Emotion Recollected in
Tranquility, or
Why Brains Need Poems
William Benzon
708 Jersey Avenue, 2A
Jersey City, NJ 07302
bbenzon@mindspring.com
Abstract: The
nervous system depends on a rich brew of neurochemicals, many of which mediate
activity for specific behaviors. Related to this is the fact that memory is
mood specific: it is easier to remember events that are congruent with our
current mood than events that differ from it. This suggests that, for
biochemical reasons, it is difficult to have a comprehensive and accurate view
of one's own life and behavior. How does one create an affectively neutral
ground from which one can observe and order the full range of events in one's
life? I suggest that literature provides the needed neutrality. Poems, plays,
and stories allow us to experience a wide range of desires and feelings in an
arena where our personal lives are secure and protected. Through repeated
immersion in this arena the brain creates cognitive structures about life
events that are affect-neutral and that can be used in helping us obtain
cognitive mastery of our own lives and self. These ideas will be illustrated by
a discussion of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129, "The Expense of Spirit."
I have not prepared a formal paper , but the following passages will
suggest the nature of what I have to say. The first two – on Trickster
and on neurochemicals and experience – are from an essay-in-progress,
"Unacknowledged Legislators: Propositions for a Naturalist Theory of
Literature." The discussion "The Neurochemistry of Experience"
is the crucial theoretical move.
The Trickster episodes are exemplary, as is Shakespeare's Sonnet 129,
which I discuss in the the third passage, which is from: Benzon, W. L. (1993).
"The Evolution of Narrative and the Self." Journal of Social and
Evolutionary Systems 16: 129-155.
When reading the Trickster example keep in mind that, traditionally,
these tales are told in public under ritual circumstances, and by a person who
has the right to tell the tales. That is quite different from silent reading in
the privacy of one's home.
The time has come to consider a specific example, two episodes from the
Winnebago Trickster cycle (Radin 1956), which is a loosely organized series of
tales. Just which episodes are told varies from occasion to occasion. Many of
the individual episodes have wide currency among Native Americans and the
Trickster figure is regarded as one of the most widespread in the world's
mythologies. As the cycle opens Trickster is a chief and he sets out to violate
a number of taboos and customs, thereby denuding himself of culture. By about
the fourth or fifth episode Trickster has devolved into an amoral semi-human
demiurge who must learn about the most elementary functions of his body. As we join Trickster at episode 38 (p.
38) we see him wandering about the world with his very long penis rolled up in
a bundle which, along with his testicles and scrotum, he has placed in a box
that he carries on his back.
At the beginning of the episode a chipmunk begins taunting Trickster
about his penis, prompting Trickster to take of his pack and rearrange his
penis and testicles within it, placing the testicles below and the head atop.
The chipmunk continues taunting Trickster, who attempts to catch him but
without success. The chipmunk scampers into a hollow log, at which point
Trickster instructs his penis: "Now then my younger brother, you may go
after him for he has been annoying you for some time." Trickster begins
probing the tree with his penis but is unable to reach the end of the hole.
When he at last withdraws his penis in frustration he discovers that only one
small piece is left.
So Trickster smashes the log to pieces (episode 39), flattens the
chipmunk, and discovers the remains of his penis. "Oh, my, of what a
wonderful organ he has deprived me! But why do I speak thus? I will make
objects out of the pieces for human beings to use" (p. 39). And so
Trickster creates a variety of useful plants, such as potatoes, artichokes,
turnips, beans, rice, and other plants. The episode concludes: "And this
is the reason our penis has its present shape. . . . and the chipmunk was
created for the precise purpose of performing this particular act" (pp.
39-40).
Taken together these two episodes (38 and 39) constitute a just-so
story; they tell us how the male genitals came to have their present form and
how a variety useful plants came into the world. The particular way those
plants were created – from the fragments of Trickster's penis – is
surely central to the meaning of this tale. But that is not what most interests
me.
Recall that, in its native context, this story is told in a group under
ritually governed circumstances. People are not alone when they hear this tale.
They are among friends. Their reactions are public. Many of the Trickster
episodes are quite funny – these two are, though the humor doesn't
survive very well in my truncated summary. People laugh at funny things, so I
imagine that, when told by a skillful raconteur, these episodes elicit gales of
laughter from the audience.
What are people affirming when they enjoy listening to this story in one
another's company, when they laugh together? Yes, they are affirming some deep
connection between the penis and useful plants. But that connection is not
itself funny. What is funny is the interaction between Trickster and the
chipmunk, the chipmunk's taunts and Trickster's exasperated and escalating
responses to them.
The story betrays or displays, is a vehicle for, sexual anxiety. On the
face of it this is not merely sexual anxiety, but castration anxiety. After
all, Trickster's penis is bitten to pieces. But I want to hedge that. Sexual
anxiety of some form is ubiquitous; these incidents will elicit whatever form
of sexual anxiety is most relevant to individual members of the audience at the
moment of telling. When they laugh together they are sharing sexual anxiety of
some form; the exact from, so I argue, is irrelevant.
This anxiety, however, is somewhat disguised. In the first place, this is not a story about any one in the
audience; it is not personal and specific. In the second place, it is not even
a story about a human being, for Trickster is not a human being. He is a semi-divine proto-human
demiurge (often regarded as an animal, e.g. a coyote or hare). So, as people
listen to the story and share their laughter, they don't have to acknowledge
sharing anything about human beings "like us." No, they are laughing
at Trickster.
In the third place, Trickster is not having sexual intercourse with a
woman or any human being or even an animal. Not at all. He is just poking his
penis around in an empty log, searching for that pesky chipmunk. This is not
sex; it is a form of battle. And when the fragments of Trickster's penis become
life-giving plants, that is not sex either. Sexual intercourse results in the birth of babies. There are
no babies in this story. To be sure, fragments of Trickster's penis become
useful plants; but useful plants are not babies. No, this is not a story of
human sexuality and birth that we are dealing with; it is something else.
Yet while the sexuality in the story is at some remove from ordinary
human sexuality, and it is clearly and obviously sexuality. The people
listening to the story have no choice but to apprehend Trickster's plight
through their own experiences with sexuality – after all, those are the
only first-hand experiences they have. They can displace or project their own
anxiety onto Trickster and share a good laugh in the company of their friends,
family, and neighbors. Everyone else is doing the same, but no one has to admit
to it, nor even acknowledge it to themselves. It just happens. It is a
potentiality build-in to the situation.
Whatever it is, it seems to me that it is something that is difficult to
communicate in ordinary conversation, even with intimates. Sexuality is
prominent in the story and I am going to assume that talking about sex is
difficult for the Winnebago as it is for us. Such talk is surrounded by taboo.
In most contexts it is simply improper to talk about sex. But what is
transpiring in the performance of this tale is beyond and different from
ordinary talk. Merely asserting that "sex makes me anxious" is quite
different from sharing that anxiety through the vehicle of an obscene story,
and that is what is happening here. The setting in which the Trickster tales
are ordinarily told is not an ordinary social context. It is governed by ritual
norms. The tales are sacred and so is the occasion of their telling. Things
that are ordinarily forbidden are allowable in this context.
This is all at one and the same time obvious and disguised. In the
ritual safety of the occasion people can share their anxiety about sexuality
and their awe at its fruitfulness. And they can do it without embarrassment.
They can affirm their common humanity and, I suspect, when the story telling is
over, everyone is in a better mood than they were when the session started. In
his discussion of "The Evolution of Expressive Culture" David Hays
talks of the ballet, asserting that "the difference in the crowd between
entrances and exit is almost tangible. Watching the ballet has changed their
mood in a favorable way" (Hays 1992, 189). That is what art does. The
mechanisms are obscure to our best current understanding, but the sense of
acceptance among our fellows is at the core of those mechanisms.
While the nervous
system has been an important prop in the previous arguments, I now want to
bring it to the foreground. by considering the concept of mode. The concept of
mode I am using is one David Hays and I (Benzon and Hays 1988: 296-298, Hays
1992: 190-193) based on work by Warren McCulloch and his colleagues (Kilmer,
McCulloch & Blum 1969).
The idea is simple. There is a particular pattern of neurofunctional
activation which is appropriate for various activities. McCulloch was interested in things such
as eating, exploring, defecating, mating, fighting, sleeping, etc. Much of the
brain's modal activity is regulated by biochemicals that are produced in core
brain nuclei (in the reticular formation) then distributed throughout the brain
via efferent neuronal projections. These chemicals bias synaptic transmission
and so can affect the arousal of the entire brain. Some of these chemicals are
specific to various behavioral modes (see e.g. Freeman 19XX, Panksepp 1998,
Shepherd 19XX). If one thinks of the brain as analogous to computer
"hardware," then a mode is a "virtual machine" specialized
for one type of activity.
The brain's modal system is regulated by the most primitive part of the
brain, the reticular core is fine for the modes of the bedroom, bathroom,
kitchen, and so forth, that is, the behaviors that have long phylogenetic
histories. Though McCulloch did not emphasize this in his 1969 publication
– a great deal of data were not available to him at that time – we
know that overall brain state is biochemically regulated. This implies that
memory is state-dependent,
to use the technical jargon, and that is a matter of considerable importance
for literary theory. I first learned about state dependence in a review of the
literature on altered states of consciousness in which Roland Fischer (1975,
199) reported an experiment originally performed by D. Goodwin. Subjects were
first made drunk and then asked to memorize nonsense syllables. When their
recall was tested while sober they performed poorly. Their recall dramatically
improved, however, if they once again became drunk. Recall of some experience
is best when the one's brain is in the same biochemical state it was in when
one had that experience. That is what is meant by state dependence. Given that
motivation and emotion are mediated by over a hundred neurotransmitters and
neuromodulators (cf. Panksepp 1998), the state dependent nature of memory has
profound implications for our ability to recall our experience. As I have previously argued (Benzon 1993, 131):
If
records of personal experience are [biochemically biased], especially in the
case of strongly emotionally charged experience, then how can we get a coherent
view of ourselves and of our world?
The world of a person who is ravenously hungry is different from the
world of that same person when he or she is consumed with sexual desire. Yet it is the same person in both cases. And the apple, which was so
insignificant when sexually hungry—to the point where that apple wasn't
part of the world at all—becomes a central object in the world once
sexual desire has been satisfied and hunger asserts itself. Regardless of the person's [biochemical
state], it is still the same apple.
If this is how the
nervous system works, then how do we achieve a state of mind in which one can
easily remember the apple as the sexual object? That is to say, how does the
brain achieve a biochemically "neutral" state of mind from which one
can recall or imagine any kind of experience?
Let me suggest that story-telling may be a way of accomplishing this.
Let us consider the Winnebago Trickster tales, a long cycle of tales that are
central to the Winnebago mythos and which are similar to tales in cultures the world over (Radin 1956).
Taken in full, the Trickster cycle encompasses a wide range of human desire and
feeling. In particular, the activities and feelings of the bedroom and bathroom
are well represented as are aggression and anger; many of the stories depict
Trickster doing things that people generally do in privacy and/or that may
elicit disapproval from others. If we assume that the various episodes evoke
some arousal of the neural circuits corresponding to Trickster's actions in the
episode (e.g. one's sexual circuitry is aroused when Trickster engages in
sexual acts) the corresponding biochemicals will be released in the brain.
These circuits will not, however, be aroused to full activity. One is only
imagining Trickster engaging in this or that activity, one is not engaging in
the activity oneself. More
directly to the point, as David Hays has pointed out (XXXX, XXX) this is
happening in the full presence of one's fellows and with their approval. Our
sense of the of ease among friends, hearing their grunts and murmurs of
approval mixed with ours, the common laughter, but also the communal sighs of
dismay, these all mingle together and establish the story itself as a good and
necessary pleasure. That, I suggest, helps us to create neural circuits that
give us the ability to recall a wide range of experience without our having to be in a neurochemical state
approximating that which mediated that experience. Stories – as well as
poems and plays – allow us to experience a wide range of desires and
feelings in an arena where our personal lives are secure and protected, where
our experience is socially approved. Without the constant experience of
emotionally charged stories, our memories would be captive to the current mood.
Thus we do not have to be sexually aroused to recall occasions of sexual
arousal, nor to be have to be angry or grieving to recall occasions of great
anger or the darkest grief, respectively. The stories we have learned in the
company of others have created a "level playing field" in the mind,
neutral ground from which we can survey the full range of human experience. I
am thus arguing that in memory, in mind – if not in action – life
follows art, rather than the reverse. If we can, perhaps in private, step back
from the living of life to recall and examine our feelings and actions, that is
because our experiences with stories have created a rich weave of mental
prototypes through which we can recall and interrogate even the most densely
emotional of our experiences. Conversely, if we cannot do this, then how can we
construct a coherent view of ourselves? If the sexually aroused self has
trouble recalling any life episodes other than those involving sexual arousal,
and the vengeful self can recall only incidents of vengeance, and the thirsty
self has little sense of any geography beyond that leading to water, then how
can we see ourselves and our fellows whole? Such a life would seem to be one of
almost constant dissociation (cf. Benzon 2001).
This view is different in emphasis from the notion that stories are
useful because they allow us to gather and share information (e.g. Sugiyama
2001). My argument is not about the usefulness of the information enfolded in
stories, but about how the social situation of story telling facilitates our ability to
recall incidents of a kind captured in stories. The usefulness of that
information is of little or no account if we cannot access that information
except from within very specific states of mind. My view is more like the
notion of cognitive mapping that Joseph Carroll (2003, XXXX) has been advocating.
Story-telling creates a mental arena in which we can review and become
self-consciously aware of the full range of our feelings and behaviors, where
we can see them in relation to one another. It is into this arena that the Winnebago enter when then
gather to listen to tales of Trickster; it is in this arena that they can apprehend
the relationship between the penis and useful plants, among many other things.
In
view of the previous discussion, I offer another proposition:
1.
Internalization
and State Neutrality: Literary
mode provides a biochemically "neutral" arena in which a full range
of feelings and desires may be brought into explicit self-conscious awareness.
Note that this assertion has an ontogenetic corollary, for adults tell stories to children as well as to other adults. We humans grow up in a world where there is this special psychological space of story-telling. We enter this space only when all is well with the world; we are thus safe and secure in this space. But the stories we hear in this space, they take us to places of great danger before, of course, resolving the danger. If my hypothesis about biochemical neutrality is correct, then the stories we hear in this space provide important psychological foundations for personal awareness and growth. It is around the categories contained in these stories that we come to organize the story of our personal life. And when Kris and Holland talk about regression in service of the ego, they are, in effect, talking about regression within the boundaries of this safe region of the psyche, the one created as one's parents and older siblings tell stories.
To see how these two
facets—ape vs. angel, biochemical specificity—of mode interact,
consider Shakespeare's sonnet 129 (for details Benzon 1976, 1978, pp. 259-326,
1981) – see text below. In the
first twelve lines our attention is directed back and forth over the follow
sequence:
DESIRE: Protagonist becomes consumed with
sexual desire and purses the object of that desire using whatever deceit and
violence is necessary:
"perjur'd, murderous, bloody . . . not to trust" (ll. 3-4).
CONSUMMATION: Protagonist gets his way, having
"a bliss in proof" (l. 11)
SHAME: Desire satisfied, the protagonist is
consumed with guilt:
"despisèd straight" (l. 5), "no sooner had/ Past
reason hated" (ll. 6-7).
The poem concludes
with a curious couplet, asserting that "All this the world well knows yet
none knows well,/ To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell" (ll. 13-14). Knowing that rancid meat can make you ill will prevent most
people from eating rancid meat, but, says this final couplet, the knowledge
that sexual desire will lead you to guilt and disgust is not powerful enough to
prevent you from walking to the trap.
This
cycle is easily explained using the concept of mode. Moral strictures governing honest and honorable behavior are
encoded in neural structures most strongly active in a certain, no doubt
cortical, mode. However, as sexual
desire grows, the biochemical state of the brain changes and mode shifts; moral
strictures are no longer readily called to mind; anything goes. Once desire is satisfied the brain can
return to a mode in which morality is regnant. When morality sees what has just been done, morality is
outraged. We can further
speculate, as outrage grows, another biochemical change occurs, inducing a
modal shift, and we are no longer in a cortical mode conducive to reason and
morality. In giving way to
outrage, morality has undermined itself.
In such a mind, reason hasn't a chance. Such is the conflict between ape and angel, between the
subcortical structures of the limbic system and the cortex.
In
this context the apparently gloomy admission of the concluding couplet, which
holds the preceding twelve lines in view and asserts that you can't escape, has
a paradoxical restorative effect [2]. Intuitively, I'm absolutely sure that it
works this way. Explaining how it
works is another matter. Hays
(1992, p. 196) suggests a deep connection between sociality and expressive
culture. Taking that as our cue,
we can see that the final couplet restores a sense of sociality. The horror and shame of the first
twelve lines resides, not only in the violence, but in the destruction of
social mutuality; the lusty animal is "not to trust" (l. 4) and
"Mad in pursuit and possession so" (l. 9). The final couplet begins with the admission that "All
this the world well knows" (l. 13) and, in so affirming, restores the
lusty and despised animal to society.
We are all like this; we know it; we can't escape. Thus the shame, guilt, and anxiety
which is evoked in the first twelve lines is assuaged and order is restored
(for an earlier, and more recondite, version of this argument see Benzon 1976,
pp. 975-976, 980). To use Hays's
terms, the relationship between the final couplet and the first twelve lines satisfies
the cortical desire for beauty and that satisfaction triggers an epiphany which
"fixes" the entire experience in one's nervous system and brings
about a bit of psychological reorganization. Over the long term the cumulative effect of such epiphanic
reorganizations is to bring greater internal coherence to the nervous system,
making subcortical ape and cortical angel more comfortable, one with the other.
Let's
conclude this section by taking a closer look at mode. In Hays's terms, the process of
creating and understanding such a sophisticated poem would be regulated by the
right rear quadrant of the neocortex.
The mode is adventure and the goal is beauty. What is being made beautiful is the relationship between the
sound of sonnet 129, which we've not discussed, and it's sense, which we have. The sound involves matters of rhythm,
rhyme, and meter and may also directly encode the emotion-bearing essentic
forms discussed by Manfred Clynes (1977, see also Fonagy, 1971, 1976; for a
more detailed discussion see Benzon, 1978). The sense, as we've seen, involves a stroll through the
primitive modes of sexual courtship, sexual action, and disgust. Unlike the person in the process of
living these experiences, the poet and readers are not deeply into any of these
primitive modes. These modes are only
weakly invoked, or perhaps only cortical residuals of these modes are evoked,
while in the right rear adventure mode.
The person actually living those lusty experiences cannot see the
vicious causal connection between them, their consciousness consumed, in turn,
by those primitive modes. I
speculate that the poet, and reader, can endure the anxiety aroused by the
partial arousal of the conflicted primitive modes at the heart of the sonnet's
sense because of the pleasure in beauty achieved, the satisfaction of the
cortical adventure mode, is offset against. We endure the anxiety because we know that beauty is coming.
Through that beauty poet and reader can see and contemplate the vicious causal
connection among the modes of the lust cycle. Thus the poem provides a vehicle in which those modes can
cohere in consciousness.
This
is a very complex expressive achievement, with centuries of cultural evolution
behind it. The initial
achievements of expressive culture are less sophisticated. But they are the foundations on which
Shakespeare's achievement rests, and that achievement is, in turn, foundation
for still more sophisticated vessels of expressive consciousness.
* * * * *
I have color-coded the text to indicate the three
phases from the discussion above. Note that some lines are not color coded.
They are, in some way, "outside" the phases of lust in action.
Desire
Consummation
Shame
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is
perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage,
extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd
no sooner but despised
straight,
Past
reason hunted, and no
sooner had
Past
reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad
in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A
bliss in proof, and proved, a
very woe;
Before,
a joy proposed; behind, a
dream.
All this the world well knows;
yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads
men to this hell.