Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love (40 page)

10
. Darwin, C.,
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(originally published 1872), in Wilson, E. O. (ed.),
From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin
, Norton, 2006, p. 1432.

11
. Ibid. p. 1415.

12
. James, W., ‘What is an emotion?’,
Mind
, 9 (1884), 188–205; in the excerpt I cite, James actually uses the word ‘feeling’ to describe what we today would call emotions: ‘the feeling neither of quickened heartbeats’, etc. This is probably due to the usage of the word ‘feeling’ at the end of the nineteenth century, but James’s idea is that bodily changes (emotions) inform our awareness of feelings.

13
. In 2011, with choreographer and theatre director Sommer Ulrickson, I created a theatrical performance about anxiety entitled
Fear in Search of a Reason
(echoing Pirandello’s
Six Characters in Search of an Author
) at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin.

14
. Freud, S.,
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (Part III),
Vol. XVI (1917),
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
Lecture XXV: Anxiety, pp. 393.

15
. Beard, G. M. (with Rockwell, A. D.), ‘Nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia)’, Chapter I in
A Practical Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion: Its Symptoms, Nature, Sequences, Treatment
, E. B. Treat, 1889.

16
. It seems that the psychologist William James nicknamed neurasthenia ‘americanitis’.

17
. Freud, S.,
Studies on Hysteria
(trans. J. Stratchey) (originally published 1895), Basic Books, 1957.

18
. Klein, D. F., ‘Delineation of two drug responsive anxiety syndromes’,
Psychopharmacologia
,
5 (1964), 397–401.

19
. American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
, 4th edn, Text Revision (DSM-IV TR), American Psychiatric Press, 2000.

20
. Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., and Damasio, A., ‘Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala’,
Nature
, 372 (1995), 669–72.

21
. I am enormously indebted to Simon Critchley for making me understand Heidegger through his writing. I have benefited greatly from his explanations of
Being and Time
in the
Guardian
in 2009. Any misinterpretation of Heidegger’s thoughts is, of course, mine. Heidegger’s original words are quoted from section 40 of chapter 6 of
Being and Time
(originally published 1927; republished by Harper & Row, 1962) and from Heidegger’s beautiful essay ‘What is metaphysics?’. Delivered as a lecture at Freiburg University in 1929, this describes anxiety’s role in our lives, and also outlines how, according to Heidegger, the methods of science fail to understand our existence.

22
. Heidegger,
Being and Time
, ch. 6 section 40.

23
. ‘in der Angst ist einem unheimlich’.

24
. Joseph LeDoux’s work on the emotion of fear and anxiety has been pioneering. Research in his laboratory has unveiled much of what we have recently learnt about fear conditioning and the brain tissues involved. The redirection of the signal pathway of fear is described in Amorapanth, P., LeDoux, J. E., and Nader, K., ‘Different lateral amygdala outputs mediate reactions and actions elicited by a fear-arousing stimulus’,
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
, 3 (2000), 74–9.

25
. Gozzi, A., Jain, A., Giovanelli, A.,
et al.
, ‘A neural switch for active and passive fear’,
Neuron
67 (2010), 656–66.

26
. LeDoux, J., and Gorman, J. M., ‘A call to action: Overcoming anxiety through active coping’,
American Journal of Psychiatry
, 158 (2001), 1953–5. This article was written in the wake of September 11.

27
. Knowledge of any kind can be harvested to inform resolute actions or generally improve our life, but sometimes we overlook its value. When interviewed by the online magazine
Slate
on how neuroscience has changed his life, Joseph LeDoux responded that one of the things he has learnt from his study of fear is that anxiety triggers anxiety and that breathing exercises such as those used in meditation are effective in dispelling anxiety, as they reduce the general arousal of the body. But he also admitted that he doesn’t practise those exercises as often as he would like. See http://www.slate.com/articles/life/brains/2007/04/ brain_lessons.html

28
. Most probably such comparison would have not pleased Heidegger, I believe, since he dismissed science almost entirely. In ‘What is metaphysics?’ he wrote: ‘. . . no amount of scientific rigour attains to the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the standard of the idea of science.’

29
. The story is reported in ‘After shock’,
Guardian
, 17 June 2006.

30
. Fakra, E., Hyde, L. W., Gorka, A., Fisher, P. M., Munoz, K. E., Kimak, M., Halder, I., Ferrell, R. E., Manuck, S. B., and Hariri, A. R., ‘Effects of Htr1a C(-1019) G on amygdala reactivity and trait anxiety’,
Archives of General Psychiatry
, 66 (2009), 33–40.

31
. ‘From describing to nudging: Choice of transportation after a terrorist attack in London’, a study of the impact of the July bombings on Londoners’ travel behaviour: http://research.create.usc.edu/project
_summaries/67

32
. For a rich source on the plasticity of the brain, also in the cause of trauma, see the excellent Doidge, Norman,
The Brain That Changes Itself
, Penguin, 2007.

33
. Beutel, M. E., Stark, R., Pan, H., Silbersweig, D., and Dietrich, S., ‘Changes of brain activation pre-post short-term psychodynamic inpatient psychotherapy: An fMRI study of panic disorder patients’,
Psychiatry Research
, 184 (2010), 96–104.

34
. ‘Medicine: To Nirvana with Miltown’,
Time
, 7 July 1958.

35
. For a comprehensive history of minor tranquillizers in the US, see Tone, Andrea,
The Age of Anxiety: A History of America’s Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers
, Basic Books, 2008.

36
. For a rich review of the drug culture in the 1950s and a discussion of drug advertisements, especially in the US, see Metzl, Jonathan Michel,
Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs
, Duke University Press, 2003.

37
. Smith, M.,
Small Comfort: A History of the Minor Tranquilizers
, Praeger, 1985.

38
. Lennard, H. L., Epstein, L. J., Bernstein, A., and Ranson, D. C., ‘Hazards implicit in prescribing psychoactive drugs’,
Science
, 169 (1970), 438–41.

39
. Auden,
The Age of Anxiety
, p. 5.

40
. I have also written about these issues in Frazzetto, G., ‘Genetics of behavior and psychiatric disorders: From the laboratory to society and back’,
Current Science
, 97 (2009), 1555–63. For a more extensive discussion of the relevance of Canguilhem’s ideas in light of advances in the life sciences, see Rose, N., ‘Life, reason and history: Reading Georges Canguilhem today’,
Economy and Society
, 27 (1998), 154–70, and Canguilhem, G.,
The Normal and the Pathological
, Zone Books, 1991.

41
. A discussion of how contemporary society incites us to action, achievement and self-realization and has become less tolerant of mild anxious states, and of how individuals have become ‘neurochemical selves’ is presented in Rose, N., ‘Neurochemical selves’,
Society
, 41 (2003), 46–59.

42
. A good argument in favour of this point can be found in Salecl, R.,
On Anxiety
, Routledge, 2004.

43
. Rilke, R. M.,
Letters to a Young Poet
, W. W. Norton, 1993.

Chapter 4

1
. These are the closing lines of Borges’s poem ‘Ausencia’, meaning ‘absence’. The translation from the Spanish is mine.

2
. Kübler-Ross, E., and Kessler, D.,
On Grief and Grieving
, Scribner, 2007.

3
. The first use of the expression ‘down in the mouth’ is attributed to Bishop Joseph Hall in his
Resolutions and Decisions of Diverse Practical Cases of Conscience
(1649), cited in Rogers, James,
Dictionary of Clichés
, Wing Books, 1970.

4
. Darwin, C.,
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(originally published 1872), in Wilson, E. O. (ed.),
From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin
, Norton, 2006, p. 1362.

5
. Ibid.

6
. Ibid. p. 1348.

7
. Provine, R. R., Krosnowski, K. A., and Brocato, N. W., ‘Tearing: Breakthrough in human emotional signaling’,
Evolutionary Psychology
, 7 (2009), 52–6; Provine, R. R.,
Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping and Beyond
, Belknap Press (Harvard University Press), 2012.

8
. Provine, Krosnowski and Brocato, ‘Tearing: Breakthrough in human emotional signaling’.

9
. Hasson, O., ‘Emotional Tears as Biological Signals’,
Evolutionary Psychology
, 7 (2009), 363–70.

10
. However, this does not seem to be a universal fact. The ‘healing’ quality of a bout of crying really depends on the circumstances, on the reason behind the tears and on who sheds them. A survey of about three thousand crying experiences showed that, while the majority of people felt better after crying, a few experienced no improvement in their mood and others felt actually worse; Bylsma, L. M., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., and Rottenberg, J., ‘When is crying cathartic? An international study’,
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
, 27 (2008), 1165–87.

11
. Provine, R. R., ‘Emotional tears and NGF: A biographical appreciation and research beginning’,
Archives Italiennes de Biologie
, 149 (2011), 269–74.

12
. Eisenberger, N. I., and Lieberman, M. D., ‘Why it hurts to be left out. The neurocognitive overlap between physical and social pain’, in Williams, K. D., Forgas, J. P., and von Hippel, W. (eds),
The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection, and Bullying
, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 109–27.

13
. Panksepp, J.,
Affective Neuroscience
, Oxford University Press, 1998.

14
. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., and Williams, K. D., ‘Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion’,
Science
, 302 (2003), 290–2.