect for objective knowledge of the subjective world, while retaining the aliveness of the psychoanalytic process, and he has shown us how to get to it. In this book, he applies his distinctive acumen to affects, the heart of human experience. What better place to grasp these dimensions together. We live in the immediacy of affects, they impel us to think and judge, we are social through them, and they are rooted in our bodies. Hinshelwood masterfully guides us into knowing them.’ Karl Figlio, clinical associate, British Psychoanalytical Society, and senior member, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association

R. D. HINSHELWOOD is professor emeritus at the University of Essex and a founding member of The Association of Therapeutic Communities and The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities.

Cover image by Finley Norman-Nott

ISBN 978-1-80-013174-3

THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS

‘Emotions have been the Cinderella of philosophical, psychological, biological, and psychoanalytic theories of the person. This, despite their being central to our subjective experience of ourselves and our relations to others. R. D. Hinshelwood has written a masterful and lucid account of theories of emotions over 4,000 years, and synthesised them into clusters of agreement and overlap. He goes on to evolve his own highly original formulation of emotions that captures both their subjective and bodily experience and their communicative function as existing in a metaphorical 3D mental space. As in his previous writing, Hinshelwood describes complex ideas with great clarity. This important book will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, and psychoanalysts in providing an outstandingly clear guide to a central aspect of what it is to be human.’ Richard Rusbridger, training and supervising analyst and child analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society, and honorary reader, UCL

Hinshelwood

‘The Mystery of Emotions: Seeking a Theory of What We Feel introduces a bold thesis: affects which have often seemed to be like an accumulation of mess of whatever is left over after the more well-thought processes have been used are more seriously meaningful. R. D. Hinshelwood takes us on a panoramic tour of the realm of emotions starting with the Greek philosophers through modern technology and artificial intelligence and up to politics, commerce, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The text is well organised, astute, and informative, and I would highly recommend it to my colleagues and students.’ Aner Govrin, professor and psychoanalyst, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

THE MYSTERY OF EMOTIONS Seeking a Theory of What We Feel

R. D. Hinshelwood

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