The Feeling Brain: Biology and Psychology of Emotion
Week 6: Development and Emotion
Aiden Bussey
To preface my post, I am not particularly interested in developmental psychology. However, some of the topics and theories covered in the reading were interesting to me.
One of the topics I found most interesting was Harris' discussion of narrative as a crucial component of emotional understanding and development. Narrative is an extremely important and intriguing phenomenon that penetrates not only the fields of psychology and neurobiology, but also philosophy, literature, anthropology and other seemingly unrelated disciplines. Further, narrative organization exists across a wide spectrum of ages and cultures, indicating that forming narratives is some sort of fundamental process for humans.
As our other readings have shown, emotion seems to penetrate evolution (non-human animals, including animals without elaborate linguistic systems seem to experience emotion in ways analogous to human experience) and various mental functions (such as reasoning). Thus, it makes sense that emotion would bare some significance in the formation and utilization of narrative.
The link between emotion and narrative to me seems to be related to the link between emotion and reasoning. Emotional contribution to reasoning seems to work primarily through giving value to memory. For instance, emotion allows neutral objects to be perceived as pleasant or unpleasant. This sort of memory requires an awareness of chronology and attribution of significance to the various components of a situation. This is directly related to narrative, which arrange connected events both in terms of chronology and significance.
Similarly, the early psychology of Freud was hugely driven by narrative forms. While much of Freud is no longer used today, he was nonetheless responsible for huge innovations in the field of psychology and many of his theories have an intuitive appeal that, while not necessarily supported by modern understandings of cognition, experience, or emotion, can nevertheless provide insight into the way that cognition, emotion, and experience are experienced. Narrative allows an individual both to situate events in time and space and to construct and arrange meanings. Often, narratives are employed to privilege the present, portraying the past as leading up to the present. This important in that it creates continuity in events that may be experienced as unrelated or senseless.
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Ever since I read Siegel's introduction to "Toward an Interpersonal Neurobiology of the Developing Mind..." I've been seeing "spider web-like nets of neural connections" everywhere (p. 69)! That is, even the pattern of interconnecting branches in the shadow of a tree reminds me of neural pathways in the brain- all "ten times ten one million" of them. We've already been confronted with such staggering statistics, relating to the immensity of connections in the brain, but the numbers might not mean much until we get into the thick of what matters to us this week: how mental maps are formed in the context of affective learning.
I particularly appreciated Siegel's approach because he highlights the simultaneous and cyclical qualities of interpersonal relationships, emphasizing the ways in which we are formed by and inform our surroundings (including the people therein). Perhaps my enthusiasm for this piece was also fueled by the fact that I read it immediately after reading an article for conference about "Emotion, Metaphor and the Creative Process" by Lubart and Getz.
If I have not over-simplified the situation too much, the concept of neuroplasticity as a result of "collaborative interpersonal interaction" is linked to my conference work- which is (vaguely) about the role of creativity in learning and development, especially collaborations between artists and young people. In the past, I have taught bookmaking to various people in the hopes that it may encourage people to become more creative authors of their own experience; and, in a way, thus making overt the process that could have actually occurred at the chemical level in the brain! Therefore, theories about narrative functions and formation are also interesting to me.
Siegel states, "Narrative coherence can be examined by determining the free and flexible flow of information as individuals tell the story of their lives... This integration appears to allow the individual to have an internal sense of connection to the past, to live fully and mindfully in the present, and to prepare for the future as informed by the past and present" (77). He asserts that the fluidity which follows is essential to emotional well-being. Later on, he expresses a perspective that relates to my initial ideas about "what is an emotion", saying that "emotion is integrative in that connects other processes to each other" (82). It is a vague description, but it refers somehow to the image of a web of interconnections, rather than isolated functions of emotion in the brain.
I also found the notion of narrative quite fascinating. What’s more, your statement concerning emotion as giving value to memory and thus emotional memory as requiring “an awareness of chronology and attribution of significance to the various components of a situation” was really interesting and beautifully said. Narrative does indeed seem fundamental to human experience precisely by embedding important sociocultural information within an emotionally compelling form. The mnemonic, rhythmic qualities traditionally found in at least oral narratives point to the way in which stories are meant to become entwined with one’s own experience, one’s own memory. Conversational narratives or discussion represent a culturally mediated social framework for self-construction and the creation of meaning. Concerning self-construction or self-differentiation, the Siegel article emphasizes the way in which discussion is a kind of education in the subjectivity of emotions, as mutually communicable experiences.
I think the most rewarding, heartening point to be found in these readings is precisely the interpersonal nature of emotional development. The Siegel article in particular eloquently speaks to the way in which interpersonal experiences directly shape mental processes. Essential here is the emphasis on the patent connection between social experience and ontogenesis, literally on the neurobiological level, thus contesting the spurious cultural-biological dichotomy. As the Hofer article also attests—something fairly obvious but whose articulation is made necessary by the every-man-for-himself-is-an-island pseudo-biological model—attachment is the key to healthy development; in short, avoiding becoming a kind of hapless Kaspar Hauser.
Getting back to narrative and more specifically language itself, I am reminded of Donald Winnicott’s classification of words as transitional objects, or non-threatening objects which aid in the process of self-differentiation. Language becomes the focal point of shared attention between child and mother, or caregiver(s). Can words be considered essential to normal human development? What is normal? If indeed words, together with gesture, represent the means by which we become integrated with other minds, must we then see language not merely as mapping onto development, as a kind of secondary, merely representational device, but as something interwoven with neurobiological, emotional development? Emotion itself, the Siegel article argues, is the bridge between minds, and potentially a bridge toward pre-linguistic, implicit memory—at least unconsciously.
It seems not unreasonable to highlight the parallel emergence of self-conscious and self-conscious evaluative emotions with the explosion of language generally between the second and third years. And even earlier, the apparent emergence of joy at three months coincides with the so-called cooing stage in vocal development, characterized by the infant’s first voluntary vocalizations, namely crude syllables. This is not to say that the two are inextricably linked, but it is nonetheless an intriguing correlation.
Lewis’ delineation of self-conscious and self-conscious evaluative emotions I think helps mollify the debate we have been having about social versus non-social and conscious versus unconscious emotions, specifically by pointing out the way in which particular emotions, namely embarrassment, empathy, envy, pride, shame, and guilt are especially bound up with social dynamics. They also constitute experiential phenomena, which can be characterized as at least potentially communicable One might still wonder, are these necessarily all conscious all of the time?
I read Aiden’s blog before reading the Hofer study and I was immediately struck by the article’s intro, “The word attachment has assumed new meanings as it has spread from literature to psychology, and most recently to biology” (Hofer, p. 1). Although Aiden writes about the use of narrative in the formulation of individual emotional literacy and not the use of a particular word in the influence of scientific emotional inquiry, I found this combination of sources a catalyst for my own associations. Forgive me if these references seem disjointed. Hopefully I can articulate my thoughts and if not, you can blame my parents for my “incoherent narrative.” (Can one be too self-reflecting? Ha!). Okay, those thoughts:
Scientists studying emotions begin their exploration with certain emotional “narratives” in mind--coherent ideas around which to wrap a hypothesis. Hofer reminds us (however much in passing) that often these ideas are formed from non-scientific writing that have been investigated and reinterpreted through, in this case, psychology and biology. Different emotional “media” can influence scientific inquiry as well as affect our individual everyday understanding of emotion, especially when we’re young. If, as children, we begin to write our “scripts” from the emotional narratives that surround us, I ultimately wonder what the effect our T.V. Nation has on the development of our psyches. I know from watching my nieces how instantly they respond to and re-enact overly dramatic kid dramas. It recalls the Matsumoto study that showed how Americans overdramatically assess emotional cues. Our parents’ narratives may not be our only template for emotional coherency. Our cultural narratives (via movies, T.V., newspapers, religious doctrine, etc…) also seem to have a major impact on us individually, collectively, and scientifically. Again, Matsumoto touched on the latter in our last readings.
If this is the case, then these cultural “scripts” could also lend to increasing the breadth of our emotional understanding. According to De Groot’s study of chess players, the greater the “library” of game scenarios, the more easily the players identified “meaningful patterns.” This led to greater strategy and ultimately to successful playing (Harris 288-289). As we become more exposed to media, literature and the arts, can this also help develop a greater emotional literacy? Lily touched on “arts therapy” in her comment. Perhaps we can talk more about this in class.
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