Emotion and Thought: A Motor Theory of Their Relations [with Discussion by Knight Dunlap, James Melrose and Morton Prince.]
情绪与思维:两者之间的动机理论
Margaret Floy Washburn
Vassar College
In what sense, and for what reasons, do emotions paralyze thought; and when and why, if ever, do they aid it? These are the questions which in the short time at my disposal I am not, indeed, hoping to answer adequately, but on which I wish to offer a few reflections. The reflections will be made from the point of view of a motor psychology whose main assumptions I will ask you for the time to accept.
The first assumption is that while consciousness exists and is not a form of movement, it has as its indispensable basis certain motor processes, and that the only sense in which we can explain conscious processes is by studying the laws governing these under-lying motor phenomena. The second assumption is that the motor accompaniment of thinking, as distinguished from sensation, consists of slight, incipient or tentative muscular contractions, which if fully performed would be visible or audible reactions to a situation, but which as only tentatively performed are a kind of rehearsal of the reactions. They may also occur unconsciously. Both full and tentative movements may be organized into systems, which may be of movements either simultaneously performed, as when we play the piano with both hands, or successively performed, as when we repeat a phrase; they may also either be steady tonic muscular contractions, such as are involved in maintaining an attitude (these I have called static movement systems), or involve actual change of position (these I have called phasic movement systems). All association of ideas and thus all thinking involves on this hypothesis the organization of tentative movements into systems.
But the word thought may be used in two senses. It may mean reverie or undirected thinking, or it may mean thinking directed towards a problem or purpose. In the first case, each idea suggests the one that follows it, but here its influence ends and our thoughts wander: A suggests B and then is forgotten, while B suggests C without aid from A. In the other case, that of directed thinking,
( 105) a long series of ideas is governed by the idea of an end, problem, or purpose, and irrelevant wandering thoughts are inhibited. Now the third main assumption that I shall ask you to bear in mind is that the peculiarly persistent influence of the idea of an end or purpose as compared with that of ordinary ideas is due to its association with a persistent bodily attitude or static movement system which I have elsewhere called the activity attitude. I have said of this attitude that "in its intenser degrees it is revealed to introspection as the ‘feeling of effort.’[1] Introspection further indicates that it is not due to shifting innervations but to a steady and persistent set of innervations. It appears from introspection, also, to be in its intenser forms a bodily attitude involving a kind of tense quietness, a quietness due not to relaxation but to a system of static innervations." Through the inherent and characteristic persistence of the innervations involved in the activity attitude as members of a static movement system, the innervations connected with the problem situation may exert the long enduring influence which is characteristic of directed thinking. This theory holds that "the motor innervations underlying the consciousness of effort are not mere accompaniments of directed thought, but an essential part of the cause of directed thought"—a proposition that has recently received support from the results of experiments by A. G. Bills,[2] indicating the impossibility of thought during complete muscular relaxation.
The motor theory under consideration thus bases all thinking on the occurrence of tentative movements, and bases directed thinking on the occurrence of a persistent motor innervation here called the activity attitude. Whatever interferes with tentative movements will inhibit all thinking; whatever interferes with the activity attitude will inhibit directed thinking. The tentative movements underlying thinking are, it is reasonable to suppose, chiefly those of the smaller and more delicate muscles of the body, such as those of the eyes, the fingers, and above all the muscles involved in speech. For it is impossible that the large muscles, say of the arms and legs, should be capable of enough variety of movement to supply the multitude of differing movements needed to form the basis of ideas. In the activity attitude, on the other hand, it is largely the trunk muscles that are concerned, as may be introspectively observed in its intenser form, the feeling of effort.
While the assumptions about thought which have just been outlined may not command assent, we shall all agree in the follow-.
( 106) -ing statements about emotion. An emotion occurs in a situation of vital significance to the organism; primitively, perhaps, the flight, fighting, or mating situations. In such a situation, the possibilities of response may be divided into several classes. First, there may occur adaptive movements of the striped muscles, adequately meeting the situation: movements of flight, fighting, or mating. Secondly, there may be non-adaptive movements of the striped muscles. Some of these, like human facial expressions, are survivals of movements formerly adaptive, or adaptive under conditions somewhat but not wholly similar. But the most striking instance of non-adaptive movements is constituted by what may be called the motor explosion: the kicks and screams of the baffled child, the curses and furniture abuse of the baffled adult, the wild expansive movements of extreme joy. A motor explosion tends to happen when adaptive response is impossible. Thirdly, there may occur internal changes produced through the sympathetic and glandular systems.
On a motor theory, the question as to when and how emotion will interfere with thought becomes the question as to which of the various things we do in an emotional situation are likely to interfere with the things we do in thinking. Which will tend most to interrupt the tentative movements underlying ideas and the activity attitude underlying directed thinking: adaptive striped muscle reactions, non-adaptive striped muscle reactions, or visceral reactions produced through the sympathetic and endocrine systems?
Clearly, one motor process can interfere with another only when it is physically impossible for the two movements or attitudes to occur together, as for example it is impossible to raise and lower the arm at the same time. Nothing can interfere with a movement but another movement. The motor theory would go farther and say that when one nervous process inhibits another, it must be because the two are connected with incompatible movements. Further, what is true of single movements is true of their combinations: whenever two movement systems are simultaneously stimulated, if one contains a movement incompatible with some movement in the other, the systems cannot be simultaneously performed and will tend to inhibit each other, unless, indeed, they become smaller by dropping out the incompatible elements. The functioning of such smaller movement systems may be regarded as responsible for dissociation, and a tendency toward it as characteristic of those individuals whom we call hysterics.
We may turn, then, to the first type of response possible in an emotional situation, namely, adaptive movements of the
( 107) striped muscles. Will these be incompatible with thought? It is obvious that one motor process will be more likely to disturb others, the more muscles it involves, that is, the more wide-spread its distribution over the body. Now definitely adaptive movements of the striped muscles, as compared with the non-adaptive motor explosion, will as a rule involve only definitely demarcated groups of muscles, and these will be for the most part the larger muscles—those of the limbs. Thinking, on the other hand, is, according to the hypothesis here adopted, based chiefly on contractions of small muscles capable of a large repertory of different movements. Stratton[3] reports the case of an aviator who, during a tail-spin fall of four thousand feet, made all the movements needed to remedy the trouble with his plane and straighten it out, while experiencing a series of intensely vivid mental images from his past life, beginning with childhood. These images, on the theory here presented, would be based on tentative movements in certain muscles, which were evidently not incompatible with actual movements in the other muscles needed to meet the emergency. Stratton deduces from this and other similar cases that it is only the intenser degrees of emotion which interfere either with coordinated action or with thinking. It is true, however, that the more serious the situation which excites emotion, the more extensive the adaptive movements are likely to be. Thus one fighting situation may require only a short, well-directed attack, while another demands a desperate struggle calling into play all the body muscles, and, by virtue of the alert watching of the enemy's movements needed, many of the smaller ones. Except in extreme cases, however, adaptive movements, it would appear, need not interfere with thought.
What, now, is the relation of thinking to the second type of response in an emotional situation? The motor explosion or non-adaptive striped muscle response has been often overlooked by psychologists. For example, Wechsler[4] divides emotional reactions into choc" or visceral responses and "behavior reactions," which involve orientation to the stimulus, thus ignoring the motor explosion, which is neither visceral nor oriented. Yet it is really an important and interesting phenomenon. As we have noted, it occurs when adaptive response is impossible. This is usually because such responses are repressed either by external force or by internal inhibitions, as in impotent anger. The case
( 108) of the motor explosion resulting from joy, by the way, is a curious one. People do, of course, all sorts of wildly irrelevant things in extreme joy. Now here adaptive response is impossible not because it is being prevented, but because it is non-existent. There is nothing one can do in joy that has any essential appropriateness to the situation, in the way that knocking a man down has essential appropriateness to anger. Joy represents not a situation where something needs to be done, but the release of energy that has been occupied in long-continued tensions, which, since it has no pre-ordained channel, diffuses itself into many channels.
There is high probability that the motor explosion, in which any and all muscular systems, including those of speech, may take part, will interfere with thinking, if thinking has any motor basis at all. A man in a wildly gesticulating, vociferous fit of rage has no muscles left at liberty to think with. In its milder form, the motor explosion is identical with general restlessness, which also involves a wide range of muscles, although in less violent contractions. And it should be noted that a motor explosion may occur in the form of tentative rather than actual movements. In such a case, I would suggest, it forms the basis of the experience of mental panic. When no adaptive movement is possible, there may occur impulses towards all kinds of non-adaptive movements; these tentative movements in all directions may well produce the effect of making our brains whirl, as we say, and would evidently through their widespread character be antagonistic to clear thought.
Thirdly, will the visceral reactions, those dependent on the autonomic and glandular systems, interfere with thinking? Why should they, on a motor theory of thought? If thinking is based on movements and attitudes of the striped muscles, nothing can interfere with it but antagonistic movements and attitudes of these muscles. And the internal changes produced through the autonomic and endocrine systems do not involve striped muscles. May we not say, then, that visceral changes per se cannot disorganize thinking?
Visceral changes have, however, indirect effects upon the external muscles. Cannon has pointed out their important influence upon adaptive responses; the pouring of sugar into the blood, the neutralizing of fatigue poisons, the checking of digestive processes—all serve the purpose of producing more powerful reactions of an adaptive nature, for instance, movements of fighting or flight. Such movements, as we have just seen, are not necessarily incompatible with thought. What, now, is the relation of non-adaptive movements to visceral changes? Since non-adaptive
( 109) movements are in themselves useless, and since, as we have seen, they are likely to interfere with thought, have such movements any function, or shall we class them with nature's superfluous products? We seem to "feel better" after them! Pascal and Davesne[5] in a recent article suggest that the non-adaptive movements called "tics" are useful in preventing the emotion from invading the "vegetative" or visceral plane, that is, the autonomic and endocrine systems; the more the emotion discharges into motor paths the less it goes into visceral paths. Various writers imply that the organism seeks to avoid the visceral discharge; why should it be avoided? The normal function of discharge into the autonomic and glandular level is to aid the performance of adaptive movements. Should these be interfered with either the visceral discharge is worked off in motor explosion, or it remains in the organic level. And according to Cannon,[6] "if these results of emotion and pain are not `worked off' by action, it is conceivable that the excessive adrenin and sugar in the blood may have pathological effects." When, then, adaptive movements remain blocked, it is probably for the safety of the organism that the visceral processes should work themselves off in a non-adaptive motor explosion. And so they have indirectly, though not directly, a disturbing influence on thought.
When and how does emotion aid thought? There is time for only a few reflections on this topic.