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On Preventing Another Century of Misunderstanding:Toward a Psychoethology of Human Experience anda Psychoneurology of Affect: Commentary by JaakPanksepp (Bowling Green, Ohio)Jaak Panksepp

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240

Most

of

our group were just tourists, peering at

one culture from the capsule

of

another. Only Bob

was prepared to live on the border. But he was full

of

ambivalence. Like the Zairean medical students, he

did not much like Chinese society; for him it lacked

warmth. At the same time he was deeply attracted to

the tradition

of

Chinese medicine.

So, although it is perhaps a scandal that the two

aspects

of

psychology are distrustful of each other.

Whittle is right, these are not jus t aspects, but self

sufficient cultures. In Canada, for all our talk

of

multi

culturalism, we have not yet managed to become com-

Jaak Panksepp

fortable with the fault-line that runs between the

Anglos and the French, let alone with our many other

cultural splits. Within psychology, we are not comfort

able with our split, but perhaps by recognizing it as a

cultural one, we psychologists can know that the move

to make is toward multiculturalism.

Keith Oatley

Dept. of Human Development

Applied Psychology

OISE University

of

Toronto

252 Bloor Street West

Toronto Canada M5S

V

On Preventing Another Century of Misunderstanding: Toward a Psychoethology of Human Experience

and

a Psychoneurology

of

Affect

Commentary by

Jaak

Panksepp (Bowling Green, Ohio)

Whittle s gentle complaint provides fertile ground for

sharing some of my own thoughts on this contentious

topic the chasm between analytic-dissective and

synthetic-integrative approaches to understanding the

mind. I will take this opportunity to share what has

been on my mind for the last 30 years rather frankly

concerning our continuing failure to have a unified

and coherent mind-brain-behavior science.

The one thing all might agree on is that the exper

imental psychology that emerged during the past cen

tury has yet to give us a lasting and coherent science

of

the human or animal condition. In my estimation,

this is largely due to the fact that it never really came

to terms with the evolutionary dynamics and epige

netic complexities

of

ancient regions of the mamma

lian brain. All too often it skirted the most profound

and central issues

of

our

lives the

clarification

of

the

many internal impulses and feelings that guide the

intentional actions and choices we routinely make

each day. For quite a while, neuroscience has also

followed that same pattern, pretending that the dy

namic, evolutionarily provided integrative statesof the

nervous system are of little importance for under

standing what the brain does. In fact, the probability

high that the brain generates a great deal of its

magic not simply through information transmis-

Jaak Panksepp is Distinguished Research Professor

of

Psychobiology,

Emeritus, Department

of

Psychology, Bowling Green State University,

Ohio.

sion, but through massive, coordinated operationsof

enormous ensembles of neurons that create global and

organic neurodynamics (states of being) that constitute

the forms

of

affective consciousness, not capable of

being reproduced, so far as we know,

on

digital com

puters. Those global, evolutionary dynamics are the

fundamental fabric of mind, which comes to be richly

embellished and besmirched by the vast complexities

of individual experiences information that is more

readily reproducible computationally.

Psychoanalysis addressed many

of

these issues

but all too rarely in ways that helped create a rigorous

culture of consensual

truth

that is the hallmark of

modern scientific thought (Macmillan, 1997). Experi

mental psychology became a fledgling memberof the

scientific community early in the twentieth century,

not because of any coherent sc ientific insight and syn

thesis it generated concerning the nature of mind or

the natural behaviors organisms exhibit, but rather be

cause of its willingness to implement generally ac

cepted experimental and statistical methodologies in

its search for lasting knowledge. Indeed, its analytic

success during the twentieth century was largely based

on

barring

the door to the darker affective corners of

the mind and keeping its attention focused obsessively

on those peppercorns of behavioral and cognitive evi

dence that strict-minded experimentalists could agree

upon. Both behaviorism and cognitivism agreed, at

times all too explicitly, that emotions and other af

fective processes were issues too murky or difficult to


3/17

Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

understand. Psychoanalysis never chose those paths of

psychic trivialization to create empirical consensus.

Its reputation suffered accordingly.

Considering the seemingly antithetical premises

of experimental psychological and psychoanalytic ap

proaches, as well as the more-apparent-than-real dual

ities

of

the human brain-mind, the polarity between

the two disciplines was inevitable but it need not be

irreversible. However, a great deal of conceptual

stitching, often through some remarkably tough intel

lectual hides e.g., see Uttal, 2000), will be needed

in order to mend the widening rift that has emerged

Panksepp, 1999). This may be achieved more rapidly

if

we better recognize the degree to which our mind

sciences are molded by personalities that are attracted

to the stark positivistic aesthetics of various intellec

tual--experimental schools, commonly well insulated

from each other, that today continue to rule the aca

demic landscape in cognitive science and neurosci

ence. What may eventually coax investigators

of

vastly different persuasions to return to a shared intel

lectual table is the increasingly evident fact that a com

prehensive understanding

of

psychological and

behavioral subtleties cannot be achieved simply by

viewing them from a single vantage point, whether by

positivistic behaviorism, cognitivism, functionalism,

computationalism, eliminativism, naturalism, men

talism, or mysterianism. Multiple and synergistic non

dualistic points of view are essential, including

behavioral, psychological, and neurological ones,

taken all

together

bitter medicine that most have

not been ready to swallow. However, the times they

may be changing. The idea that the way we c an best

understand the brain-mind is by simply emulating the

physical sciences is gradually losing force. The recog

nition that the mind is not only used by but also

re lized various brain activities, with unique types

of self-organizing complexity not capable of being

replicated by silicone-based digital computers, is tak

ing hold Searle, 1992; Clark 1997).

Slowly Toward a Coherent

Mind-Brain-Behavior Science

The failure of too many in the various psychological,

psychoanalytic, and neuroscience communities to con

currently embrace the full hierarchical complexity

of

the human brain-mind with a full devotion to concep

tual flexibility and scientific rigor, has saddened many

generations of students who wanted a deep and realis

tic understanding of the human condition. After a cen-

24

tury

of

remarkable research effort in experimental

psychology, almost five decades

of

cognitivism, and

three decades

of

modern neuroscience, we still have

no unified community

of

scholars that tries to bring all

the relevant issues openly into consideration-perhaps

the recently emerging consciousness studies programs

come closest. In any event, since we are close to solv

ing some substantive psychological issues scientifi

cally e.g., the nature of attention, memory, and

perhaps even emotions), we should no longer ignore

the many remaining issues that have long been ne

glected from the fundamentally affective dimensions

of mind to subtle feelings of volition and free-will. In

experimental psychology, the most poignant orphan

of our intellectual practices has been primary process

or core consciousness----our deeply animalian--emo

tional

n ture n

issue that psychoanalysis accepted

see Solms and Nersessian, 1999) but which, at least

during the past century, it did not nurture toward a

vigorous scientific maturity. However, because

of

the

recent revolutions in neuroscience and molecular biol

ogy, along with emerging psychobehavioral and dy

namic perspectives, we may finally be in a position to

deal credibly with some

of

those long-neglected issues

using rather standard, albeit somewhat more theoreti

cally flexible, scientific approaches. The only thing

that should matter in this scientific game is the capac

ity to make predictions that can be empirically verified

or falsified, whether they be traditional third-person

measures or various indirect measures

of

first-person

experience.

A broad neuropsychobehavioral probing

of

the

nature of the basic emotional and motivational sys

tems of the mammalian brain, and the layers of con

sciousness they regulate, has considerable potential to

help heal the rifts between these troubled fields

of

ours.

think the evidence, read correctly, is over

whelming that our most immediate psychobehavioral

concerns, from our fundamental instinctual actions to

our more subtle life choices, are based upon funda

mental biological values that our brains express as

feelings MacLean, 1990; Panksepp, 1998a; Damasio,

1999). We will only make meager progress on a vari

ety of higher mental issues e.g., see Uttal, 2000) until

those foundational values are better clarified.

Unfortunately, the powerful cultural, intellectual,

and emotional forces that would seek to counter such

efforts remain alive and well. Indeed, those forces

probably arise naturally from the deep polarities and

animosities of human nature. The reactionaries who

brought Galileo to his knees four centuries ago, con

tinue to thrive within our own scientific communities,


4/17

242

although they no longer command the old tools of

torture. But all too often they do control the purse

strings for furthering empirical inquiries. Obviously,

the scientific community is not immune to everyday

power politics and the skewering influence of bull

headed, alpha-type personalities who have commonly

had too little hands-on experience with relevant as

pects of life or laboratory to make the best scientific

choices. Indeed, all long-standing scholarly traditions

seem to be conservative in nature, with a class of ill

prepared priests who recite traditional catechisms

to protect the status quo.

To try to shed some light, admittedly dim, on

such issues, I will aspire to characterize (and shall, no

doubt, caricature) the personalities that may be imped

ing progress at the present time. My aim is not pejora

tive, but I would highlight the intellectual stagnation

that can result when too many scientific practitioners

take excessive pride in the rigor of their logic and the

precision of

their methods rather than their willingness

to confront nature as she truly presents herself in ani

mate life. I will here call them, perhaps rather too

gratuitously, left-hemisphere types, and contrast their

approaches with the growing minority who aspire to

grapple with the whole brain, with all of its diverse

and often irrational riches.

The Sociobiology of the Psychological Sciences

As Whittle emphasizes, there are many subtle reasons

for the schisms that characterize the various scholarly

traditions that aspire to understand the psyche, the

mind, and behavior. Although I largely agree with

Whittle s analysis, I will toy further with the possibil

ity that rather straightforward human cultural and per

sonality issues may lie at the heart

of

the various

intellectual disharmonies and discontents he described

so poignantly. I also believe many

of

our troubles arise

from ancient group dynamics that any competitive

group of highly intelligent anthropoid apes is bound

to exhibit when they are competing for limited re

sources and their minds are split between fundamen

tally different, culturally shaped worldviews, such as

the willingness to consider objective versus subjective

forms of data, experimental versus insightful-intuitive

approaches to human nature, and the resulting disputes

concerning the scientific credibility of third versus first

person points of view. I do believe that the mentalistic

position to which most intelligent people subscribe has

been so widely rejected by mind-brain specialists to

some extent for primitive group solidarity rea-

Jaak Panksepp

sons partly because their limited but rigorous spe

cialist positions set them apart as uniquely qualified

experts who supposedly have privileged perspectives

to adjudicate on the nature of psychological reality.

At some point, most investigators, probably be

cause of their cognitive and emotional strengths but

also because of the reward structures in which they

must pursue their activities, select which approach

they most admire either for deep intellectual and, not

uncommonly, for straightforward opportunistic rea

sons. During the past half-century of advancing mate

rialism, there have been clear and differential rewards

for selecting positivistic analytic paths over deeper in

tegrative-synthetic ones. As a result, the middle way,

which accepts the importance of both approaches, of

both deductive reason and inductive insight, for any

coherent understanding, has become the road least

traveled. I remain puzzled

at

how little commerce cur

rently exists on that byway, especially in my own field

of

behavioral neuroscience, a powerful animal brain

research discipline that has so much rigorous evidence

and evolutionary hypotheses to offer for the creation

of a lasting psychobiological understanding of the hu

man mind (Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000).

It seems that to some yet unmeasured extent, pre

vailing intellectual positions reflect desires to establish

group and individual identities. Every human has a

need to feel that he or she is best at something. f one is

a farmer

or

builder, the evidence is often immediately

evident to the eye. Hence, grantsmanship all too often

becomes a skilled exercise in deceptive practices. f

one is an academic or a therapist, then it is only evi

dent in the praise and attention that others are willing

to grant. Thus, in intellectual matters, the strengths

of

our alliances may be as important as the coherence of

our ideas. Without social coalitions, we put ourselves

at

risk

of

being marginalized in the competition for

the necessary resources to continue scientific work.

And it is much easier to agree on the factual pepper

corns than the big-ticket integrative items. Accord

ingly, most scientists are committed to views held by

long-established scientific groups, most

of

which in

order to survive as traditions are bound to be intellec

tually conservative. Unless a field is in the midst of

technological-eonceptual breakthroughs (such as mo

lecular biology during the past few decades), most in

vestigators are bound to remain constrained by the

leaden weight of the status quo even if they have won

derful and productive ideas they would personally like

to pursue. The federal granting establishment in the

United States has become a remarkable exemplar of

a system that encourages conceptual conservatism and


5/17


rewards run-of-the-mill empIrICIsm at least at the

funding application stage, since what one does scien

tifically with the provided support is rarely subject to

accountability .

One reason there has been remarkably little prog

ress in understanding someof the key issues of human

nature is because the study of emotions and motiva

tions has long been devalued in the biological, psycho

logical, and brain sciences. For current cultural

reasons, emotions and psychoanalytic approaches are

deemed

of

much less importance than cognitions and

information processing approaches to understanding

the human mind. Although the reasons for that are

many perhaps the most important being the ascen

dancy of the digital computer model of mind , the one

dimension that has rarely been discussed is the poten

tial skewing influences of the typical personalities that

are attracted to scientific endeavors. I will now weave

a blunt hypothesis that there has been a massive left

hemisphere bias operating in the scientific arena and

a right-hemisphere bias in the psychoanalytic one. Al

though this hypothesis remains to be empirically eval

uated, the mere fact that it has been so difficult to

get substantive programs of emotion research off the

ground in mainstream psychology and neuroscience

will be taken as prima facia evidence that some rather

unusual personality and cultural forces have shaped

the ways in which the mind has been studied over the

past five decades.

Can

Left-Brain Sciences Understand Whole

rain

Minds?

As Whittle implies, the causes of the intellectual dis

sensions that have been evident in the twentieth-cen

tury mind sciences probably go deeper into human

nature than we are typically wont to admit. Tempera

mental style surely has an enormous influence on

guiding the scholarly and professional choices of the

participants. The scientific structures built by those

who enjoy the chaotic right-hemispheric play

of

diver

gent ideas and the resulting intuitive flashes, and those

who admire more rigorously straight-furrowed left

hemispheric forms of convergent thinking and the re

sulting logical inferences are bound to differ. Could

one of the major dilemmas in the brain-mind sciences

be that most practitioners, becauseof student selection

pressures, are remarkably proficient in left-hemi

sphere linear thinking skills while being rather impov

erished in right-hemisphere pattern-recognition

abilities? Might it be largely the reverse in psychoana-

4

lytic circles, where open listening surely a right-hemi

sphere attitude must be cultivated? Might such biases,

if they could be demonstrated to exist, lead inexorably

to remarkably skewed conceptionsof the brain-mind?

For didactic purposes, I will here utilize a vastly

oversimplified conception

of

right- and left-hemi

sphere functions to make some general points about

scientific personalities that may need to be made in

rather glaring terms. Although there is abundant evi

dence that the right hemisphere is more capable of

extracting nondominant patterns and meanings from

available information stores Fiore and Schooler,

1998 , the attitudinal dichotomy I will pursue surely

runs deeper in the brain-mind thanjust right-left hemi

spheric biases. Still, recent attempts to put everything

of obvious cognitive value into the left hemisphere

Gazzaniga, 1998 , without fully recognizing the psy

chologically more subtle and emotionally deep contri

butions of the right Beeman and Chiarello, 1998 ,

encourage me to proceed with my oversimplified

tongue-in-cheek analysis.

A great deal of the controversy concerning

whether we can empirically study mental states is

based

on

our philosophical position concerning the

empirical accessibility of such states. Some claim that

such states, although they surely exist within the brain,

are simply not open to substantive empirical analysis

at the present time Uttal, 2000 . I suspect that such

philosophic positions are created as much by the af

fective inclinations, or lack thereof,

of

their purveyors

as the intellectual rigor of their arguments. In any

event, if we consider that the generation and apprecia

tion of inductive inferences is promoted more by the

synthetic flow of right-hemisphere associations

my-

thos

while the power of deductive logic is promoted

more by left-hemispheric analytic skills

logos ,

we

may come to understand why linear, left-hemisphere

mental styles have prevailed so overwhelmingly in the

sciences, including those that have sought to under

stand behavior and mental life. The rules

of

scientific

agreement are much more certain and clear-cut for

deductively logical left-hemispheric thought than for

the creative inferential leaps that emerge more from

the right.

Indeed, the traditional linear analytic thinking of

the natural sciences has paid enormous dividends in

generating systematic understanding of our world and

in harnessing its material resources. However, those

modes of left-hemispheric thought that have worked

so well at unraveling the dynamics of the physical

world, have not succeeded as dramatically in the

brain-mind sciences. Perhaps this is because the brain-


6/17

244

mind is not simply the unfeeling type of linear infor

mation processing computational device that many

left-hemisphere types would like to believe, but rather,

at its foundation it is a fundamentally organic and

globally holistic integrator and blender

of

past evolu

tionary solutions and present environmental chal

lenges. Perhaps for any comprehensive understanding,

the two views need to be judiciously combined, so that

the capacity of a mode of thought to generate coherent

predictions rather than logically airtight arguments be

comes the main arbiter of how we allow a fundamen

tally organic mind science to evolve.

We should also recall that left and right hemi

spheres have rather different affective styles and social

priorities. Most of us tend to present ourselves to the

world with our left-hemisphere linguistic skills, to the

point where we commonly speak out of one side of our

mouth----often remarkably logically in a propositional

left-hemisphere way, but quite unreasonably from a

more integrative right-hemisphere perspective. The

left hemisphere, in its appointed role of projecting an

image of positive social desirability into the world, is

not only an interpreter Gazzaniga, 1998), but also

a skilled confabulator , especially when it comes to

trying to deal with emotional experiences, which are

felt more intensely by its more passive and silent part

ner. Clearly, it is the right hemisphere that provides the

greater depth to our emotional narratives and affective

experiences Ross, Homan, and Buck, 1994; Ornstein,

1997; Beeman and Chiarello, 1998), and perhaps the

left hemisphere is a specialist in emotional repression.

f so, there is reason to believe that the left hemi

sphere, divorced from the fundamental anchoring of

the full spectrum of human emotional experiences

elaborated subcortically and within the other side of

the brain, could easily become adept at helping con

struct simple-minded

dreams

of reason that create

monsters

y

least favorite examples being the

radical behaviorism that denied mind and brain any

place in the behavioral sciences and all eugenics

movements past and present. Also, the mere fact that

women are better than men in coordinating the activi

ties of the two hemispheres Shaywitz, Shaywitz,

Pugh, and Constable, 1995), may go a long way to

ward explaining why females are underrepresented in

the natural sciences, as well as why holistic and fluid

right-hemispheric modes of psychoanalytic thought

have prevailed in feminist theory and the arts.

There is much to be discovered about the person

alities that are attracted to an uncompromisingly left

hemisphere logic-reason) view

of

the world as well

as those who selectively view life through the prism

Jaak

Panksepp

of the right intuition-insight). I would wager that,

could it be empirically evaluated, the majority

of

tradi

tional scientists would tend to fall in the former cate

gory, helping explain why twentieth-century

psychology offered us so many linear and logically

simplified, and ultimately incomplete views of human

nature. Indeed, might the stark Machiavellian egotism

that all too commonly prevails in high-powered left

hemisphere science see Pert [1997] for a recent de

scription of the take-as-you-can types that pervade so

much of present-day science), reflect a functional dis

connection syndrome when the left-hemisphere abili

ties are excessively divorced from right-hemisphere

values?

To put the hypothesis bluntly: A larger than nor

mal proportion of the most successful scientists, in

cluding experimental psychologists, may be

remarkably self-centered, highly competitive, and all

too often, not very agreeable types. As a population,

they may have less than normal levels of emotional

sensitivity, with a predilection for exhibiting notewor

thy symptoms of academic autism. They are satis

fied to know more and more about less and less, with

little heed for social and emotional sensitivities that

concern most other people. Whether the incidence of

such personality styles is actually higher than that

found in the humanities or other professions would be

a most interesting issue to evaluate empirically, and

if

the data support the hypothesis, to discuss psychoana

lytically. To my knowledge, no substantive empirical

analysis

of

differential personality styles in different

academic disciplines has been conducted, but I suspect

the topic may be a rich mine for some eager psycholo

gist, sociologist, or cultural anthropologist. In any

event, I offer this psychoanalytic hypothesis to explain

the chaotic state of our mind sciences only half in jest.

In any event, the Janus-faced nature

of

our cognitive

and affective proclivities has surely exerted yet un

measured effects on the forms of our various

mind-brain science.

Future Speculations about the Personality

Styles of Scientists and the Sciences They

Create

f

there is some type

of

selective funneling

of

different

personalities into different disciplines, it is bound to

have remarkable consequences for the way whole

fields of

thought and inquiry are framed, most espe

cially in the psychological sciences. For instance,

might the massive intolerance for talk about inner psy-


7/17


chological causes among behavioral psychologists be

based not only on the methodological difficulties

posed by the study of the subjective life, but also on

their lopsided emotional skills? From my own 40 years

of

experiences in the field, that does not seems a far

fetched possibility. Despite recent advances in deci

phering how emotional learning transpires in certain

areas

of

the brain such as the amygdala (e.g., LeDoux,

1996), one is still hard put to find a behavioral scientist

who seems constitutionally able to openly discuss the

potential role

of

affective feelings in the instigation

and guidance

of

behavioral responses and regulation

of behavioral choices. The majority, at least in my

experience, tend to believe that type of talk borders

on the absurd. Only begrudgingly will most entertain

the idea that other animals actually experience pain

and

fear-preferring

to phrase their ideas in terms of

nociceptive stimuli and anxietylike behaviors.

The radical behaviorism

of

the middle part

of

the

twentieth-century-the mode

of

thought that aspired

to kill

psychoanalysis-was

an exemplar

of

that kind

of

thought. It was deeply logical in its limited domain,

but in my estimation, it yielded a fundamentally mis

guided view

of

animate nature. Despite the behaviorist

desire to aspire to nothing but visually observable ob

jectivity, there is still every reason to believe that ani

mals lives revolve around many comparatively

invisible inner causes, evolutionarily constructed, that

cannot be unambiguously observed in the behavioral

acts

of

organisms but must be neurotheoretically in

ferred. I did my part to coax Skinner to change his

radically antagonistic and limited ways

of

thinking

(i.e., Panksepp, 1990), but, in the final accounting, he

was not coaxed into reconsidering the possibility that

emotional and motivational feelings are not simply

excellent examples of the fictional causes to which

we commonly attribute behavior (Skinner, 1953, p

160).

To this day, his ultrapositivistic way

of

viewing

the animate life prevails in behavioral neuroscience,

even though the more skilled thinkers will now tend to

espouse terminal agnosticism (typically

of

the

closed

door

variety) on the topic

of

emotional and motiva

tional affective experiences in animals. In the face

of

the massive amount

of

data indicating that various

subcortical areas

of

the mammalian brain mediate va

lenced affective states, arising from essentially the

same circuits in all species that have been studied

(Panksepp, 1998a), I find closed door agnosticism

to be either opportunistic or remarkably half-minded.

If

physicists had taken such positions to the internal

structure of atoms, we would still be ignorant of the

5

physical nature

of

matter. We will remain as ignorant

of

the true organizational principles

of

the mammalian

brain if we continue to ignore the central role

of

af

fective states in the governance of animal behavior

and human mind. Considering the deep neuroanatomi

cal homologies in the organization of subcortical re

gions of the brain, it is likely that our capacity to

decipher the circuitry that generates emotional pro

cesses in animals (e.g., as indexed by approach and

avoidance, and conditioned place preferences and

aversions) can provide an essential platform for un

derstanding which types

of

brain systems govern af

fective states, and perhaps the foundations of

consciousness, in humans. At least, it will yield coher

ent theoretical propositions that can be empirically

evaluated in humans using various biological (e.g.,

pharmacological) maneuvers. Thus, the type

of

agnos

ticism we should aspire to should be

of

the open

door variety.

In any event, affective processes are still widely

considered insubstantial by most neuroscientists,

while considerably more dubious procedur l concepts

such as reinforcement are commonly discussed as

if

they are substantive biological realities simply be

cause animal behavior in prisonlike environments can

be molded remarkably effectively by systematically

applied whips and

carrots,

all too commonly

wielded by experimenters who relish the concept

of

linear control

s

opposed to chaotic neurodynamics.

Need it be pointed out that to this day no one has yet

demonstrated a reinforcement

process

to be oper

ate in molding the real-world behaviors

of

animals?

If

one really looked at

ll

the evidence, one would be

forced to conclude that concepts such as reinforce

ment are more likely to be the phlogiston

of psychol

ogy than are the basic emotional value systems of

ancient regions

of

the mammalian brain.

The notion

of

reinforcement may simply be an

inevitable hangover

of

the assumption that we could

obtain clear conceptions of the major causes of animal

actions simply by studying stimulus-control

of

behav

ior in semistarved animals tested under conditions

where there were no effective behavioral alternatives

other than those provided by the experimenter. This

is a classic methodological

flaw-an

experimenter-im

posed

dem nd ch r cteristic th t

introductory psy

chology students are trained to recognize and avoid in

designing their own fledgling experiments. Although

it is understandable why many would deem it to be

an exquisitely desirable form

of

experimental con

trol, we should not accept the delusion that such

methodologies provide general insights into how the


8/17

6

spont n ous

behavior

of

animals is regulated.

Throughout the behaviorist era, the instruments of

measurement were essential for creating the system

atic response patterns that were observed. The natural

spontaneous behaviors of animals were neglected, and

when those urges did rear their wondrous heads, they

were deemed to reflect the misbehavior

of

organ

isms. Today, a similar type

of

control-oriented mind

set is leading to a massive overdiagnosis of Attention

Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorders in our American

society (Panksepp, 1998c).

Obviously, when animals have no reasonable be

havioral options, they are likely to take the single one

offered to them by the experimenter. The remarkably

robust and consistent patterns of behavior in starved

animals within Skinner Boxes did provide a clear im

age

of

how most organisms will behave under strin

gent economic constraints, but we should be under no

illusion that those methodologies provided powerful

and deeply meaningful general laws of behavior.

Paradoxically, the realistic alternative that evolu

tionarily provided instinctive feelings typically guide

behavioral choices in the real world remains as rare

in the prevailing forms of dustbowl cognitivism

s

in

the preceding behavioristic varieties. Although af

fective explanations would require us to specify rather

precisely what we mean by internally valenced feel

ings, that is now an option that can be realistically

envisioned (Panksepp, 1998b; Berridge, 2000). Feel

ings are not simply vague concepts that emerge from

our linguistic abilities (Rolls, 1999) nor from our vast

abilities to remember events transpiring in our brains

(LeDoux, 1996) or to perceive events in our bodies

(Damasio, 1994). They appear to be fundamental birth

rights of ancient centromedial regions of the human

brain (Damasio, 1999) that we share with all the other

mammals (Panksepp, 1998a).

I do believe that brain evolution represented the

animal s point of view much more than most behav

ioral neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists were

ever willing to consider. To the best of our knowledge,

all other mammals have basic emotional feelings and

neurosymbolic selves based on neural foundations

that are homologous to our own (Panksepp, 1998a,b).

Affective or core consciousness is a very old brain

function (Damasio, 1999; Panksepp, 1998a, 2000).

Once we begin to provisionally entertain and to exper

imentally evaluate the existence

of

such brain pro

cesses, a coherent psychological science may emerge

that

s

more accurate and more conceptually satisfying

than the ones we now have (Watt, 1999). Such ap

proaches to mental life may also provide an intellec-

Jaak Panksepp

tual structure that can be more easily respected by

many other disciplines, and it can be incorporated

readily into revitalized forms of psychoanalytic

thought.

Continuing Intellectual Polarities

From a psychoanalytic point of view, the stark, skele

tonlike structure of behavioristic thought often resem

bled a monstrosity that had not come to terms with

many essential aspects of either human or animal life.

As Whittle poignantly highlighted, the minds of stu

dents were all too often numbed at sacrificial altars

of

intellectual traditions that disenfranchised themselves

from vast swaths of human experience and animal

existence. The absence

of

any substantive or even

handed discussion

of

animate emotions in the behav

iorist literature was only the most evident case in

point, and such attitudes remain alive and well today

in both cognitively and neuroscientifically oriented

disciplines. Indeed, our most recent attempt-to-publish

experience has revealed to us once more how vital the

antiemotional forces are within the scientific commu

nity our

discovery

of

what appears to be animal

laughter has been most difficult to publish in tradi

tional scientific outlets (Panksepp and Burgdorf,

1999), as were our studies

of

animal play 20 years

earlier, and

of

separation-induced crying before

that (Panksepp, 1998a, chapters 14 and 15). The ac

ceptance

of

coherent primordial forces in the animal

brain is apparently not welcome news in those disci

plines, for many practitioners would still like to con

ceptualize animals as mindless, nonconscious reflex

machines rather than the spontaneously active agents

that they are.

The fact that basic emotions and motivations

were so thoroughly devalued in twentieth-century ex

perimental psychology (including current cognitive

varieties) remains the most tangible symbolic token,

perhaps even a fundamental cause, of

our

century

of

misunderstanding. At present, there are a remarkable

number

of

investigators who still scoff at the idea that

a variety of affective feelings may be intrinsic func

tions of the mammalian brain. Since the study sections

of granting agencies are abundantly populated by such

skeptics, work on many

of

the most important basic

emotional systems

of

the mammalian brain, such as

those that mediate anger, grief, and joy, continue to

receive essentially no support, and thereby are receiv

ing remarkably little experimental attention. Likewise,

pharmaceutical firms, whose research departments re-


9/17


main well populated by unreasonably radical behav

iorists (who brought them many slick behavioral

technologies, but few productive ideas), are not devot

ing sufficient resources to trying to discover medica

tions for regulating specific emotions. Meanwhile

exhorbitant amounts

of

money are being squandered,

to put it bluntly but symbolically, on severely stressing

animals to determine how nociceptive responses in

their tails are modified by local spinal mechanisms.

During the twentieth century, experimental psy

chology became a discipline that expected productive

minds to subsist at the meager table

of facts with

which all reasonably alexithymic left-hemisphere

types can agree. At the same time, psychoanalytic

thought insisted that we must seek to deal with the

full complexity of the human condition, but sadly, it

did not encourage investigators to invest in compelling

new empirical paradigms to clarify the ideas and con

cepts it wished to disseminate. Through that failure,

it disenfranchised itself from the available sources of

scientific support and respect. All too often, psychoan

alytic thought wished to capture the full circus carni

val life, and thereby found its most welcome home

among literary theorists who felt no need to have their

thought tempered by the purifying fire of experimental

analysis. After all, humans do love a great story,

and as often as not, the facts be damned.

All too many proponents of psychoanalytic views

have insisted that the diversity of individual lives can

not (and often, should not) be subjected to the dehu

manizing tools and perspectives of available

experimental disciplines; for the subtleness of mind

might not emerge unscathed from that. Indeed, there

is much to be said against human sciences that wish

to force the vast diversity of human mind and behavior

into statistically constructed pigeonholes such as few

factor theories of personality and massive evolution

arily dictated modularities that all too often do not

respect the remarkable plasticities and potentialities

of the human brain. However, to the extent that psy

choanalytic thought is to be taken seriously in scien

tific circles, it will need to be linked to empirical

observations. As many behaviorists might claim from

their starkly ascetic perspectives it is better to have

an honest kernel of replicable knowledge rather than

a banquet of verbally generated understanding laid

out on quicksand. Fortunately, what was quicksand

only a few decades ago, has become firm ground for

theory building because of the neuroscience and mo

lecular biology revolutions. The fact that many emo

tions and motivations have specific circuits and

molecular codes is the single most important finding

7

that allows us clear access into the neuronal nature

of a growing number of primitive mental processes

(Panksepp, 1986, 1993).

In any event, what is needed now is for us to

leave those old intellectual battles for dominance be

hind, and to seek new ways

of

thinking that allow

multiple viewpoints a voice around a widening intel

lectual table. As Freud suspected, fundamental mental

tendencies are

re lize within

neuronal systems. As

we come to absorb the lessons from neuroscience, we

should also come to respect the need for accurate em

pirical descriptions of the human mind. We should

not allow established dogma to be the arbiter of what

constitutes generally accepted understanding we

should be guided by prediction generated by our ideas.

Perspectives that yield no predictions must continue

to be deemed sterile or premature.

Toward Reconciliations

Thus, we now stand at an intellectual juncture where

there is enormous room for fruitful compromise, pro

ductive synthesis, and the development of robust new

hybrid research strategies. Psychoanalytic thought

without a new level of empiricism and experimental

psychology without a fuller confrontation with the an

cient foundational value substrates of the mind, will

only sustain needless polarities. As long as our intel

lectual systems sustain and nurture those polarities

(e.g., in the structures of academic subdisciplines

where one area need not pay attention to the relevant

work of other areas), we will continue to discourage

and alienate the best students who come to us still

adept at using both of their cerebral hemispheres at

times miraculously so, considering the current domi

nance of left-brain oriented educational systems

within our society. Thus, any future curriculum in psy

choanalysis should absorb the best psychobiology,

neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology of the last

few decades. Indeed, all the social sciences must come

to terms with the evolved, epigenetically refined abili

ties of the brain.

In therapy also, we must better recognize that

there are two distinct personalities in each individual,

of both right and left hemispheric varieties (Ross et

aI., 1994; Schore, 1994), as well as deeper, subcortical

affective ones. One aim of therapeutic enterprises, as

well as our educational ones, should be to introduce

them to each other (Schiffer, 1998).

Obviously, the styles of both hemispheres need

to be acknowledged not only in therapy but also in


10/17

8

our educational systems, s we reverse the sustained

misunderstandings that characterized the twentieth

century. Perhaps that can be achieved by all sides in

vesting in new empirically based perspectives with

which all can agree. As argued eloquently by Uttal

(2000), a newly refined form

of

behaviorism must be

a player, but not the only player, in any future synthe

sis. I sometimes think that an emerging functional neu

roscience, based on evolutionary principles, can

become a sufficiently robust and lasting foundation

where all modes of thought can consiliate within the

dynamics

of

the enchanted loom. The emerging evi

dence has now demonstrated that all brains contain a

set of emotional and motivational value-creating sys

tems around which a great deal of behavior, both ratio

nal and irrational, revolves. The evolutionary

divergences and progressions within these core pro

cesses among mammalian lines have probably been so

modest that remarkable homologies still exist in brain

systems that help regulate basic human and animal ac

tions.

The continuous historical thread of DNA that still

ties

us

to all other forms of life, is providing a richness

of underlying controls, shared with all other animals,

that should be satisfying to both hemispheres for many

millennia (Raff, 1996), especially when it is viewed

from the perspective of

the environmental contexts in

which it must unfurl its magic in remarkably plastic

ways (Oyama, 1985). At the same time, the interactive

mind-brain processes allow us to envision, all too eas

ily, evolved cerebral modules (e.g., Tooby and Cos

mides, 2000) where only general cerebral abilities may

exist (Samuels, 1998; Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000).

Thus, the major danger of theoretical approaches,

s

behaviorism always claimed (as a result of the multi

plication of instincts at the turn of the century), is

the ease with which after-the-fact

just so

stories

can be generated. Without strong corroborative evi

dence

of

conclusions, they just constitute plausible ex

amples of a vast number of theoretical possibilities,

and it should be the responsibility of each investigator

to cast potential explanations in ways that can be em

pirically falsified. Neuroscientific thought can anchor

our theorizing realistically better than any other con

straint at the present time.

For the foreseeable future, a most important so

cial and educational question will be: How shall we

build modes of thought and educational systems that

respect and convey the fullness of

the shared seeds

that evolution has provided not only for us but all our

brethren creatures, without in any way demeaning the

sustaining environments, both natural and cultural,

Jaak Panksepp

that allow those seeds to grow fruitfully? Parentheti

cally, we must now consider, with renewed energy,

how we might discourage those who would flirt with

disasters-for

instance, the new eugenicists who

would meddle with our germ lines, no doubt

r the

betterment

the human spirit.

Could we really geneti

cally engineer humans who feel the hedonic caress of

bliss more than the sting of loss (e.g.,.

wireheading.

com

without doing irreparable harm to the social fab

ric? Surely sociocultural problems require sociocultu

ral solutions (e.g., Panksepp, 1998c), even though

there should also be many biological aids for individu

als whose emotional processes are deficient or trouble

some. But we are only at the verge of realistically

discussing such possibilities. The levels of genetic and

epigenetic complexity that we must deal with are stag

gering (Oyama, 1985; Raff, 1996), and many of us

find it troublesome that the analytically adept left

hemisphere types, with their dreams of reason, are

once again contemplating playing carelessly with our

most precious heritage.

New and refined versions of neuropsychoanalytic

thought could be one of the most powerful antidotes

to blindly meddling with the human spirit. But to be

effective, that may require a new and rigorous attitude

to take hold--one where the full array of analytic tools

from the experimental disciplines are fully imple

mented to demonstrate the general foundational out

lines and the individual details of human minds. That

is exactly where experimental psychology has failed

quite miserably during our past century of misunder

standing. It has given us rather little knowledge about

our ultimate concerns-the nature of the pericons

cious affective processes that surround and support

our more acute forms of awareness.

e

must come to

terms with the many deep and insistent feelings that

guide the life choices we must make. We need to cre

ate cultural supports for encouraging a full scientific

confrontation with those deep neuropsychological

issues.

We are now in a position to take some major

steps along the path that Freud sketched in sparse out

line, and all too often in very preliminary and, at least

from our present vantage, rather perplexing ways. I

believe that we could have a major healing

process-a

synthesis that takes full advantage of the scientific

analytic traditions of the twentieth

century-if

we

build a new and robust psychoanalytic science. I

would like to share two views, one philosophical, and

one practical, that may help us construct a unified sci

ence of

human mind, based partly on animal brain

research, where neuropsychological and psychoana-


11/17


lytic thought, not to mention scientific and humanistic

thought in general, can subsist and support each oth

er s endeavors.

Philosophical Issues

I am fond of the possibility that

we

may be able to

make progress

if we

only have a solid foundation

of

knowledge about biological values with which most

reasonable thinkers could agree. I think that the neuro

psychic world, at least in the long run, is constructed

largely

as

it appears to us

subjectively-we

make an

enormous number

of

life choices based upon the way

those choices make us feel.

We

avoid cold, hunger,

thirst, fear, and loneliness. We all aspire to engage

creatively with the world, seeking material and social

resources and interactions that produce pleasures and

satisfactions, to avoid all kinds

of

harm. Our adult

social behavior is often

so

confusing only because we

commonly do not follow the immediate dictates

of

our

feelings, but rather the paths that seem instrumentally/

cognitively most propitious for our long-term goals.

This leads to all varieties of conflicts and thwarting,

which establish layers

of

emotional complexity upon

our more basic urges. Accordingly, it has been a di

lemma to conceptualize adequately what those more

ancient species

of

psychic activity, the basic feelings,

consist of. However, now we have some credible

hypotheses-they

reflect the actions

of

ancient neural

systems that were constructed, during long-spans

of

evolutionary time to generate various intentions in

action (Searle, 1983 -which are ultimately experi

enced as dynamic value codes (i.e., feelings with a

psychodynamic shape to guide our behavioral ac

tions (for summary, see Panksepp, 1998a). With addi

tional layers of cognitive evolution,

as

our ancestors

came to compete more and more for the same limited

resources, the options for effective behavioral action

became ever more complex, yielding the possibility

that we could have real intentions to act in voluntary

ways (Spence and Frith, 1999). And now we hu

mans-the top

predators-have

hierarchically ar

ranged neural systems unparalleled in brain evolution,

creating a subtlety

of

mind accompanied by a sense of

power and dominion over the world that is unrivaled.

This does not mean that the manner in which the

brain achieves psychological capacities is transparent,

and it

is

all too easy to acknowledge defeat, in princi

ple, and regress to behaviorist solutions that were re

markably successful for helping

us

address certain

limited problems in rigorous empirical ways. It is all

9

too easy to have the type of psychobiological despair

recently expressed by William Uttal (2000):

However, behaviorists generally argue that all re

sponses (or behaviors) are measures

of

the totality of

the experience or awareness

of

the behaving organism

and are the resultant of a combination of many differ

ent stimulus, organism, and response variables as well

as the past experiences and (to an unknown, but usu

ally lesser, degree) the genetic heritage of the individ

ual. The combination is irretrievably tangled,

according to behaviorists, and little if anything can

be done to disentangle the combination. According to

this viewpoint, behavior cannot tell us anything about

the component processes or mechanisms that underlie

the mental events. Indeed, because many possible

mechanisms could lead to the same psychological

event and there are many obscuring and transforming

factors between behavior and mental processes, the

barrier between the two domains is impenetrable as a

matter

of both deep principles and practical consider

ations p 5].

Well, true enough, as long as we choose to leave

the evolved circuitry of subcortical regions of the brain

out of our overall analysis. Clearly, it is our newfound

knowledge

of

the brain that can now save us from the

endless quandary of the behaviorist nightmare de

scribed so poignantly above. We do have one robust

path out

of

that bog

of

despair, and it is paved by

neuroscientific knowledge that recognizes that basic

psychological processes can be both used and

re lized in complex brain systems (Searle, 1983 -a

path that has been resisted, until recently, by both psy

chology and psychoanalysis.

However, a true understanding of affective pro

cesses in the mammalian brain allows us a conceptual

path of remarkable clarity. The reality of both human

and animal minds is based upon the dynamics of our

ancient, and hence often shared, value systems. Those

behavioral actions that make us feel good internally,

in the many ways that have so rarely been discussed

in modern neuroscience and experimental psychology,

will be advanced. Those actions that make us feel

worse internally, in the many ways that have hardly

been discussed in modern experimental psychology or

neuroscience, will be diminished. It may be

as

sim

p e as that.

Behaviorism may have had it backwards all

along--environments mold behavior only to the extent

that they can recruit the self-organizing affective func

tions

of

organisms. The only reason reinforcement


12/17

5

procedures work so well, especially in highly con

strained prisonlike circumstances, is because they tap

into the dynamics

of

various underlying emotional sys

tems. There really is no unified brain function such

as

reinforcement, only environmentally induced

changes in our perception

of

world events, and our

endeavors to maximize positive feelings and to mini

mize distress within those perceptual fields. However,

as

psychoanalytic thought has always recognized, to

feel better, sometimes we must make psychological

detours of enormous proportions, with many subtle

interactive and often conflictual layers of being. The

mind is like an onion. As we peel off the outside cog

nitive layers (many

of

which are less conscious and

less intentional than most believe) we get closer and

closer to the ancient animalian centers of gravity, the

basic emotional and motivational barometers, that

guided the evolution and epigenetic emergence

of

the

surrounding complexities. As we peel away the thick

cortical layers

of

cognitive potentials (the tool

boxes of consciousness), the evolved animal mind

(

id structures full

of

a nonpropositional form

of

affective consciousness) reveals itself within the hu

man brain.

If this

is

a realistic picture, it will,

of

course,

be

of

foremost importance to come to terms with the

fundamental nature

of

feelings. That is a project that

has barely begun, and prominent investigators are still

trying to conceptualize feelings

as

epiphenomenal spe

cies within the higher memorial and linguistic reaches

of the brain (LeDoux, 1996; Rolls, 1999) where our

highest levels

of

intentionality are elaborated (Spence

and Frith, 1999), rather than in the evolutionary an

cient emotional processes

of

the brainstem where the

core of mammalian consciousness emerged. I believe

those forms of neodualism, that are yielding such won

derful peppercorns of fact, are fundamentally mis

guided. They do not adequately recognize the natural

psychological kinds that arise from intrinsic, evolu

tionarily provided brain activities, and they continue

to

be lumbered by a form

of

dualism that could be

resolved straightfowardly

if

they recognized how men

tal processes are not only

used

but also

re lized

in

certain operations

of

the brain (Searle, 1983, chap

ter 10). But there is now a robust alternative view,

coherent with the general philosophic path laid out by

Searle-that our values are fundamentally created by

the ancient instinctual operating systems

of

the brain

that

we

share with other animals (Panksepp, 1998a;

Damasio, 1999).

I believe the evidence has become overwhelm

ing-our basic feelings are fundamentally the reflec-

Jaak Panksepp

tions

of

certain brainstem neural systems in action.

The experience

of

thirst arises from plasma volume

and osmotic receptors in specific areas

of

the hypothal

amus, and their influence is distributed widely in sub

cortical regions of the brain, including those specific

zones where many other forms

of

affect are generated

(Panksepp, 1998b). The pleasure

of taste

is

instanti

ated by specific subcortical systems

of the mammalian

brain (Berridge, 2000). Hunger, in both mouse and

man, reflects some yet uncomputed combination

of

activities in brain Neuropeptide Y dynorphin, orexin,

and melanocyte stimulating hormone, glutamate, and

GABA systems in action (Kalra et aI. 1999), with

general modulation of all systems by the biogenic

amines. Hunger and all the other basic feelings pene

trate the higher layers

of

the brain-mind, making it an

issue of utmost cognitive concern when the primordial

psychic powers are sustained for any length

of

time. Also such feelings can also be tokens, like

any perceptual tokens such as the redness

of

apples,

in our cognitive deliberations. However, it is funda

mentally incorrect, at least in my reading of the evi

dence, to believe that evolution left such ultimate

concerns as biological values to be mere tokens within

cognitive planning systems. Evolution, just as our sub

jective experience would suggest, made them pow

ers that are global state variables in diverse

parliamentary lobbies

of

the mind-brain.

Compelling hypotheses along these lines can

fi-

nally be generated for a host

of

basic feelings-emo

tions. If we take these perspectives seriously, we may

finally be approaching a substantive understanding of

the shared foundations of human

and

animal nature,

although most

of

the hard experimental work and

novel neuro-psychoanalytic theorizing lie ahead. It

will be an exciting chapter of science when we learn

to sift the basic genetically guided abilities from deriv

ative socially constructed processes in the analysis

of

how brain generates mind stuff.

In any event, it would be most wonderful, if we

were willing to invest the effort to make sure that

we now head toward a century

of

mutually beneficial

understanding rather than a furtherance

of

the types

of

polarization and misunderstanding that character

ized our recent past. This may require an intellectual

rebirth-one

that abandons outdated modes

of

thought

that were acceptable in a previous era. Perhaps the

most dangerous ghosts from the past are the varieties

of

Cartesian mind-body dualism that attempt to funda

mentally divide that which is indivisible (for review,

see Damasio, 1994).


13/17


The cabalistic delusion that mind can exist with

out material dynamics is, I believe, the single most

destructive idea that we have ever had in the

brain-mind sciences. Although humans can buffer

their affective processes, with volitional, working

memory processesof their frontal, parietal, and tempo

ral cortices, and thereby withhold vario\ls primitive

emotional reactions, most animals do not have such

options, at least anywhere close to our human abilities,

for emotional repression and regulation. The sustained

emotional responses of animals probably reflect direct

read-outs of their emotional states. The reason such

isomorphisms are not accepted are largely because the

neuroscientific behaviorists still believe that an analy

sis of the behavioral and physiological responses are

the sole issues of importance in any neural analysis.

Affect, they believe, can be deemed to be a superfluous

issue. For some reason, they fail to accept or acknowl

edge that affect is the foremost personal concern that

people have when they are in emotional states, and

that animal affective neuroscience is essentially the

only way we can find out, in any detailed way, how the

basic human feelings are truly constructed in the brain.

In any event, mind, brain, and behavior are com

pletely

interpenetrant and

we cannot understand the

resulting integrated processes unless we are willing to

take all three perspectives concurrently to the studyof

animate actions.

If

behaviorists continue to just study

emotional behaviors, with no concern for the affective

experiences of animals, we will continue to have a

dualistic view

of

the brain.

If

experimental psycholo

gists and psychoanalysts choose to pursue only the

psychic reflections of brain processes, when the

ous three-pronged solution is readily available, we

shall surely continue with another century of misun

derstanding. However,

if

we come to terms with the

full tridimensional complexities, accepting that there

are various unified psychic states arising from neuro

dynamic processes that arouse behavioral urges, then

we may eventually have unified approaches to knowl

edge that can truly nourish the intellectual curiosity

of

future generations of students. In following such

paths, we may also eventually generate psychiatric di

agnostic categories that are based on our knowledge

of

brain emotional and motivational systems, and their

neural substrates Panksepp, 1988, 2001 , rather than

those that are simply based on catalogs of external

symptoms.

A Practical Proposal Psychoethology

Considering the high likelihood that all mammals

share the same fundamental value structures in their

5

brains, from various motivational processes to the

more subtle emotional ones, we can anticipate that

animal brain research will clarify the fundamental na

ture of our biological values with a remarkable degree

of

clarity. Unfortunately, it will not be able to say

much about our wider

concerns the

cognitive atti

tudes and strategies that constitute the details of our

mental lives. For that, there is no substitute for careful

and insightful exploration

of

the human mind, which

experimentally, at least, has barely begun. At the men

tal levels, there is bound to be much greater species

variability Budiansky, 1998 , especially among the

evolved cognitive adaptations of which evolutionary

psychologists speak so persistently and eloquently

Tooby and Cosmides, 2000 , even

as

they tend to

disregard the primitive evolved systems of the brain

mind that have already been revealed Panksepp,

1998a; Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000 . Even though

the debate concerning the experimental analyzability

and accessibility of the mind is by no means resolved,

and despite the failures of previous introspective tradi

tions Uttal, 2000 , in fact a credible form of experi

mental mentalism has barely started to be

implemented. We must study the human mind as it

naturally presents itself, and there is no better tool

than free association. Although the narrative data

streams that will need to be analyzed are bound to

be hypercomplex, it is time to begin evaluating the

affective-eognitive ramifications of the human mind

with the best empirical approaches

available not

only to describe group tendencies but also the unique

ness of individuals. New methodologies-naturalistic

approaches in which scientists and humanists can be

equally

involved may

help in such endeavors. I

would call one such new approach psy hoethology

While traditional ethology consisted of the care

ful and detailed study

of

animal and human behavioral

actions, psychoethology could aspire to do the same

for the human mind. What is desperately needed is

a generally acceptable methodology whereby mental

contents can be observed without all the interference

that the flow

of

life provides.

Of

course, the prototypic

psychoanalytic couch, with a human actively listening

at the head but not intruding actively in the narrative

flow, seems to be an ideal methodology. The human

narrative, unhindered by the momentary pressures of

life, needs to be the initial database upon which addi

tional layers of substantive analysis may eventually

be experimentally imposed.

The reason such data, especially from regular ev

eryday folks, have not been collected is obvious the

data stream is so rich, and an empirical analysis so


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252

complex, that only a few have had the heart to begin

Dahl, 1998; Dahl, 1998). As always, there is the per

sistent

problem that

the listener might unduly bias

the mental

flow

with their own remarks, with the

smallest nuance being able to sway the stream of free

associations into different eddies and currents. There

is also the possibility that without the natural verbal

give and take that can only occur between humans,

only a chaotic, unsystematic stream

of

data might

emerge. Perhaps a few well-placed standardized ques

tions would help steer the mind into desired channels

that can be more easily analyzed. In any event, to

my

way of thinking,

we

need to give the strategy a vigor

ous try, before abandoning hope. At present, the meth

odological problems are not insurmountable.

Now that

we

are in a computational age, where

voice-recognition technologies and automated tran

scription

of

ongoing narratives is possible, and content

analysis programs have been created, even for the

evaluation of emotional issues Pennebaker, Mayne,

and Francis, 1997), the concept has a realistic chance

of

being widely implemented. Also, for the more sub

tle psychodynamic issues, where layers of meaning

are embedded in the narrative that no computer could

yet decode, there may be many individuals, from the

humanities, with remarkable language skills, who

might be willing to participate

as

decoders in such

projects. The data stream also needs to be analyzed

from traditional psychoanalytic perspectives, and the

three types of analysis need to be contrasted. Obvi

ously, participants in such studies would have to agree

to longer term time and emotional commitment than

is common in most psychological experiments, and

there might have to be a considerable learning phase

in order for people

to

become comfortable in such

situations. Participants will have

to

feel themselves

to

be compatriots in the search for knowledge, as op

posed to being mere subjects as has long been

rigu ur in more traditional psychological studies.

As

experimental manipulations, one might con

sider various mood and motivational induction proce

dures prior to analytic episodes. Also, instead

of

allowing a totally free stream of associations, it may

be wise

to

utilize a few existential questions e.g.,

What kind

of

person would you like

to

be?)

to

help

guide the narrative

flow

onto some common issues.

Eventually investigators may be able to devise a vari

ety of standard challenges to systematically evaluate

resulting emotional tendency. It would be important

to

have good emotional-personality measures on sub

jects to evaluate output differences

as

a function of

temperament. It would also be good to monitor the

Jaak Panksepp

facial expressions and changes in vocal prosody

as

people systematically share their lives. The utility

of

drug manipulations will,

of

course, be enormous, es

pecially

if

stable baselines can be established e.g.,

Knutson et

aI

1998). Indeed, an enormous number

of

psychobiological predictions from animal studies

can already be generated for such interventions Pank

sepp, 1998a). The systematic study of psychiatric and

neurological patients should be highly informative

e.g., Solms, 1997). In any event, the establishment

of

adequate psychological descriptions

of

normal human

mental activities, in their full richness, seems to be a

project deserving a great deal

of

experimental atten

tion.

f

such methodologies proved to be effective,

they may eventually be capable of being used for diag

nostic and prognostic purposes in a new era

of

human

istic psychiatry.

The issue of how accessible the human mind is

to

systematic measurement i.e., Uttal, 2000) must re

main an open issue until a great deal more research

has been conducted. I am optimistic that some credible

and replicable signals, especially in the study

of

basic

emotional systems, will emerge from such analyses

once they are adequately implemented. Psychoanalytic

approaches,

as

molded by the constraints

of

empiri

cism, provide an excellent model

of

how we might

proceed. Of course, it will be impossible to fathom

the internal structures of mind simply from an analysis

of

input and output functions since there are an infin

ity

of

intervening possibilities). However, with solid

neuroscience conceptions concerning the sources

of

the basic emotions and motivations shared by all mam

malian brains e.g., MacLean, 1990; Panksepp, 1998a;

Damasio, 1999), we should be able to make great

strides in analyzing the Niagara of psychoanalytic data

that could be extracted from human narratives. It will

be fascinating to see how basic affective processes, the

natural kinds of the mind, guide the environmentally

constructed meanderings of the cognitive stream. It

will be interesting

to

see whether many psychoanalytic

concepts like the defense mechanisms of repression

and reaction formation can be demonstrated to be nat

ural kinds of the brain-mind, or whether they are sim

ply derivative processes of how memory fields are

constructed.

Also, when

we

begin to take a deep emo

tional-motivational perspective to human mind, the

notion that introspective reports have to be veridical

descriptions of relationships in the external world be

comes less relevant than they might be from more

strictly cognitive vantages e.g., Kahneman, Slovic,

and Tversky, 1982; Nisbett and Wilson, 1997). The


15/17


human mind may have more affective irrationality

in it than logical clarity. Experimental psychologists

have too often wished to ignore that, but it should be

studied rather than being seen

s

a shortcoming. In

any event, to determine whether stable patterns

of

cog

nitive activities emerge during emotional states,

psy-

choethology

needs to be given a fair empirical hearing.

Coda

I am in complete agreement with Whittle in his call

for a new pluralism in the way in which we approach

the systematic study of the human mind, especially its

emotional forces. Brain psychodynamics can only be

realistically approached from many concurrent, and

mutually respectful, points

of

view. A long time ago,

physicists realized that they could not understand the

hidden underbelly

of

nature by simply ascribing to one

perspective. Subatomic entities needed to be conceptu

alized not only s particles but also s wave dynamics.

We are now approaching a comparable stage

of

intel

lectual development in the brain-mind sciences. Every

brain-mind phenomenon must be approached from

multiple points of view. The idea that one should dis

card psychological analysis completely in preference

for a neural

eliminativism

(Churchland, 1995), al

though rather popular among neuroscientists and per

haps even appropriate for many brain phenomena, is

a view that encourages polarization of attitudes as op

posed to a realistic, multidimensional confrontation

with many of the most important mind-brain issues.

Although mental events, s typically conceptual

ized in psychology, often do not help much in ex

plaining specific behavioral acts, we often fail to

acknowledge that adaptive actions are often long-term

processes rather than ones that can be captured by brief

laboratory experiments.

If

we recognized that mind is

just another way of viewing the complexity of the

brain in action (Searle, 1983), we would be more

tempted to open up the intellectual campfire round

which we share our perspectives rather than narrowing

it. Unfortunately, a penetrating institutionalized

strength

of

will to stand behind the utility

of

pluralist

points

of

view has yet to emerge within our prevailing

scientific disciplines. This, I believe, simply reflects

our desire to divide and conquer rather than our desire

to create a rich banquet

of

mind-brain science that can

nourish our desire to understand the human condition.

The basic emotions are a poignant case in point.

Experimental psychology, especially its cognitive and

behavioral neuroscience forms, have not been able to

5

construct a realistic way to discuss and analyze such

important issues. We are stuck in dualistic modes

of

thought where emotional feelings supposedly have no

causal efficacy (because they are matters

of mind )

and all

of

the weight

of

responsibility is placed on

supposedly nonfeeling neural circuits, with perhaps a

causally inefficacious (epiphenomenal) form

of

feel

ing

emerging from higher cortical systems that deal

informationally with tokens

of

subcortical infor

mation (e.g., LeDoux, 1996).

Is it not much more reasonable, at least from an

evolutionary point

of

view, that emotional feelings are

part and parcel

of

ancient instinctual neural systems in

action? In other words, emotional feelings arise rather

directly from the arousal

of

certain primitive neural

systems (Panksepp, 1998b). That is the view that most

of

the critical evidence is pointing toward. In my esti

mation, no dualistic-type readout by a higher mind is

needed to create affective states, even though higher

memorial abilities are surely able to extend those neu

ral activities, those feelings, in space and time, as to

kens in working memory so

s

to permit more

sophisticated cognitive strategies.

A moving image for one fundamental emotional

process that I have studied extensively by focusing on

the separation-distress circuitry

of the vertebrate brain

comes from James Saunders play ext Time ll Sing

or ou and it goes like this:

There lies behind every thing, and you can believe

this or not as you wish, a certain quality which we

may call grief. I t s always there, just under the sur

face, just behind the f ~ d e sometimes very nearly

exposed, so that you can dimly see the shape

of

it

as you can see sometimes through the surface

of

an

ornamental pond on a still day, the dark, gross, inhu

man outline

of

a carp gliding slowly past; when you

realize suddenly that the carp were always there be

low the surface, even while the water sparkled in the

sunshine, and while you patronized the quaint ducks

and the supercilious swans, the carp were down there,

unseen. It bides its time, this quality. And if you do

catch a glimpse of it, you may pretend not to notice

or you may turn suddenly away and romp with your

children on the grass, laughing for no reason. The

name

of

this quality is grief.

By studying the neural shapes and dynamics

of

these

carp that glide under the surface

of

our every

day experiences, we can come to terms with the intrin

sic coherences

of the affective mechanism that

evolution created with the mammalian brain. We can


16/17

5

finally understand the urges and pleasures of sex, the

pains of

hunger and cold, and the pleasures

of

food and

warmth.

We

can come to terms with th

23 on preventing another century of misunderstanding: toward a psychoethology of human experience...

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