A stroll through the emotions

 

Freud seemed to be saying that ultimately all our emotions came down to sex. He apparently thought that sex governs our whole psychology even before we become adolescents, Granted the lack of success that Freud's theories have had in curing people of their psychological ills, however, I think that we may assume that life is just a little more complicated, or straightforward, depending how you look at it.. There is therefore not only the matter of Oedipal relationships, but independently, I would suggest, a wish to survive and a wish to understand what is going on around us as an adjunct to that. As we have discussed before, our emotions, our feelings, are designed to motivate us to do a whole variety of things that we would not otherwise do, sex being only one of them.

Now it may not be surprising that the scientific search into our emotions is continuing, if only because the accepted economic model - based on avarice - has broken down. It simply does not explain things well enough in order to produce a coherent description of how our economic system works. Our emotions have become a major field for research, therefore, in an effort to win the next Nobel prize for economics, this time, though, allowing for the full complexity of human nature.

It seems that the accepted view of our emotions amongst the psychological fraternity these days is that there are only six of them: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. These are certainly obvious ones, each having its own facial expression and very separate set of feelings. Clearly they are an essential background for the writing of poems, plays and stories. They have an essential role in our lives: fear to avoid predators, anger to conquer foes and disgust to avoid diseases, for instance. I am not quite sure why greed and selfishness are not there though, as they are clearly a fundamental part of our make-up. And then there is the feeling of boredom which pushes us to do things rather than sitting around. And of course love not only makes the world go around, but populates it. Although I find it difficult to see how, perhaps these others can all be described in terms of the fundamental six. Depression is another very strong feeling. It is though a strange emotion as it prevents us from doing things. Unhappiness can drive us to find happiness, but depression has what seems to be a wholly negative effect. It may of course be an emotion which is the equivalent of an arthritic knee. Although real, it is an aberration.

But there are now apparently some new contenders for the title of 'emotion' in the scientific world. President Obama has reminded us that we can feel uplifted, with tears in our eyes and an all-over glow. It is certainly capable of being felt by people throughout the world - we only have to look at the reaction around the world to his speech on the night when he was elected. What is it for, though? Well, according to the experimental psychologists, the chemical involved, oxytocin, doesn't make us give money to charity, but it does make us want to touch and hug and generally be more open and trusting of each other, which may well be a good thing for society. A feeling of elevation is relatively rare as an emotion, but if people are asked to remember their most cherished moments in life, then moments of elevation are likely to feature in the top 5. Perhaps that other great iconic moment of this millennium, the Susan Boyle performance, now seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world, was something which will have moved society forward towards global harmony?

What about pride? It is a paradox - a deadly sin, but at the same time necessary for our development as humans. I suspect that here there is a linguistic difficulty for us in Great Britain as the word pride is involved both in 'Pride' and 'taking pride in' or 'being proud of'. There is nothing after all which is wrong with taking pride in one's work or being proud of an achievement. Employers are likely to sack those who take no pride in their work. It is only the sort of pride which overvalues ourselves as individuals which is, in the religious sense, sinful and also works against our own best interests. It makes us view ourselves in an irrational light, which is never good.

And then there is apparently the emotion of interest itself. I would take this to be the other side of the coin to boredom, but clearly the two of them in tandem give us motivation to do things, to find things out, even in the absence of a tangible reward. It's what you can indulge more when you've retired. I do though wonder whether the carrot of a reward for eventual success in our jobs would actually work at all in the absence of the continuous motivation provided by our emotional attachment to doing things and finding things out. Of course, this then calls into question the monetary reward needed to motivate people when they are doing jobs which are not purely routine - bankers come to mind. Should it in fact be less than for those on the assembly line? Why do we pay more to intelligent people who can do more complex, but at the same time more intrinsically rewarding work? Would they not do the work anyway? But would I have been willing to charge my clients less for my advice? That's the problem with avarice. It doesn't just apply to bankers.

 

 

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