Janus (11 page)
Authors: Arthur Koestler
If it is in the nature of living things to pool resources, to fuse when
possible, we would have a new way of accounting for the progressive
enrichment and complexity of form in living things.
[9]
III
THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF EMOTION
1
Emotions can be described as mental states accompanied by intense
feelings and associated with bodily changes of a widespread character
-- in breathing, pulse, muscle tone, glandular secretion of hormones
such as adrenalin, etc. They have also been described as 'over-heated'
drives. They can be classified, in the first place, according to the
nature of the drive
which gives rise to them: hunger, sex, curiosity
(the 'exploratory drive'), conviviality, protection of the offspring,
and so on.
In the second place, a conspicuous feature of all emotions is the feeling
of
pleasureableness or unpleasureableness
, the 'hedonic tone',
attached to them. In the third place, there is the polarity between the
self-assertive and self-transcending
tendencies which enter into
every emotion.
We thus arrive at a three-dimensional conception of human emotions. I have
proposed* a coarse but homely analogy for it: imagine your mental scenery
transformed into the saloon bar of a tavern, equipped with a variety of
taps, each serving a different kind of brew; these are turned on and off
as the need arises. Then each tap would represent a different
drive
,
while the pleasure-unpleasure rating would depend on the
rate of flow
through the tap -- whether it is nice and smooth, or gurgles and splutters
because there is too little or too much pressure behind it. Lastly,
the ratio of self-assertive to self-transcending impulses in emotive
behaviour could be represented by the
acid-alkaline scale
. This is not a
very engaging metaphor, but it may help to visualize the three variables
(or parameters) of emotion which the present theory suggests. Let us
take a closer look at each, and particularly at those features which
distinguish it from other theories.
One of the difficulties inherent in the subject is that we rarely experience
a pure emotion. The barman tends to mix the liquids from the various taps:
sex may be combined with curiosity and with virtually any other drive.
The point is too obvious to need further discussion.
The second variable, the pleasure-unpleasure scale or 'hedonic tone',
also gives rise to ambiguous, 'mixed feelings'. Earlier on (in
Chapter II
) I quoted Freud's dictum that pleasure
is always derived from 'the diminution, lowering or extinction of
psychic excitation and unpleasure from an increase of it'. This view
(which was held throughout the first half of our century by the major
schools in psychology, including American behaviourism* and Continental
psychoanalysis) is no doubt true for the frustration of 'over-heated'
primitive drives which arise, for instance, from the pangs of starvation;
but it is palpably untrue for that class of complex emotions encountered
in everyday life, which we call pleasurable excitement, thrill, arousal,
suspense. Reading an erotic passage in a book leads, in Freud's words,
to an 'increase in psychic excitation' and should therefore be unpleasant;
in fact it arouses a complex emotion in which
frustration is combined
with pleasure
.
imagination
in human emotions. Just as an imagined stimulus in
an erotic reverie is sufficient to arouse physiological impulses, so,
vice versa, imagined satisfaction may lead to a pleasurable experience --
the 'internalized' consummation of those components in the complex drive
which can be lived out in fantasy.
Another gateway through which imagination enters into the emotional drive
is
anticipation
of its reward. In the previous example the reward was
fictional, yet emotionally real, i.e., pleasurable; now we are talking
of the imagined anticipation of the factual reward. When one is thirsty,
the sight of the publican pouring beer into one's glass is pleasurable,
although it 'increases psychic excitation'. The same applies to the
preliminaries of love-making, or watching a thriller: the anticipation of
the happy ending mediates the 'internal consummation' of some components
of the emotive drive while the excitation of other components increases;
we are impatient to get over the preliminaries which at the same time
we enjoy.
Although the 'internalization' and 'internal consummation' of emotive
drives are triggered by acts of imagination, they have their physiological
concomitants in visceral and glandular processes, and are as 'real' as
the muscular activities of 'external' or overt behaviour. The memory of
a French thee-star meal can be sufficient to re-activate one's gastric
juices.
The more sublimated the drive (i.e., the closer the coordination between
the higher, cortical, and the lower, visceral levels of the hierarchy)
the more it is amenable to internalization. This sounds rather abstract,
but consider two players in a chess competition facing each other across
the board. The simplest way of defeating the opponent is to club him over
the head. A player may occasionally experience this urge (particularly if
this opponent is Bobby Fischer), but he will never seriously entertain
the idea: the competitive drive can express itself only according to
the 'rules of the game'. Instead of resorting to violence, the player
visualizes in his imagination the possibilities of deriving an advantage
from his next move, and this mental activity provides him with a series
of pleasurable anticipatory, partial satisfactions, even if in the end
victory is not achieved. Hence the sporting pleasure in competitive
games, regardless -- up to a point -- of the final outcome. Stevenson
saw deeper than Freud when he wrote that to travel hopefully is better
than to arrive.
Romantic lovers have always been aware of this. Longing is a bitter-sweet
emotion with painful and pleasurable components. Sometimes the imagined
presence of the beloved person can be more gratifying than the real one.
Emotions have a many-coloured spectrum of components, each with its own
hedonic tone. To ask whether to love is pleasurable or not is as meaningless
as to ask whether a Rembrandt painting is bright or dark.
We can now turn to the third source of ambivalence in our emotions.
The first, we remember, was the biological origin of the drive, the second
the pleasure-unpleasure tone attached to it, the third is the polarity
of self-assertion versus self-transcendence which is manifested in all
our emotions.
Take love first -- an ill-defined but heady cocktail of emotions with
countless variations. (Sexual, platonic, parental, oedipal, narcissistic,
patriotic, botanistic, canine-directed or feline-orientated, as the
textbooks would say.) But whatever its target and method of wooing, there
is always present an element of self-transcending devotion in varying
proportions. In
sexual
relationships, domination and aggression are
blended with empathy and identification; the outcome ranges from rape to
platonic worship.
Parental love
reflects, on the one hand, a biological
bond with 'one's own flesh and blood' which transcends the boundaries
of the self; while domineering fathers and over-protective mothers are
classic examples of self-assertiveness. Less obvious is the fact that
even
hunger
, an apparently simple and straightforward biological drive,
can contain a self-transcending component. Everyday experience tells us
that appetite is enhanced by congenial company and surroundings. On a
less trivial level, ritual commensality is intimately related to magic
and religion among primitive people. By partaking of the flesh of the
sacrificed animal, man or god, a process of transubstantiation takes
place; the virtues of the victim are ingested and a kind of mystic
communion is established which includes all who participated in the
rite. Transmitted through the Orphic mystery cult, the tradition of
sharing the slain god's flesh and blood, entered in a symbolic guise
into the rites of Christianity. To the devout, Holy Communion is the
supreme experience of self-transcendence; and no blasphemy is intended
by pointing to the continuous tradition which connects ritual feeding
with transubstantiation as a means of breaking down the ego's boundaries.
Other echoes of this ancient communion survive in such rites as baptismal
and funeral meals, symbolic offerings of bread and salt, or the blood-brother
ceremony among some Arab tribes, performed by drinking a few drops of the
elected brother's blood.
We can only conclude that even while eating, man does not live by bread
alone: that
even the apparently simplest act of self-preservation may
contain an element of self-transcendence
.
And vice versa, such admirably altruistic pursuits as caring for the sick
or poor, protecting animals against cruelty, serving on committees and
joining protest marches, can serve as wonderful outlets for bossy
self-assertion, even if unconscious. Professional do-gooders, charity
tigresses, hospital matrons, missionaries and social workers are
indispensable to society, and to inquire into their motives, often hidden
to themselves, would be ungrateful and churlish.
3
Thus leaving apart the extremes of blind rage and mystic trance
at opposite ends of the spectrum, all our emotional states show
combinations of the two basic tendencies: one reflecting the individual
holon's wholeness, the other his partness, with a mutually restraining
influence on one another. But it may also happen that the integrative
tendency, instead of restraining its antagonist, acts
as a trigger or
catalyst
for it. We shall discuss in
Chapter IV
the disastrous consequences of self-transcending identification of the
individual with the group-mind, its leaders, slogans and beliefs. For the
moment we shall turn to the happier aspects of the self-same catalysing
process, when it serves to generate the magic of illusion in art.
How does the process work? Let us consider a simple situation with only
two people involved: Mrs A. and her friend, Mrs B. whose little daughter
has recently been killed in an accident. Mrs A. sheds tears of sympathy,
participating in Mrs B.'s sorrow, partially identifying herself with her
friend by an act of empathy, projection or introjection -- whatever you
like to call it. The same might happen if the 'other person' is merely
a heroine on the screen or in the pages of a novel.
But it is essential to distinguish here between two distinct emotional
processes involved in the event, although they combine in the lived
experience. The first is the spontaneous act of identification itself,
characterized by the fact that Mrs A. has for the moment more or less
forgotten her own existence by participating in the experiences of another
person, real or imagined. This is clearly a self-transcending and cathartic
experience; while it lasts, Mrs A. is prevented from thinking of her own
worries, jealousies and grudges against her husband. In other words,
the process of identification temporarily
inhibits
the self-assertive
tendencies.
But now we come to the second process which may have the opposite effect.
The act of identification may lead to the arousal of
vicarious emotions
experienced, as it were, on the other person's behalf. In Mrs A.'s case
the vicarious emotion was one of sadness and bereavement. But it can
also be anxiety or anger. You commiserate with Desdemona; as a result,
the perfidy of Iago makes your blood boil. The anxiety which grips the
spectator of a Hitchcock thriller, though vicarious, is physiologically
real, accompanied by palpitations, increased pulse rate, sudden jumps of
alarm. And the anger aroused by the ruthless gangster on the screen --
which Mexican audiences have occasionally riddled with bullets --
is real anger, marked by a flow of adrenalin. Here, then, is the core of
the paradox, which is basic to the understanding of both the delusions
of History -- and the illusions of Art. Both derive from man's nature as
a belief-accepting animal (as Waddington called it). Both require a --
temporary or permanent -- suspension of disbelief.
To recapitulate: we are faced with a process in two steps. At the first
step, the self-transcending impulses of projection, participation,
identification
inhibit
the self-assertive tendencies, purge us of
the dross of our self-centred worries and desires. This leads to the
second step: the process of loving identification may stimulate --
or trigger off -- the surge of hatred, fear, vengefulness, which,
though experienced on behalf of another person, or group of persons,
nevertheless increases the pulse rate. The physiological processes which
these vicarious emotions activate are essentially the same whether the
threat or insult is directed at oneself or at the person or group with
whom one identifies. They belong to the self-assertive category, although
the self has momentarily changed its address -- by being, for instance,
projected into the guileless heroine on the stage; or the local soccer
team; or 'my country, right or wrong'.
It is a triumph of the imaginative powers of the human mind that we are
capable of shedding tears over the death of Anna Karenina, who only exists
as printer's ink on paper, or as a shadow on the screen. Children and
primitive audiences who, forgetting the present, completely accept the
reality of events on the stage, are experiencing a kind of hypnotic
trance, with its ultimate origin in the sympathetic magic practised
in primitive cultures, where the masked dancer becomes identified with
the god or demon he mimes, and the carved idol is invested with divine
powers. At a more advanced stage of cultural sophistication we are still
capable of perceiving Laurence Olivier as himself and as Prince Hamlet of
Denmark at one and the same time, and of manufacturing large quantities
of adrenalin to provide him with the required vigour to fight his
adversaries. It is the same magic at work, but in a more sublimated
form: the process of identification (of spectator via actor with the
hero) is transitory and partial, confined to certain climactic moments,
a suspension of disbelief which does not entirely abolish the critical
faculties or undermine personal identity.
possible, we would have a new way of accounting for the progressive
enrichment and complexity of form in living things.
[9]
III
THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF EMOTION
1
Emotions can be described as mental states accompanied by intense
feelings and associated with bodily changes of a widespread character
-- in breathing, pulse, muscle tone, glandular secretion of hormones
such as adrenalin, etc. They have also been described as 'over-heated'
drives. They can be classified, in the first place, according to the
nature of the drive
which gives rise to them: hunger, sex, curiosity
(the 'exploratory drive'), conviviality, protection of the offspring,
and so on.
In the second place, a conspicuous feature of all emotions is the feeling
of
pleasureableness or unpleasureableness
, the 'hedonic tone',
attached to them. In the third place, there is the polarity between the
self-assertive and self-transcending
tendencies which enter into
every emotion.
We thus arrive at a three-dimensional conception of human emotions. I have
proposed* a coarse but homely analogy for it: imagine your mental scenery
transformed into the saloon bar of a tavern, equipped with a variety of
taps, each serving a different kind of brew; these are turned on and off
as the need arises. Then each tap would represent a different
drive
,
while the pleasure-unpleasure rating would depend on the
rate of flow
through the tap -- whether it is nice and smooth, or gurgles and splutters
because there is too little or too much pressure behind it. Lastly,
the ratio of self-assertive to self-transcending impulses in emotive
behaviour could be represented by the
acid-alkaline scale
. This is not a
very engaging metaphor, but it may help to visualize the three variables
(or parameters) of emotion which the present theory suggests. Let us
take a closer look at each, and particularly at those features which
distinguish it from other theories.
* In The Ghost in the Machine, Ch. XV.2
One of the difficulties inherent in the subject is that we rarely experience
a pure emotion. The barman tends to mix the liquids from the various taps:
sex may be combined with curiosity and with virtually any other drive.
The point is too obvious to need further discussion.
The second variable, the pleasure-unpleasure scale or 'hedonic tone',
also gives rise to ambiguous, 'mixed feelings'. Earlier on (in
Chapter II
) I quoted Freud's dictum that pleasure
is always derived from 'the diminution, lowering or extinction of
psychic excitation and unpleasure from an increase of it'. This view
(which was held throughout the first half of our century by the major
schools in psychology, including American behaviourism* and Continental
psychoanalysis) is no doubt true for the frustration of 'over-heated'
primitive drives which arise, for instance, from the pangs of starvation;
but it is palpably untrue for that class of complex emotions encountered
in everyday life, which we call pleasurable excitement, thrill, arousal,
suspense. Reading an erotic passage in a book leads, in Freud's words,
to an 'increase in psychic excitation' and should therefore be unpleasant;
in fact it arouses a complex emotion in which
frustration is combined
with pleasure
.
* Where Thorndike's 'Law of Effect', which asserted the same fallacy,The answer to this paradox lies in the important part played by
reigned as supreme dogma.
imagination
in human emotions. Just as an imagined stimulus in
an erotic reverie is sufficient to arouse physiological impulses, so,
vice versa, imagined satisfaction may lead to a pleasurable experience --
the 'internalized' consummation of those components in the complex drive
which can be lived out in fantasy.
Another gateway through which imagination enters into the emotional drive
is
anticipation
of its reward. In the previous example the reward was
fictional, yet emotionally real, i.e., pleasurable; now we are talking
of the imagined anticipation of the factual reward. When one is thirsty,
the sight of the publican pouring beer into one's glass is pleasurable,
although it 'increases psychic excitation'. The same applies to the
preliminaries of love-making, or watching a thriller: the anticipation of
the happy ending mediates the 'internal consummation' of some components
of the emotive drive while the excitation of other components increases;
we are impatient to get over the preliminaries which at the same time
we enjoy.
Although the 'internalization' and 'internal consummation' of emotive
drives are triggered by acts of imagination, they have their physiological
concomitants in visceral and glandular processes, and are as 'real' as
the muscular activities of 'external' or overt behaviour. The memory of
a French thee-star meal can be sufficient to re-activate one's gastric
juices.
The more sublimated the drive (i.e., the closer the coordination between
the higher, cortical, and the lower, visceral levels of the hierarchy)
the more it is amenable to internalization. This sounds rather abstract,
but consider two players in a chess competition facing each other across
the board. The simplest way of defeating the opponent is to club him over
the head. A player may occasionally experience this urge (particularly if
this opponent is Bobby Fischer), but he will never seriously entertain
the idea: the competitive drive can express itself only according to
the 'rules of the game'. Instead of resorting to violence, the player
visualizes in his imagination the possibilities of deriving an advantage
from his next move, and this mental activity provides him with a series
of pleasurable anticipatory, partial satisfactions, even if in the end
victory is not achieved. Hence the sporting pleasure in competitive
games, regardless -- up to a point -- of the final outcome. Stevenson
saw deeper than Freud when he wrote that to travel hopefully is better
than to arrive.
Romantic lovers have always been aware of this. Longing is a bitter-sweet
emotion with painful and pleasurable components. Sometimes the imagined
presence of the beloved person can be more gratifying than the real one.
Emotions have a many-coloured spectrum of components, each with its own
hedonic tone. To ask whether to love is pleasurable or not is as meaningless
as to ask whether a Rembrandt painting is bright or dark.
We can now turn to the third source of ambivalence in our emotions.
The first, we remember, was the biological origin of the drive, the second
the pleasure-unpleasure tone attached to it, the third is the polarity
of self-assertion versus self-transcendence which is manifested in all
our emotions.
Take love first -- an ill-defined but heady cocktail of emotions with
countless variations. (Sexual, platonic, parental, oedipal, narcissistic,
patriotic, botanistic, canine-directed or feline-orientated, as the
textbooks would say.) But whatever its target and method of wooing, there
is always present an element of self-transcending devotion in varying
proportions. In
sexual
relationships, domination and aggression are
blended with empathy and identification; the outcome ranges from rape to
platonic worship.
Parental love
reflects, on the one hand, a biological
bond with 'one's own flesh and blood' which transcends the boundaries
of the self; while domineering fathers and over-protective mothers are
classic examples of self-assertiveness. Less obvious is the fact that
even
hunger
, an apparently simple and straightforward biological drive,
can contain a self-transcending component. Everyday experience tells us
that appetite is enhanced by congenial company and surroundings. On a
less trivial level, ritual commensality is intimately related to magic
and religion among primitive people. By partaking of the flesh of the
sacrificed animal, man or god, a process of transubstantiation takes
place; the virtues of the victim are ingested and a kind of mystic
communion is established which includes all who participated in the
rite. Transmitted through the Orphic mystery cult, the tradition of
sharing the slain god's flesh and blood, entered in a symbolic guise
into the rites of Christianity. To the devout, Holy Communion is the
supreme experience of self-transcendence; and no blasphemy is intended
by pointing to the continuous tradition which connects ritual feeding
with transubstantiation as a means of breaking down the ego's boundaries.
Other echoes of this ancient communion survive in such rites as baptismal
and funeral meals, symbolic offerings of bread and salt, or the blood-brother
ceremony among some Arab tribes, performed by drinking a few drops of the
elected brother's blood.
We can only conclude that even while eating, man does not live by bread
alone: that
even the apparently simplest act of self-preservation may
contain an element of self-transcendence
.
And vice versa, such admirably altruistic pursuits as caring for the sick
or poor, protecting animals against cruelty, serving on committees and
joining protest marches, can serve as wonderful outlets for bossy
self-assertion, even if unconscious. Professional do-gooders, charity
tigresses, hospital matrons, missionaries and social workers are
indispensable to society, and to inquire into their motives, often hidden
to themselves, would be ungrateful and churlish.
3
Thus leaving apart the extremes of blind rage and mystic trance
at opposite ends of the spectrum, all our emotional states show
combinations of the two basic tendencies: one reflecting the individual
holon's wholeness, the other his partness, with a mutually restraining
influence on one another. But it may also happen that the integrative
tendency, instead of restraining its antagonist, acts
as a trigger or
catalyst
for it. We shall discuss in
Chapter IV
the disastrous consequences of self-transcending identification of the
individual with the group-mind, its leaders, slogans and beliefs. For the
moment we shall turn to the happier aspects of the self-same catalysing
process, when it serves to generate the magic of illusion in art.
How does the process work? Let us consider a simple situation with only
two people involved: Mrs A. and her friend, Mrs B. whose little daughter
has recently been killed in an accident. Mrs A. sheds tears of sympathy,
participating in Mrs B.'s sorrow, partially identifying herself with her
friend by an act of empathy, projection or introjection -- whatever you
like to call it. The same might happen if the 'other person' is merely
a heroine on the screen or in the pages of a novel.
But it is essential to distinguish here between two distinct emotional
processes involved in the event, although they combine in the lived
experience. The first is the spontaneous act of identification itself,
characterized by the fact that Mrs A. has for the moment more or less
forgotten her own existence by participating in the experiences of another
person, real or imagined. This is clearly a self-transcending and cathartic
experience; while it lasts, Mrs A. is prevented from thinking of her own
worries, jealousies and grudges against her husband. In other words,
the process of identification temporarily
inhibits
the self-assertive
tendencies.
But now we come to the second process which may have the opposite effect.
The act of identification may lead to the arousal of
vicarious emotions
experienced, as it were, on the other person's behalf. In Mrs A.'s case
the vicarious emotion was one of sadness and bereavement. But it can
also be anxiety or anger. You commiserate with Desdemona; as a result,
the perfidy of Iago makes your blood boil. The anxiety which grips the
spectator of a Hitchcock thriller, though vicarious, is physiologically
real, accompanied by palpitations, increased pulse rate, sudden jumps of
alarm. And the anger aroused by the ruthless gangster on the screen --
which Mexican audiences have occasionally riddled with bullets --
is real anger, marked by a flow of adrenalin. Here, then, is the core of
the paradox, which is basic to the understanding of both the delusions
of History -- and the illusions of Art. Both derive from man's nature as
a belief-accepting animal (as Waddington called it). Both require a --
temporary or permanent -- suspension of disbelief.
To recapitulate: we are faced with a process in two steps. At the first
step, the self-transcending impulses of projection, participation,
identification
inhibit
the self-assertive tendencies, purge us of
the dross of our self-centred worries and desires. This leads to the
second step: the process of loving identification may stimulate --
or trigger off -- the surge of hatred, fear, vengefulness, which,
though experienced on behalf of another person, or group of persons,
nevertheless increases the pulse rate. The physiological processes which
these vicarious emotions activate are essentially the same whether the
threat or insult is directed at oneself or at the person or group with
whom one identifies. They belong to the self-assertive category, although
the self has momentarily changed its address -- by being, for instance,
projected into the guileless heroine on the stage; or the local soccer
team; or 'my country, right or wrong'.
It is a triumph of the imaginative powers of the human mind that we are
capable of shedding tears over the death of Anna Karenina, who only exists
as printer's ink on paper, or as a shadow on the screen. Children and
primitive audiences who, forgetting the present, completely accept the
reality of events on the stage, are experiencing a kind of hypnotic
trance, with its ultimate origin in the sympathetic magic practised
in primitive cultures, where the masked dancer becomes identified with
the god or demon he mimes, and the carved idol is invested with divine
powers. At a more advanced stage of cultural sophistication we are still
capable of perceiving Laurence Olivier as himself and as Prince Hamlet of
Denmark at one and the same time, and of manufacturing large quantities
of adrenalin to provide him with the required vigour to fight his
adversaries. It is the same magic at work, but in a more sublimated
form: the process of identification (of spectator via actor with the
hero) is transitory and partial, confined to certain climactic moments,
a suspension of disbelief which does not entirely abolish the critical
faculties or undermine personal identity.
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