The Act of Creation (37 page)

D. When a woman weeps in
sympathy
with another person's sorrow
(or joy), she partially identifies herself with that person by an act of
projection, introjection, or empathy -- whatever you like to call it. The
same is true when the 'other person' is a heroine on the screen or in
the pages of a novel. But it is essential to distinguish here between
two emotional processes -- although they are experienced simultaneously
and mixed together.
The first is the act of identification itself -- the fact that the
subject has for the moment more or less forgotten her own existence and
participates in the existence of another, at another place and time. This
in itself is a self-transcending, gratifying and 'ennobling' experience
for the simple reason that while it lasts, the subject, Mrs. Smith,
is prevented from thinking of her own anxieties, ambitions, and grudges
against Mr. Smith. In other words, the act of identification temporarily
inhibits
the self-asserting tendencies.
The second process is mediated by the first: the act of identification
leads to the experiencing of vicarious emotions. When Mrs. Smith
is 'sharing Mrs. Brown's sorrow' there is in the first place the
sharing
, and in the second, the
sorrow
. The first is an
unselfish participatory experience which makes her feel 'good' -- in the
literal, not in the cheap sense (when self-congratulatory or gloating
sentiments are present, there is no true identification). The second
is the sorrow -- a vicarious experience, but genuinely felt. It may of
course be joy or anxiety instead. The tears of Mrs. Smith at the happy
ending when the lovers on the screen are reunited or the baby's life
is saved in the nick of time, are released by the same process as the
tears of the woman whose son has suddenly returned: relief from anxiety,
and a hot surge of joy.
The anxiety which grips the spectator of a thriller-film, though
vicarious, is nevertheless real; it is reflected in the familiar physical
symptoms -- palpitations, tensed muscles, sudden 'jumps' of alarm. The
same applies to the anger felt at the machinations of the perfidious
villain on the screen, whom Mexican audiences have been known to riddle
with bullets. This leads us to an apparent paradox which is basic to
the understanding of all dramatic art forms. We have seen that on the
one hand the self-transcending emotions -- participation, projection,
identification --
inhibit
the self-asserting tendencies:
they soothe, calm, eliminate worry and desire, purge body and mind
of its tensions. On the other hand, the act of self-transcending
identification may
stimulate
the surge of anger, fear, cruelty,
which, although experienced on behalf of somebody else, nevertheless
belong to the self-assertive, aggressive-defensive class and display all
their bodily symptoms. The mother's bustling, laughter, agitation on her
son's return, shows the classic 'adreno-toxic' pattern, characteristic
of the self-assertive emotions -- although her anxiety was centred
not on herself, but experienced on behalf of her son. Anger, fear, and
the related 'emergency-reactions' use the same physiological mechanism
whether the threat is directed at one's own person, or the person with
whom one has identified oneself. They are always 'self-assertive' --
although the 'self' has momentarily changed its address -- by being,
for instance, projected into the handsome and guileless heroine on the
screen. Righteous indignation about injustices inflicted on others
can generate behaviour just as fanatical as the sting of a personal
insult. Self-sacrificing devotion to a creed bred ruthless inquisitors --
'the worst of madmen is a saint run mad'.
The glory and the tragedy of the human condition are closely related to
the fact that under certain circumstances the participatory tendencies
may serve as mediators or vehicles for emotions belonging to the opposite
class; whereas under different circumstances the two tendencies counteract
and harmoniously balance each other. We shall return to this subject,
from a different angle, in the next section; but let me note in passing
that the preceding remarks on the various ways in which the two tendencies
interact on the psychological level are again in keeping with the facts
(as far as known) about the different modes of interaction between the
two divisions of the autonomous nervous system, which may be antagonistic,
compensatory, cathartic, or catalytic, according to conditions. [2]
* * *
E. Self-Pity. A little boy is beaten up by a gang of bullies. For a while
he tries to fight back, to hit, scratch, and kick, but his tormentors
immobilize him, and at last he begins to cry in 'impotent rage'.
But the expression is misleading. Anybody who has watched children
fight knows that weeping will start only after the victim has given
up struggling and wriggling and accepted defeat. After a while new
outbursts of rage may renew the struggle, but, each time this happens,
weeping is interrupted. It is not an expression of rage (although the
two may overlap) but an expression of helplessness after rage has been
exhausted and a feeling of being abandoned has set in -- a yearning
for love, sympathy, consolation. In other words, the tears once more
signify a frustration of the participatory emotions; and if no sympathy is
forthcoming, self-pity will provide a substitute -- a mild dissociation
of the personality, in which the self is experienced almost as an alien
object of loving commiseration.
Similar considerations apply to so-called 'crying in pain'. In states
of violent physical pain, as in acute states of rage, the organism is
fully occupied coping with the emergency and has no time for tears.
'Great pain', wrote Darwin, 'urges all animals, and has urged them during
endless generations, to make the most violent and diversified efforts to
escape from the cause of sufferings. Even when a limb or other separate
part of the body is hurt, we often see a tendency to shake it as if
to shake off the cause, though this obviously be impossible. Thus a
habit of exerting with the utmost force all the muscles will have been
established whenever great suffering is experienced.' [3]
Cannon has shown that the
Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear,
and Rage
(the title of his classic work) all follow the same basic
pattern, that they are emergency responses of the sympathico-adrenal
system. Violent pain seems to be experienced by the unconscious mind as
an aggression, whether it is inflicted by an outside agent or not. When
the aggressor is a tooth or a cramp in the stomach we are apt to say
'it hurts', as if the offending organ were not part of oneself, and we
try to shake the aggressor off, as animals do, by writhing, or pressing
against it. Only when the pain has abated to a tolerably steady, 'dull'
level do we accept it as part of ourselves -- we 'have' a headache or
'are' under the weather -- at the same time admitting that nothing can be
done about it; writhing and struggling cease in the admission of defeat,
as in the case of the child in the grip of its tormentors. 'Weeping in
pain' starts only when the specific pain-behaviour stops, as 'weeping
with rage' starts when rage-behaviour stops, and for precisely the same
reasons: it is an abandoning of defences, an expression of helplessness,
a craving for sympathy, and -- if accompanied by vocal cries -- an appeal
for help.
Another misconception is that children 'cry with fear', if 'crying' is
used as a synonym for weeping. A child may cry out, in the literal sense,
when suddenly frightened; it may run away, and if it cannot, strain away
from the threatening apparition, lift his hands in protection, and distort
his face into a mask of terror. Once more, the tears will come only after
the acute fright and the specific strained fright-reactions have ceased;
they do not mean 'I
am
frightened' but 'I
was
so frightened,
and maybe still am a little, and now I want to be comforted.'
Consider what happens when a little boy, running along a gravel path,
suddenly stumbles and falls. The fright-reaction consists in the
protective outstretching of hands, and related muscle-reflexes. Once
the contact with the earth is made and the first shock overcome,
the acute scare ebbs away, the muscles relax in surrender, the facial
expression changes from fear to the sympathy-begging grimace of incipient
weeping. If there is no witness to the drama, self-pity will again
provide the overflow. If it is witnessed by the mother, who makes a
fuss and betrays her anxiety, this will increase the child's craving for
tenderness and its tears will ask for more. If, on the other hand, she
gently but firmly debunks the drama, then, after a moment of puzzlement,
the child may break into rather hesitant laughter -- the residue of the
scare, and even the slight pain, are denied by reason and worked off,
while at the same time the sympathy-craving emotions are nipped in the
bud by the mother's matter-of-fact attitude.
Lastly, 'crying in hunger'. A baby never weeps from hunger -- it cries
to signal hunger. The proof is that crying instantaneously stops when the
bottle or breast is offered, before hunger can have ceased; furthermore,
once the child is weaned from breast and bottle, hunger ceases to be
expressed by crying or weeping. [4]
Needless to say, when a baby cries to attract attention, to signal
that it is hungry or in distress, if often breaks into tears at the
same time. Yet in such situations we say 'the baby is crying', not
'the baby is weeping', because the essence of the performance is the
vocal protest or appeal for help; the shedding of tears is merely an
accompaniment. The baby's bawling, kicking, and tossing is a typical
and impressive emergency-reaction in 'pain, hunger, fear, and rage'
of a dramatically self-asserting kind. The simultaneous overflow of
the tear-glands may be 'genuine' weeping -- longing for affection
and tenderness -- as an accompaniment to the bawling; it may also be
due to physiological causes. Watering of the eyes can be induced as a
purely physiological defence reflex against the intrusion of a foreign
body -- a piece of grit or the molecules which carry the smell of
onions. (Lachrymation caused by such local irritation is, by the way,
unilateral -- it occurs initially in the affected eye only). [5] It
can also be caused by coughing, sneezing, vomiting, and after prolonged
fits of laughter. The physiological mechanism is still somewhat obscure,
except that all these violent exertions affect the mucous membranes
of the nose and throat, and tend to dry them; the lachrymal glands may
have the function of restoring lubrication through tears entering the
nose. [6] When one sees a baby cry its head off with dry eyes until
it gets hoarse, one intuitively feels that tears would be a relief --
both psychologically and physiologically. The same applies to adults in
situations of extreme distress.

Home they brought the warrior dead;
She nor swooned nor uttered cry.
All her maids, watching said,
'She must weep or she will die'.
(Tennyson, The Princess)

Lastly, weeping may start in the child as a genuine, spontaneous
overflow-reflex, but once the power of tears has been consciously or
unconsciously recognized, the flow may be initiated automatically, or
even voluntarily, as a weapon more subtle and more effective than mere
cries of complaint or protest.* 'We seem to acquire specific visceral
habits just as we pick up characteristic verbal and manual habits,'
Kling has remarked, [7] and we ought to include in 'visceral habits'
the exercise of the lachrymal glands. Weeping may be recruited into the
service of hysteria, emotional blackmail, and even courtly behaviour (as a
proof of sensibility less strenuous than swooning); it may be associated
with convulsions, shrieks, and agitated display; but its true character
is manifested by the person who weeps alone -- helpless in her surrender
to an emotion which, by its nature, can find no other outlet, whether
it is caused by the thunder of a church organ, or the fall of a sparrow.
NOTES
To
p. 271
. So scant are the references of any
significance to the subject in the technical literature, that I thought
it would be useful to future students to list what I could find under
a separate heading at the end of the bibliography. My indebtedness to
those who helped in this is acknowledged in the Preface.

 

 

To
p. 273
. Romain Rolland describing the character
of religious experience in a letter to Freud -- who regretfully professed
never to have felt anything of the sort.

 

 

To
p. 274
. 'The characteristic anatomical
organization of the parasympathetic is correlated with absence of unitary
action in this system. It is not surprising therefore that the adrenal
medulla . . . has no counterpart in the parasympathetic system, and
that no parasympathicomimetic hormone capable of acting extensively upon
organs innervated by this system is liberated in the body.' (Macleod,
ed. Bard, 1941 ed.) ' . . . In contrast to the sympathomimetic hormones,
the vagus substance is rapidly destroyed, and therefore produces very
localized response. These effects are in line with the general behaviour
of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems of nerves.' (White and
Smithwick, 1941, 2nd. ed.)

 

 

'All the viscera can be influenced
simultaneously
in one direction
or the other by varying, up or down, the . . . tonic activity of the
sympathetic division. And any special viscus can be
separately
influenced . . . by varying . . . the tonic activity of the special nerve
of the opposed cranial or sacral [parasympathetic] division. . . . The
sympathetic is like the loud and soft pedals, modulating all the notes
together; the cranial and sacral [parasympathetic] innervations are like
the separate keys.' (Cannon, 1929, 2nd. ed.)

 

 

In the years since this has been written, the significance for psychology
of the anatomical and physiological contrast between the two branches
of the autonomic nervous system has become more evident, to the extent
that 'rage is called the most adrenergic, and love the most cholinergic
reaction' (Cobb, 1950). A further correspondence between patterns of
emotive behaviour and modes of interaction between the two branches
of the autonomic nervous system emerged when it was shown that the
vagoinsulin system may act, in different circumstances, as an inhibitory
or a catalytic agent in the glucose-utilization process and may also
produce overcompensatory after effects (Gellhorn, 1943, and 1957). Hebb
(1949) suggested that a distinction should be made between two categories
of emotions, 'those in which the tendency is to maintain or increase the
original stimulating conditions (pleasurable or integrative emotions)'
and 'those in which the tendency is to abolish or decrease the stimulus
(rage, fear, disgust)'. Whereas the latter have a disruptive effect
on cortical behaviour, the former have not. A few years later, Olds
(1959 and 1960) and others demonstrated the existence of 'positive'
and 'negative' emotive systems by electric stimulation, and further
showed that they were activated respectively by the parasympathetic and
sympathetic centres in the hypothalamus.