In terms of the study of emotions, Antonio Damasio describes the 20th century as “the century of neglect.” If the research of emotion is said to begin with Aristotle, then by the end of 19th century we have a body of work that includes the writings of Pascal, Spinoza, Darwin, Freud, Sartre and William James among many others. But all of this success in the study of emotions was cut short in the 20th century when the study of emotion was given increasingly short shrift by scientists and thinkers who embraced a philosophically outdated Cartesian model of the mind in order to support the computational theories of intelligence made so popular by the “cognitive revolution” of the 1950’s. Today, the computational model of the mind advocated by the strong AI theory and Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar, has been upset—-philosophically by Searle, Merleau-Ponty and Dreyfus; in mathematics and physics by Penrose; and in the field of neuroscience by Damasio. Remarkable advances in brain study have provided us with a very different perspective––an emotional revolution, claims Damasio––which positions emotion as the very basis of reason. As the first mechanism of rational processes, it seems that emotion is a primal and practical necessity.
It is becoming clear that there are a whole host of medical ills that can be illuminated by emotional studies. Indeed, understanding how the emotional system works is crucial for the effective treatment stroke and mood disorders. Emotional studies have important applications in the social space as well; for while it is clear that what goes on in a culture economically, politically, and legally involves decisions that emerge out of rational processes, it seems that these rational processes evolve out of, and work alongside, emotional processes that have their origin in the survival of the organism; it appears that the way we produce moral behaviour is very closely tied to the emotional system in an evolutionary sense. Clearly, emotion has an immense role to play in our decisions as individuals and as a society; but how are we to understand this relationship between emotion and reason? What is an emotion? What is a feeling? And why is reason so dependent on both of them?
Damasio redefines the concept of emotion by amplifying its description into three categories:
1. Basic emotions––fear, anger happiness, as studied by Darwin and others––appear to be universal; even without the same names they are represented by the same behaviour in different cultures and even across certain species.
2. Background emotions, which are the most prevalent emotions we have. We are always in an emotional state, ie.discouragement or enthusiasm. Consciousness is always an emotive state.
3. Secondary or social emotions include compassion, shame, contempt, pride, and jealousy. These are entirely tied to social concerns, to those with whom and towards whom we act, others.
Secondary or social emotions were initially thought of as purely cultural constructions, but this has been shown to be not quite the case. While culture and education––the social environment as a whole––clearly plays an enormous role in directing the specifics of how emotions are applied, animal research has shown that a number of these emotions are present in primates who have been observed behaving compassionately, even towards other animals of other species. It seems as though these secondary emotions permeate our genetics and are as much a part of our biological make up as the primary emotions are.
Using William James as starting point, Damasio outlines the distinction and relationship between feeling and emotion–James’ inversion of the traditional view of the physiology of the emotion/feeling cycle has been been borne out by later research. James writes:
Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.
By interposing the body between the causative stimulus and the emotive mindstate, James shows the inseparability of mind and body; he also shows that body is represented in the brain, either directly or indirectly, and that the brain can map the body. However, James leaves out the possibility of an appraisal of the the stimulus itself. Although there is often no stimulus appraisal––fear may cause a direct body state––it does happen, especially when we are confronted with more complex situations. According to Damsio, James conflated emotion and feeling: on one hand James gives the impression that emotion is a variety of reactive behaviours; but then, on the other hand, he says that the perception that we get from the reaction is the emotion. This was shown to be an inconsistent view by the physiologists in the early 20th century.
In Damasio’s terms, emotion and feeling can be understood separately. Feelings involve cognition and are composite perceptions of:
1. partcular states of the body that are real or simulted
2. states of altered cognitive resouces
3. the deployment of certain scripts (descriptions) which can be really in the body or generated in the brain––ie. a desctiption of happiness
4. different states of cognitve ability in different body states––ie. time perception, learning attentiveness etc.
And all of this is connected to a causative state which is intentionality––how we feel ‘about’ or ‘towards’ something.
And human emotions are understood as:
1. largely unlearned programs of automatic actions and cognitive strategies aimed at the management of life. Largely but not 100% automatic––we can have some measure of control over them.
2. programs aimed at the management of life; one cannot do without emotions; they play an evolutionary role for the self and/or for the group
3. triggered by objects or situations that act on the mind, whether they are real or in the mind as a recollection; defects in particular aspects of emotion can be traced to lesions in certain parts of the brain.
In Damasio’s view, emotion involves an appraisal of stimulus, a triggering of emotion, and an execution of emotion and/or emotional states. Feeling involves an emotional trigger which stimulates brain structures to initiate a set of internal chemical changes which create changes to the viscera in the central nervous system. Thus, the experience of an emotion and the feeling associated with it involves a variety of changes in cognitive resources. Emotions change how we recall past experiences and perceive time; and they alter the relationship between our bodies and the world––even way in which we reason changes profoundly with emotive states. In brief, emotions and feelings change the way in which we attend to the world.
This relationship between emotion and feeling developed out of complex mechanisms of reaction built out of many other processes that were tied to survival: reward and punishment, scaling of internal needs, pain and pleasure. And it is certain that early creatures relied on such mechanisms long before emotions appeared as we understand them. In terms of survival, emotions and their components can be understood as exercising homeostatic or bodily regulating goals–they have everything to do with how an organism manages it’s life cycle. In our life cycle there is a mandate in our genome which drives us to persist and prevail––the emotional system is the latest expression in this blind desire to stay alive. As Damasio points out, the multitudes of cells in the body have a drive to persist, prevail and stay alive; to homeostaically manage the process of energy acquisition and transformation. This is the genesis of emotions and the birth of feeling: pleasure and pain.
It seems that there really is no separating mind, brain and body. The mind exists because there is a body; the body is the context for the mind/brain. The mind’s principle task is to examine and manage the internal economy of the organism. Feelings are always tied to the body, directly or indirectly; information about the body is so selective that it goes into specialised channels in the brain. Indeed, the brain creates chemical markers that have to do with specific bodily states. These markers allow the brain to carry out somatic perception which is key in the appraisal of stimulus (decision making) and the ability of emotional response to vary with context. Somatic-marker associations are reinstated, or recalled, physiologically and bias cognitive processing. In cases where complex and uncertain decisions need to be made, the somatic markers recall all reward and punishment experiences associated with the relevant stimuli, which are then summed to produce a net somatic state––that gut feeling. This overall state is used to direct (or bias) the selection of the appropriate action. Utilising the somatosensory cortex, the brain can even run internal simulations of responses or transformations in bodily states as representations in the mind. This is what Damsio terms the “as if ” body loop: it is as if the body was actually sensing or undergoing this or that experience recreated internally. This allows us not only to predict possible bodily or emotive states for ourselves but also to project them onto others. This clearly has relevance with regards to the secondary emotions outlined above as well as to predictive mental behaviour that rationalise potential outcomes.
According to Damasio, emotions are action programs which preceed feelings (which are the perception of these programs.) Emotions operate in multistage cycles and cannot be understood as being about or in one area of the brain that is a centre for this or that. They are modified by context––socialisation plays an important role––and reflect the ongoing management of life inside the organism; feelings give us a window into this internal life. Internal needs cannot be repressed. In the case of food, for example, the body declares a state of hunger because it wants to reach homeostasis and therefore lets this situation come into consciousness so that the mind can decide on appropriate action.
Cognitively speaking, we have multiple routes open to us. We have a fast route of decision making, which is biologically entrenched, and governed by powerful emotional, intuitive or “gut” responses to a given object or situation; and we have reason, traditionally understood as a slow methodical “cost-benefit” analysis. But these routes are not necessarily opposed to each other. In a healthy individual they work together in order to expedite the decision making process. Emotions also allow us to make decisions with out consciously confronting every option available to us; they allows us to freely and purposefully rationalise by removing or highlighting certain key options. Indeed, emotion seems to be the seat of practical reason itself; or, at the very least, it is the means by which it can function effectively. As some of Damasio’s patient studies have shown, damage to certain parts of the brain that are associated with emotion can have drastic effects in the realm of reasoning, both in terms of practical decision making and socialisation. And there have been those that, due to a break down in the somatic apparatus, have lost the ability to feel emotions while they can still intellectually understand their significance.
Emotion also plays a role in social processes that lead to social homeostasis. Most of our social engagements involve, to some degree at least, the projections into the social space of our biological needs. But the effectiveness and health of this social homeostasis would necessarily reflect the state of the culture itself and its emotional health and intelligence. It seems impossible, however, that a definitive account of this could be provided here. In the end it seems that everything we say about emotion needs to be put into context …
DAMASIO LECTURE: “Emotion, Feeling, and Social Behavior: The Brain Perspective”
DAMASIO LECTURE: MEDICINE TO SOCIETY I & II
Hubert Dreyfus on Merleau-Ponty, Computers and the mind:
10. Thinking About Emotions: James & Sartre
April 1, 2008
For many critics James’ model of the emotions falls short as it does not explicitly demonstrate the role of emotion in higher cognition. Indeed, Sartre’s Esquisse d’une Theorie des Emotions attacks James’ conception of emotions as being too concerned with physiology. For Sartre, emotions are––whether we are willing to admit it or not––our own actions; they are ways in which we make prereflexive choices about how we deal with the world; they are acts which allow us to escape from the world or transform it according to our desires: spite, resentment, love, fear, joy and sorrow are kinds of “magical transformations of the world.”
Sartre was profoundly influenced by Hiedegger, and by Husserl, who influenced them both. For Heidegger, Husserl’s philosophy was incomplete because it did not take into account the historical being for whom such questions about existence and consciousness make philosophy possible in the first place. Heidegger views experience as necessarily situated in a world and in ways of being—Dasein is the being that cares about Being. Heidegger argues that Dasein, finding itself thrown into the world amidst things and with others, is thrown into its own possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of its own mortality. The need for Dasein to assume these possibilities––the need for it to be responsible for its own existence––is the basis of Heidegger’s notion of authenticity.
Heidegger created the term “thrownness”––which is also used by Sartre––to describe the idea that human beings (Dasein) are “thrown” into existence without having chosen it. Existentialists consider being thrown into existence as prior to any other thoughts or ideas that humans have or definitions of themselves that they create (there are of course great differences here between Atheist and Christian points of view). In Kierkegaard’s words:
How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?
Heidegger’s conception of authenticity, simply stated, revolves around the individual’s “throwness” into the world and the integrity and honesty with which the individual creates his own authentic subjectivity, only to reintegrate it back into the world. Sartre systematises Heidegger in his own way by positing that for humans, existence preceeds essence: thrown into the world, man makes himself because man asks ontological questions (Being for itself). Objects do not engage in ontological questioning, thus for objects essence preceeds existence (Being in-itself). But also Sartre believed that humans can also engage in Being for Others: A person who cannot embrace their freedom to confront existential absurdity and define their life seeks, in effect, to be “looked at”—to be made an object of another’s subjectivity. This creates a clash of freedoms whereby person A’s being or sense of identity is controlled by––in the mind of A at least––person B’s thoughts about A.
Like Heidegger, Sartre leans towards the view that consciousness and the world are a unified phenomenon and that there is no separating them; that even in attempting to ‘bracket’ conscious phenomena out of common notions of reality we cannot neglect the innate unity of what we have separated. However, Sartre also continues the tradition of the Cartesian dichotomy between the consciousness and the world. Creating what often seems to be an infuriating paradox, on one hand Sartre embraces Heidegger’s Dasein, on the other he extends the Cartesian/Husserlian distinction between Mind––or perhaps more acurately in Sartre’s case, the freedom of the will––and World. Despite the virtuosic and often confusing double talk Sartre employs to deal with this apparent contradiction, he is always clear about the ultimate point of his thought which rests firmly in his concepts freedom and responsibility. For Sartre consciousness is freedom and responsibility is the idea that we are the sole authors of our actions; we must accept the consequences of our actions—there are no excuses. In order to understand the apparent incoherence in Sartre’s position we must realise that he has no wish to justify his philosophy in terms of scientific or logical truths. For Sartre the only truth is action in “good faith.” Sartre is, above all else, concerned with individual and political honesty; the individual and the individual alone creates his own essence:
“If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.”
Existentialist phenomenology, as put forward by Sartre, critiques and extends the Husserlian method by taking the position that a phenomenological examination of consciousness must take the world into account in terms of action, not simply passive intention. Like Husserl, Sartre’s concept of consciousness requires intentionality–-it is always about the things of the world. And again, like Husserl, Sartre is concerned with making the distinction between the phenomenal experience in the conscious mind and the immediate experiencing of material objects of the world. But, for Existential phenomenology, abstract consciousness is not a passive Husserlian realm like the transcendental ego, rather it is an active, dynamic engagement with or towards the things of the world. Thus Sartre views emotion as imposing itself on the world, transforming it according to a subjective scheme that works in accordance with the modified notions of being and authenticity that he took from Heidegger.
By postulating being as nothingness Sartre tries to separate it from the realm of worldly causality. In order to protect his conception of freedom, it is crucial for Sartre maintain consciousness as independent from the causal relations of the word, as distinct from the deterministic laws of physics. Introducing his own version of epoché, Sartre takes the position that, as we see ourselves as something distinct from the causal categories we impose on matter, we are obliged to make the distinction between the objective or scientific view, and the perspective of active, subjective, first person engagement. Therefore, from the point of view of Existentialist phenomenology, consciousness itself can be in no way considered as an object of itself––hence the break with Husserl––and, more importantly, it cannot be understood as being caused. For Sartre, consciousness is freedom itself.
Sartre’s conception of freedom allows him to hold the position that all action is chosen, and that the emotions are the pre-reflective choices which inform and permit action. Sartre removes causality from emotions, and––perhaps in an attempt to find a middle ground between physical determinism and the freedom of consciousness––describes them as “the terms by which” we make the choices that we do. An obvious argument emerges at this point: if emotions set the terms by which by which we make conscious choices, does that not imply––at least indirectly––causality? Sartre responds that emotions are not causes of behaviour but rather that they are “spontaneous out pourings of consciousness in which one takes the world in a certain way.” For Sartre, emotions are a way of structuring consciousness and he rejects any form of determinism with regards to the acts of the mind––the Freudian sub-conscious is impossible in Sartrian psychoanalysis; and the idea that emotions are fundamentally naturally selected responses to natural stimuli is rejected.
Sartre’s reading of James seems to reduce to James’ concept of emotions to naturally determined physiological responses that inform psychological states; and he criticises James for not giving enough weight to the free mental evaluations that cause emotions. Indeed, James’ essay on the emotions, taken alone, seems to describe only the essential mechanism of emotion and feeling; and while this explains ‘primal’ or early emotional responses that are completely concerned with survival, it does not explain emotional responses which are born out of more complicated mental processes. From this perspective James’ conception of emotion seems reductive and omissive when it fails to provide an alternative to the bodily means by which emotion can be generated in the organism and when it does not take the influence emotion on cognition and behaviour into account.
However, James’ views on emotions very complicated when viewed in the larger context of his work. James’ Principles of Psychology describes the relation of subjective consciousness in relation to the world and society and offers extensive examinations of how the phenomena of experience, including emotions, are interpreted by the individual and evolve with experience; The Will to Believe offers a view of the function of metaphysical mental states and their necessity in the creation of belief, which is in James’ view, of practical necessity to understanding the phenomena of experience spiritually. Emotion is seemingly always present, albeit sometimes tacitly, in the work of James. A broader reading of James indicates that, although emotions and feelings may be phylogenetic in origin and fundamentally physiological in nature, they are experienced, and enter the stream of consciousness where they are interpreted with regards to the highest interests of the individual. As James makes clear, experience is an unbroken stream that unifies the world, the body and the mind; it willfully looks backwards and projects forward in time and thereby constructs meaning, belief and truth out of existence.
Indeed, James’ view would seem to imply the following: the environmental context and physical manifestations of emotions, as they come to be represented as phenomena of experience, develop into mental states which are themselves recalled and reinterpreted; now not only with regards to the demands of the environment and the primal needs of the organism, but also in relation to each other. This creates the internal psychological states that create ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, personal belief and normative social values, and, indeed, subjectivity––the self in its various forms. Higher emotions––and this is not clearly stated by James––seem to emerge from conflicts between these mental states which may be only indirectly caused or influenced by events or stimuli considered external to the mind such as threats to the body and self, the extended self (ie. family, society, possessions etc), or belief and values. And, as Sartre also implies, these conflicts often seem imply choices which are driven pre-reflexively by the emotion that accompanies them. However, Sartre views any kind of implication of causal relations between biological/natural necessity and emotions as a negation of the soveringnty of the will; he rejects the existence of any kind of biological, psychological, historical or normative social determiner on the mind, asserting that this view ultimately leads to a deterioration of true conceptions of freedom and individual responsibility.
Sartre managed to instrumentally employ the structural and theoretical aspects of Husserl and Heidegger to critique the late 18th and early 19th century malaise and complacency brought on, in part, by Darwinian biological determinism, the historical determinism of Hegel, and later, the Psychological determinism of Freud. Sartre understood this condition to be a negation of human nature which is, above all, burdened with the responsibility of total freedom. Sarte’s “Existential Idealism” is born our his reaction to the action (and inaction) of his countrymen during the second world war; he accepts no excuses for collaboration with the Nazi’s, nor does he accept excuses for the absence of action against them. For Sartre freedom is transcendent; it cannot be repressed by science or logic and ultimately rests in the soverignty of the subjective will; emotions are the intentional assertions that the subjective will projects on to the world. But this unrelenting assertion that individual existence is the responsibility of freedom––which is rationalised by the seemingly unvalidated claim that consciousness is freedom precisely because it is not caused––raises problems.
The question that looms largest concerns meaning. Because Sartre’s conception of consciousness appears to move psychically in one direction––the emotions assert themselves pre-reflectively and intentionally towards the passive matter of the world, “magically transforming” it according to subjective choice, and thereby allowing the will to act––it is difficult to to know how or in what context the Sartrian notion of conscious freedom is to exert itself. Indeed, context would imply a causal influence, as a goal would imply a need or a desire. And what about ethics and cultural differences?
Whereas James describes consciousness as caused by an evolutionary process akin to natural selection that favours conscious traits in the survival of an organism—as a complex system of mind, body and world which informs and feeds back upon itself, thus creating understandings and beliefs out of the phenomena of experience which function in the highest interests of the organism—Sartre offers his concept of “bon foi”, which represents the universal spirit of existential responsibility. Where James’ pluralistic view gives play to individual, environmental, and social factors with regard to the interpretation and cause of emotion, Sartre’s philosophy seems to put all its faith in the subject…
TBC
What is an Emotion? William James (1884)
Jean Paul Sartre: The Emotions (fragment)
This is 1 out of 7 in a BBC series on Sartre
9. Our Highest Interests: Phenomenology and Belief
March 27, 2008
On James and Husserl:
In philosophical terms, the term phenomenology has had several interpretations, each of which has involved a study of the relationship between phenomena and consciousness via different methodologies and perspectives. Kant introduced the phenomenal view of experience, positing that the world cannot be understood in any way other than how we experience it––any understanding of world is necessarily phenomenal because all knowledge begins with experience which forms the fundamental intuitions of the mind. Hegel’s phenomenology continues and attempts to complete the work of Kant. Abandoning the hierarchichal notion of inner and outer experience, observer and object, Hegel views experience itself as being in the world as a phenomena of the Mind or Geist; for Hegel, it makes no sense to draw the distinction of things in themselves because in order for the phenomenon of experience to occur there can be no separation between the mind and the world; it is all ‘Spirit.’ As Merleau-Ponty points out, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Freud can all be seen, in one way or another, as early disciples of phenomenology. He writes:
[Phenomenology] is a transcendental philosophy that suspends affirmations of the natural attitude in order to understand them, but it is also a philosophy for which the world is always “already there”, before reflection, like an inalienable presence… it is the attempt at a direct description of our experience such as it is, and without regard to its psychological genesis, or to the causal explications that the savant, the historian, or the sociologist can furnish of it… it is in our selves that we will find the unity of phenomenology and its true sense.
Thus we can see a strong connection between phenomenology and existentialism; there is indeed a strong subjective position in phenomenology even as it strives to understand experience in terms which transcend psychological causes.
Edmund Husserl, the Moravian mathematician and logician, developed phenomenology into a highly influential discipline which began as a critical study of the psychological aspects of mathematical and logical truths. Husserl criticised logicians of his time for not focusing on the relations between subjective processes that lay at the root of pure logic; and offered a series of three strata on which logical thought could be understood. From a practical level of syntax and grammar, through a level of judgement which created laws to prevent contradiction and formal laws of possible truths, Husserl arrives at a ‘meta’ or ‘transcendental’ logic which frees the logician to work in the realm of universal logic wherein, theoretically at least, the psychological problems of formal categories (logic and mathematics) could be surpassed and all possible valid deductions could be potentially attained.
Extending his study to experience itself, Husserl’s Phenomenological method strives to understand the essential structures of experience by placing an emphasis on subjectivity and the examination of consciousness through the phenomena that appear to it. Husserl seeks out the structures that make experience possible by examining the relationship between the acts of our consciousness and the objects our consciousness, ultimately questioning how these acts and objects are made possible. Like Descartes, Husserl looks for a kind of certainty with regards to understanding consciousness; and, he does not believe that this certainty can be found solely in our immediate experience of the world. But where Descartes had to doubt the truth of all empirical observations until he could prove them solely on the basis of his subjectivity, Husserl views subjective consciousness as intentional with regards to the things of the world––it is always conscious of or about something. Thus, for Husserl, the things of our conscious experience begin with the things of the world––the Cartesian scepticism with regards to the world exterior to the self goes to far.
However, Husserl does want to attempt to examine the objects of experience as separate from any preconceived judgement of reality––he wants to discover them as conscious phenomena, not simply as entities existing in the world. He creates a distinction between phenomenology and ontology: we can see an object before us and understand it to be existing in reality; but we can also imagine the same object, dream of it or possibly hallucinate it. Simply taking an ontological account of how an object immediately appears to us does not describe the complete phenomenology of the possible ways in which we might experience an object in our minds. Using a technique he calls epoché, he ‘brackets’ reality out of experience; this allows him to go beyond the simple and immediate perception of objects and examine the essence of experience as a phenomena. Husserl came to understand experience as relying on a set of basic intuitions which are centred in what he calls the ‘transcendental ego.’ For Husserl, the transcendental ego and the intuitions make the various types of conscious experience possible and are fundamentally responsible for perception, mathematical truth, logic, and all the ways in which we engage meaningfully with the world.
Thus, the reality of the material world––and the objects that constitute it–– is not rejected by Husserl, but rather it is bracketed out in order to enable the clear identification of the structures of perception. The notion that conscious perception of phenomena is driven by properties that we see as emanating from objects themselves is rejected and replaced with the idea that perception is constituted by our intentionality directed towards objects. From the phenomenological standpoint, the object of perception is not understood simply as an external entity, nor is it seen as offering indications about what it is. It is a set aspects and attributes that imply one another under the overall idea or essence of a particular object. Thus we can see, dream, hallucinate and imagine an object, and each one of these functions is an experience of the attributes which constitute our general idea of that object. Later in his career Husserl uses this position to launch a critique of western science, challenging what he views as its dogmatic empirical and naturalistic orientation. He goes as far as to say that mental/spiritual functions exist in their own reality independent of any physical basis and that any science that cannot take this into account is not complete. While his conception of the transcendental ego and pure experience, as well as his discourse on intuitions, places Husserl in the tradition of German idealism epitomised by Hegel and Kant; and although his ‘bracketing’ of reality is clearly a development of Cartesian thought, there is also an element in Husserl’s phenomenology which resonates with work of the American psychologist and philosopher William James.
James recognises, as Husserl did, that the common notion of scientific empiricism was problematic; and while he is, in a sense, in line with the romantic critique of science, James does not wish to promote an antiscientific agenda; rather, he wants to ensure that science is realistic about its claims. James noticed that there was a very strong tendency for science to reduce the natural world into some thing artificial; and that there was a troubling connection between the kinds of claims science makes about a phenomenon and the way in which it is examined. James’ radical empiricism can be understood as concerning itself with an examination of the basis of knowledge, the nature of experience, and how the idea of ‘truth’ is to be properly understood in terms of verification, vindication, and belief. For James, experience cannot be laid out into a hierarchy and it is certainly under no obligation to justify itself to science and philosophy. But, while James takes the position that experience must be examined on its own terms, he rejects the idea that it can be properly understood when it is separated, bracketed, or otherwise removed from the visceral environment that spawns it.
Associationalist thought in its various guises––most famously in Aristotle and the classic empiricism of Locke, Hume, J.S. Mill––tends to take the position that understanding comes about by the continual association of unrelated and independent elemental entities. For James, the objects of the world are only known to the mind as phenomena, as experiences evolving in relation to each other with wilful and meaningful purpose. Thus he views the associationalist position as being mistaken when it claims that the fundamental feelings and observations of the world which construe understanding, the ego, and indeed consciousness itself are unaware of each other. James insists that for consciousness to occur at all there must be what calls a ‘supernumerary intelligence’, a wilful intelligent being, to bind these feelings and perceptions together. For James, the mind is a process of experience which creates the means by which anything can be understood to be existing at all––a non-subjective explanation involving association of constantly conjoined entities, analogies of ‘blank pages’ or ‘vessels’ being filled will not do. James’ “stream of consciousness” describes the ego as the subjective point of awareness that joins experience, permitting the ideas, emotions and feelings that went before to stand in conscious relation to those that are being experienced now and those that we might expect to experience in the future. For James, this explains the continuity of consciousness that is lacking in the associationalist model, but which is clearly a fundamental aspect of experience.
James’ radical empiricism seems to allow for subjectivity in a way that is consistent with experience; and, like Husserl, James understands consciousness as requiring selectivity and intentionality on the part of the individual. But where the exact nature of Husserl’s view on intentionality and its meaning for the human organism is the subject of ongoing debate, James is clear and, above all, pragmatic. The individual becomes conscious of phenomena which are of “highest interest” for him or her to pick out from the immense wash of background stimuli. These highest interests become the intentional focus of subjective consciousness; they give meaning to the objects of experience whose attributes move in relation to each other and traverse the realms of experience––from simple observation, to dreams and hallucinations. Thus the individual or the ego is the result, and in a sense the creator or perpetuator of, a conscious process in which selectivity and intentionality are of fundamental importance to survival. Survival depends on consciousness, not only in a practical sense of identifying and interpreting phenomena, but also in the abstract conditions of its own meaning and necessity: consciousness creates the conditions by which survival ceases to be an hypothesis and becomes an imperative.
For James, experience shows that consciousness, intentionality, and the will are fundamental; and he claims that when scientific theories exclude such fundamental elements they receive only the results that are representative of the narrow methods of inquiry that they employ, creating a warped or incomplete understanding of the subject of investigation. For example, it may well be that part of the way in which we understand the relations between phenomena does indeed have something to do with association, and that experiments involving the association of phenomena and consciousness could tell us something about the nature of the mind. James would claim, however, that this is not necessarily a complete picture of what is going on, and that in fact, most of our experiences do not work in this way at all. The practical, functionalist psychology put in place by James rejects the classic view of consciousness as a Cartesian substance. Rather, it is understood as a process of mental operations which manage a network of systems by way of the will, attention, and selection. It serves a practical purpose in terms of survial by allowing for the formation of coherent experiential interpretations of the world. James’ ideomotor theory of the will describes the functionality of the volitional element of consciousness: initally a collection of reflex responses to the phenomena of experience, basic behaivour becomes more and more adaptive until volition––which informs selectivity and later intentionality––is brought to bear on these initial reflexes; the will expresses itself on behalf of its highest interests; it is not separated from the body, but rather becomes the volitional version of bodily reflexes. Thus intentionality can be understood as a conscious, wilful engagement with the world that develops out of increasingly selective primordial responses to environmental stimuli which are in the higest interests of the organism.
Clearly, the criteria applied in process of choosing the objects of experience we pick out, or otherwise become aware of against the backdrop of the world at large, are central to the phenomenology of Husserl; but, for James, a fundamental part of the selective response to experience is based in reflex and instinct. The practical judgements we make about the objects of experience must necessarily reflect––in essence at least––the process of instinct/intentionality and the conscious stream of experienced phenomena. James’ view is pragmatic; it is not a logical or philosophical exercise; it is functional; ideas about ‘bracketing’ do not apply. In Jamesian terms, we accept as true those ways of understanding experiences that resonate with our highest interests. And this resonance sounds from our most mundane, primitive and banal needs and desires to our loftiest and most sublime aspirations; it rumbles ominously in our deepest fears and sings triumphantly of our greatest achievements. It traverses the empirical, the social, and the transcendental and forms the foundation for belief, insight, and the way in which we come to understand our experience of the world.
Husserl and James seem to part where phenomenology offers a formal representation of experience and psychology offers a material description of it. While the thought of James and Husserl share the basic same purpose––to reveal the purity of experience such as it is given––they interpret experience in very different ways. In its search for the essence, phenomenology treats experience as being, above all, intentional; experience is always subject to the formal structure of intentionality. James’ Radical empiricism employs a continuous conception of experience that is causal of psychological states like intentionality and belief; and this plays a crucial practical role in directing our selectivity and integrating our bodies and minds with the world in a way that quite literally keeps our highest interests in mind.
7. Illusions and Discontents: Psychoanalysis and Religion
February 21, 2008
“…the question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression––in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body.” Norman O. Brown
Freud claims that religion is the product of the human desire to have wishes fulfilled; that through religion we project what we long to be the case against what reality and/or society permits. Religion is thus an illusion. He considers the religious belief in God the perfect father to be a repressed compensation for our own imperfect fathers––this perpetuates the infantile longing for a perfectly loving parental figure. Religion, in other words, retards human development and interferes with the larger goal of attaining human maturity. While science aims to be clear about what is real and what is illusion, religion blurs this distinction and is symptomatic of mass repression. But is Freudian psychoanalysis really so dismissive of faith? This essay attempts to uncover the complex and subtle psychoanalytical view of religion.
For Freud the unconscious begins with repression––when an individual refuses to admit real desires and thoughts to conscious life; when he or she refuses to recognise his or her true nature. Dreams and neurotic symptoms which interrupt into the conscious domain do not give a perfect image of the unconscious thought of an individual, but they do give sufficient evidence that it exists in the form of a conflict between two psychic forces. Freud extends this into a theory of human nature, claiming that the repressed unconscious is present in all human beings and that we are all therefore neurotic in some way or another. Mental health then is a normative judgement about the social acceptability of the neurosis of a given case.
Where Descartes and the Enlightenment claimed that the foundation of human nature rested in reason and pure thought, Freud posited that the driving force behind the universal and fundamental realm of unconscious repression is desire. Thus, psychoanalysis effectively destroys the concept of pure reason as fundamental to human nature and demonstrates that it is desire above all else that motivates our psychology: I desire, therefore I am. Freud posits ‘the pleasure principle’ which claims that, above all, our psychic energy is concerned with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. However, this desire for pleasure is at odds with the rest of the world; the pleasure-principle is in conflict with the reality-principle, and it is this that is at the root of repression. But the pleasure principle holds fast in the unconscious, evidencing itself in reality through dreams and symptomatic behaviour. In this view, the conscious self can be understood as the surface mediator between our inner desiring selves and the outer world––governed by the reality principle, the conscious self is a largely linguistic psychological apparatus which allows for acculturation. Indeed, it has often been said that Freud srtikes a fatal third blow to the notion of human dignity. Like Copernicus and Darwin, who respectively shattered mankind’s assumptions about his elite place in the cosmos and nature, Freud’s claims remove humanity from its special position in consciousness and sheds doubt on the assumption that we are the masters of our own minds. Because emotions are necissarily fragmented by feeling, understanding and, ultimately, by the expressive form they take, Freud also questions the assumption that our understanding of the meaning of our emotions is consistent. Indeed, cultural and social variables could play and enormous role here as well. Considering this perspective it is very difficult to understand emotion as simply an internal mental state whose nature and meaning is secure.
Freud was clearly inspired by Darwinian thought and early on he identified the reality-principle with the “struggle for existence”, implying that, in essence, psychological repression was due to economic factors––the need to work. Later on Freud constructs a more complicated theory which claims that man, in effect, represses himself by creating civilisation. Freud came to the conclusion that mankind creates society, society imposes repression, repression is the cause of universal neurosis; and thus there is an intrinsic relationship between civilisation and neurosis. From this basic concept of universal repression comes Freud’s tripartite theory of the psyche and its constituent structural elements: id, ego and superego.
Freud divided the id (instinct and internal desire) into two parts: Eros (life, desire) and Thanatos (death). Eros is related to instincts that are crucial to pleasurable survival, such as eating and copulation––the instinct an infant has to suckle, or the drive the adult has for sex. Thanatos most clearly represents an unconscious wish to die––to put the struggles of life to an end. Freud also posited a relationship between the death instinct and our desire to escape reality through media, fiction, alcohol and drugs and religion. Thus the id is the source of our most fundamental drives for food, sex and agression––it is atemporal, amoral, egocentric and illogical. It is the home of the libido and is essentially infantile in nature. Indeed, Freud saw the mind of an infant to be all id: a collection of impulses and desires directed by instinct which demand immediate satisfaction.
Mediation between the external world the id and the superego is carried out by the ego. While it allows for the conscious expression of some instinctive desires from the id––depending on their perceived consequences––, the ego’s primary function is the protection of the individual. When id desire conflicts with reality or the individual’s internalisation of society’s morals, norms, and taboos, defence mechanisms are often used by the ego. Psychoanalysis structures these mechanisms on four levels with level one being the most pathological and four the most normal or healthy.
The mechanisms included in level one are viewed as psychotic and include: denial, distortion and delusional projection. These mechanisms arise form the ego when reality is too disturbing or threatening to accept; they permit a delusional reshaping of reality and effectively eliminate the need to cope with it. While the pathological use of these level one mechanisms may render the adult individual insane to others, they are also a healthy part of dreams and childhood psychology.
In an attempt to deal with anxiety provoked by threatening people or by uncertain or uncomfortable reality, level two mechanisms include: projection, paranoia, prejudice, idealisation of others, jealousy, passive aggression, somatization and acting out. Behaviour of these types are often seen in severe depression and personality disorders. In adolescence, however, the occurrence of all of these defences is normal. Those who use these defences habitually are often viewed as immature, difficult to deal with or out of touch with reality.
Level three mechanisms, while common amongst adults, can often cause problems in relationships, work and life in genera when used as the primary style of coping with the world. Displacement, dissociation, intellectualisation, reaction formation and repression are all common at this level.
Finally, level four mechanisms include altruism, anticipation, humour, identification, introjection, sublimation, and suppression. These mechanisms are considered by psychoanalysis to be mature and indicative of the healthy adult; and while they may have their origins in immature responses, they have been adapted over the years in order to optimise pleasure and mastery. The deployment of these mechanisms allows the subject to integrate conflicting emotions and thoughts while still remaining effective; and as a result, persons using these mechanisms are viewed as having virtues. (see glossary below)
Additionally Freud posited a super-ego, which opposes the id and tends to control the ego. The symbolic voice of the father, the super-ego dictates cultural rules, morality and taboo; and plays a large part in instantiating guilt. It is born out of the Oedipus complex: a stage of psycho sexual development in childhood where children of both sexes regard their father as an adversary and competitor for the exclusive love of their mother. In Civilisation and Its Discontents, Freud extends this idea to society by presenting a “cultural super-ego.” For Freud mankind is caught between civilisation’s demand for conformity and the individual desire for freedom. The culture of civilisation inhibits man’s instinctual drives, which results in feelings of non fulfilment. Additionally, Freud maintains that while human beings are inherently savage, our aggression is weakened and disarmed by civilisation which imbues us with a sense of guillt––the mechanism by which cultural norms are enforced.
The position that all of mankind is neurotic and that at the core of humanity is pure savage aggression is certainly a difficult concept to accept. At first glance it seems to throw history into darkness and mankind into a homogenous and undesirable state. Certainly, this is a questionable assumption. It is important, however, that we consider the context in which Freud was writing. World War I must have had an important impact on his central observation about the tension between the individual and civilisation. Europe, coming out of a relatively stable period, was entering a period of what must have seemed like catastrophic change––the very foundations of modernity were crumbling and, with the shock of a world war, the future would have seemed very uncertain indeed. Freud must have seen symptoms this anxiety in his patients and the society at large. Additionally, we should keep in mind that there are certain types of neurosis which psychoanalysis claims can serve a practical role during the historical development of a society. These different neuroses have different sets of symptoms and different structures with regards to the relation between the repressed, the ego, and reality. Freud claims that there is a co-relation between cultural variation and types of neurosis. In Civilisation and its Discontents he writes:
“If the evolution of civilisation has such far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilisation––or epochs of it––possibly even the whole of humanity––have become ‘neurotic’ under the pressure of civilising trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim great practical interest.”
Freud viewed neurosis as being dynamic because of the weak nature of neurotic compromise; he saw neurosis as a psychological process with profound historical implications. Left to itself, Freud viewed the pattern of this process as regressive, always moving towards the source of repression. In the dreams and symptoms expressed by his patients, he saw themes and images that were intrinsically linked to the ritualistic and mythical history of humanity. Thus, for Freud, the link between history and neurosis is religion. The mistake has often been made that Freud’s statement that religion is a “substitute-gratification” and Marx’s view that religion is “the opiate of the masses” mean essentially the same thing. While a surface reading of Freud could certainly give the impression that psychoanalysis views religion simply and only as a mistaken manifestation of wish fulfilment, we must consider that the Freudian concept of “substiute-gratification” also contains truth: distorted by repression, substitute-gratifications express the very real and timeless desires of the human soul.
Psychoanalysis views religion as a neurosis as well as an attempt to cure that neurosis from the inside. Freud’s position is that religion has tamed antisocial instincts and created a sense of community around a shared set of beliefs, thus helping the civilisation. However, it has also exacted an enormous psychological cost to the individual by making him perpetually subordinate to the primal father figure of God. Thus the fundamental positive psychoanalytical understanding of history can be seen as a process of gaining maturity, or independence from our self-instantiated psychological apparatus (religion). However, as Freud points out in the dark conclusion of Civilisation and its Discontents, regression is possible as well. For Freud it is the task of psychoanalysis to complete what religion has failed to do: overcome the repressed infantile neurosis of the individual and society and allow mankind to emerge as a mature entity.
Freud here is consistent, for if we examine his levels of ego defence mechanisms we find a correlation between the the most pathological or infantile mechanisms in level one with the most delusional and dogmatic aspects of religion. But religiously inspired thought has shown itself capable, especially via the individual, to rise and exhibit the altruism and other qualities associated with level four responses. However, these individual cases or small groups are easily reabsorbed into the dominant delusional ideology. For Freud, a psychoanalytical study of the individual, civilisation and history is crucial if mankind is achieve its ideal––to move beyond these historically necessary but ultimately dangerous neurotic illusions.
While Freud makes clear that it is desire that rules the human condition, for him it is science above all that offers mankind a humble place of reflection on his place in the world. Thus, psychoanalysis in the grandest sense, is a study of the fundamental unsatisfied and repressed desires which drive history; it is a science of history that takes up where Marx leaves off. Economic determinism rests on the tacit assumption that economic progress is driven by needs that are fully conscious and ultimately biologically determined. In Freud’s view, however, history gives ample evidence that man is never fully satisfied with the satiation of conscious desire––psychoanalysis offers a way out of destructive neurosis and endless discontent. Where Marx begins with the grand narrative of opposing economic forces in society, Freud’s dialectical struggle begins with in the individual case. The goal of psychoanalysis is to deepen the historical understanding of the individual and thereby the society so that mankind may “awaken” from his own history as if from a nightmare; to engage life rather than history; or, as Norman O. Brown puts it, “to enter the state of Being which was the goal of his Becoming.”
While the Freudian model of psychoanalysis is an elegant and, in an of itself, consistent system of thought, it rests on certain assumptions and comes to certain conclusions which have not only seen it discredited as science but have also raised the ire of feminists and anthropologists alike. His conclusions about the psycho sexual development of children and claims about the universality of the Oedipus complex have attracted harsh criticism; and, looking at Freud’s ideas in retrospect, it is difficult to separate them from the man and his times. Still, it is difficult to deny that Freud was on to something big. Psychoanalysis has not only spawned an enormous legacy but has also profoundly influenced 20th century thought across a wide variety of domains, from education to advertising. But what of this ‘promise’ of psychoanalysis? What of this claim that psychoanalysis might rid mankind of this ‘disease’ that is history in which religion plays such a pivotal role? Freudian psychoanalysis and the economic determinism of Marx both engage in the kind of prophetic historical vision inspired by Hegel and a dialectical interpretation Darwin’s ideas. Marx offers a clear and inevitable––albeit erroneous––outcome to the process of economic determinism; Freud, however, remains vague about the nature of the final rapprochement of psychological forces which have plagued mankind since the inception of society. For psychoanalysis, it seems, the final, positive state of mankind would be one free of repression; but does this not ultimately require a final and eternal subsumption of eros and thanatos? an eternal reconciliation of life and death; conscious and unconscious; physical and psychic? Is this not, in a sense, a resurrection? Clearly, the ultimate Freudian vision for psychoanalysis is no less mythical or grand than that of Christianity. It is nothing less than the salvation of mankind.
“…because the body is satisfied, the death instinct no longer drives it to change itself and make history, and therefore, as Christian theology divined, its activity is in eternity.”
Norman O. Brown
There are several more episodes of this on You Tube under the name “Century of the Self”
READING: Freud’s various theories about the origins and nature of religion are presented in Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, and Moses and Monotheism.
See also: Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History.
Ego Defence Mechanisms, Glossary of Terms:
Level 1
Delusional Projection: Gross delusions about external reality, usually paranoid in nature.
Denial: Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening; refusing to perceive or consciously acknowledge the more unpleasant aspects of external reality.
Distortion: A reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs.
Level 2
Projection: a primitive form of paranoia; also reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming consciously aware of them; attributing one’s own unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and emotions to another; includes severe prejudice, severe jealousy, hyper vigilance to external danger, and “injustice collecting”; shifting one’s unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses within oneself onto someone else, such that those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations are perceived as being possessed by the other.
Acting out: Direct expression of an unconscious wish or impulse without conscious awareness of the emotion that drives that expressive behaviour. Fantasy: retreat into fantasy in order to resolve inner and outer conflicts. Hypochondriasis (a.k.a. somatization): The transformation of negative feelings towards others into negative feelings toward the self
Passive aggression: Aggression towards others expressed indirectly or passively.
Idealisation: Subconsciously choosing to perceive another individual as having more positive qualities than they may actually have.
Level 3
Intellectualisation: A form of isolation; concentrating on the intellectual components of a situations so as to distance oneself from the associated anxiety-provoking emotions; separation of emotion from ideas; thinking about wishes in formal, affectively bland terms and not acting on them; avoiding unacceptable emotions by focusing on the intellectual aspects.
Displacement: shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet; separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening.
Reaction Formation: Converting unconscious wishes or impulses that are perceived to be dangerous into their opposites; behaviour that is completely the opposite of what one really wants or feels; taking the opposite belief because the true belief causes anxiety. This defence can work effectively for coping in the short term, but will eventually break down.
Dissociation: Temporary drastic modification of one’s personal identity or character to avoid emotional distress; separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.
Repression: Process of pulling thoughts into the unconscious and preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering consciousness; seemingly unexplainable naiveté, memory lapse or lack of awareness of one’s own situation and condition; the emotion is conscious, but the idea behind it is absent.
Level 4
Introjection: Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person
Sublimation: Transformation of negative emotions or instincts into positive actions, behaviour, or emotion.
Altruism: Constructive service to others that brings pleasure and personal satisfaction.
Anticipation: Realistic planning for future discomfort
Humour: Overt expression of ideas and feelings (especially those that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about) that gives pleasure to others. Humour enables someone to call a spade a spade, while “wit” is a form of displacement.
Identification: The unconscious modelling of one’s self upon another person’s character and behaviour.
Suppression: The conscious process of pushing thoughts into the preconscious; the conscious decision to delay paying attention to an emotion or need in order to cope with the present reality; able to later access uncomfortable or distressing emotions and accept them
