Self and Emotional Life

by Adrian Johnston

  The Emotional Brain (LeDoux), 175, 188

  emotions, xvii–xviii; and Agamben’s zoē-bios distinction, 193–94; and decision making, 7, 30; distinction between affects and emotions/feelings (Lacan’s conception), 151; distinction between public emotions and private feelings (Damasio’s conception), 163–64, 166, 179–80; entanglement with nonemotional dimensions, 177–78, 190–91, 194, 200; and formation of images/ideas, 54; greater variety of negative emotions compared to positive emotions, 187; and homeostatic regulation, 31, 50–51; imprecise vocabulary for, 198–200, 207; link between consciousness and emotion, 30–31; Panksepp’s taxonomy of seven elementary emotions, 186–87, 192, 201; primary and secondary (“social”) emotions, 217; and rationality, 7–8, 30, 50; relationship amongst affects, emotions, and feelings (Freud’s conception), 110–14; relationship amongst emotion, feeling, and knowing (Damasio’s conception), 164–65; relationship amongst feelings, emotions, and care for self and others (Damasio’s conception), 51. See also affects; feelings; passions; specific philosophers, psychoanalysts, and neuroscientists

  Empfindungen, 212; confusion caused by translation issues, 119; Damasio and, 165; and deception, 208; and feelings-had and feelings-known, 167–69; and honte (shame as a felt feeling), 157–58; relation to Affekte and Gefühle, 111–14

  epigenetics, xi, 188, 191, 194, 196–97, 199

  Ethics (Spinoza), 4–5, 35–42

  evolution, xi, 175–76, 180–83, 186–87, 201

  existence, 5, 6, 20, 32, 39–40. See also self-preservation

  experience, 27–28, 44, 56, 57

  face and facial expressions, 46–48, 64

  false connections, 103–4, 107, 122, 128, 145

  fear: and bodily movements, 13, 14; FEAR emotional system, 186, 189; and wonder, 9

  The Feeling of What Happens (Damasio), 58, 162–63, 169, 170

  feelings, xvii–xviii; and deception, 208; distinction between affects and emotions/feelings (Lacan’s conception), 151; distinction between public emotions and private feelings (Damasio’s conception), 163–64, 179–80; feelings-had and feelings-known, 165, 167–69; as feelings of feelings, xviii, 85; and Lacan’s distinction between honte and pudeur, 157–62; misfelt (see feelings, misfelt); and neural maps, 52, 165; relationship amongst affects, emotions, and feelings (Freud’s conception), 110–14, 164–65; relationship amongst feelings, emotions, and care for self and others (Damasio’s conception), 51. See also affects; emotions; Empfindungen; passions; specific philosophers, psychoanalysts, and neuroscientists

  feelings, misfelt, xviii, 86, 212; Damasio and, 165; and doubts raised about feelings during analysis, 140–41; and enigmatic nature of affects, 146–47; and false connections, 107; Freud’s statements on, 106–7 (see also Freudian metapsychology of affects); Green and, 106–7; and guilt, 90–91, 99–101, 107, 162, 212–13; and hysteria, 87, 103; Lacan and, 106–7, 141, 146–47, 152–53, 162; and shame, 162; and three destinies of quotas of affect (felt, misfelt, unfelt), 109–10; unconscious affects as, 94–95; Žižek and, 141. See also defense mechanisms

  Fink, Bruce, 118, 119, 122, 125–26, 145

  force of existing, 5, 39–40

  Foucault, Michel, 192

  free association, 166, 203

  free will, 18

  Freud, Sigmund, x, xiii, 88–101; and affects (see Freudian metapsychology of affects); and anxiety, 89–90, 99–101; belief in lack of symbolic activity in the nervous system, 214–15; and the brain, 60–62, 214–16, 255–56nn7,21; city of Rome analogy for psyche, 60–61, 198; and conscience, 77–78, 91–92, 95; and “criminals from a sense of guilt,” 78, 92–93; dichotomy between energy and structure, 84, 102, 126; and drives, 105–6, 109, 127, 131, 213–16; on the ego, 222; focus on guilt, 78–79; Green and, 111; and hysteria, 86–87, 103–4; Kant and, 69; Lacan and, 84, 103, 119, 148–49 (see also Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis); and moral masochism, 93, 95–97; and negative therapeutic reaction, 94; and obsessive disorders, 88–89, 98–99, 103; and plasticity (capacity to preserve the past), 60–62; and pleasure principle, 95, 218; and primacy of the unconscious, 83–84; and principle of inertia, 218; and problem of unconscious guilt, 78–80, 88–101; and psychical energy, 215; recognition of possible to-be-discovered physiological mechanisms in affective life, 104–5; and remorse, 98–99; and revolutionary nature of discovery of the unconscious, 83–84, 148–49; and sleep, 61–62, 93; and spatiality of the psyche, 69–70; and structure of the self, 69–70, 78, 92 (see also id-ego-superego triad); vacillations over possibility of unconscious affects, xvii, 75–80, 88–101, 105–13, 118, 119, 155, 212; and warfare, 132. See also consciousness; ego; Freudian metapsychology of affects; id; id-ego-superego triad; preconscious; superego; unconscious

  Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, xii, xvii; affects as aftereffects of interactions of signifiers, 123, 135; and anxiety, 133, 151–52; complexity and enigmatic nature of affects, 134, 137–38, 146–47; cross-resonating relations between multiple representations, 128–29; Damasio and, 165–66; and desire, 124; and drift/displacement of affects, 122, 124, 137, 138, 155; estrangement of the parlêtre from its affects, 137–38; inextricable entanglement of the affective and the intellectual, 120–22; Lacan’s assertion that there exists one central affect (anxiety), 139–40, 147–48, 151; Lacan’s denial of unconscious affects, 76, 84, 111, 119, 122, 129, 134, 149, 212–13; Lacan’s objections to affective life as primary focus of analysis, 120–21; neologism affectuation, 141, 146–47, 208; neologism jouis-sens, 143–46, 196–98; neologism lalangue, 141–46, 195–200; neologism senti-ment, 141, 146–47, 213; priority of signifier-ideas over affects, 122–24; representation and the confusion caused by translations of Vorstellungsrepräsentanz, Vorstellung, and Repräsentanz, 125–32, 135–37; repression, 122, 125–34, 138; sexuality and death, 161; signifiers as sole entities capable of becoming unconscious through repression, 119

  Freudian metapsychology of affects, 102–17; affective structures (Affektbildungen), 110–13, 116, 157–58, 212; confusion caused by translation issues, 119, 125–32; conversion, conversion symptoms, 103; defense mechanisms, 103–10, 115, 131; dichotomy between energy and structure, 102, 112, 144; distinction between “affect” (Affekt) and “idea” (Vorstellung), 102–3; and drives, 105–6, 109; false connections, 103–4; Lacan and, 114 (see also Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis); and misfelt feelings, 106–7; misunderstandings in Anglo-American tradition, 114–15, 119; primary and secondary processes, 143–45; primary repression and secondary repression/repression proper, 125–26; Pulver and, 113–17; quota of affect (Affektbetrag), 109–10, 112–13, 214–16; relationship amongst affects, emotions, and feelings, 110–14, 164–65; three destinies of quotas of affect (felt, misfelt, unfelt), 109–10; and unconscious vs. potential affects, 114–16

  Gage, Phineas, xii–xiv, 57–58

  gaze, and psychoanalytic relationship, 70–71

  Gefühle, 111–14, 212

  generosity, 13, 17–18, 24–25, 64

  God, 36, 41–42, 44, 53

  Green, André, 106–7, 111–12, 202–5

  guilt, xv, xvii, 88–101, 110–13; and anxiety, 89–91, 99–101, 110, 212–13; and civilization, 97–98; feeling of culpability without awareness of transgression, 78, 91, 110, 162, 212; Freud’s vacillations over unconscious sense of guilt, 78–80, 88–101, 113, 212–13; as fundamental philosophical affect in relation to ethics, 77; guilt-in-search-of-a-crime, 78, 92–93; and id-ego-superego triad, 78–80, 88, 91–93, 99–101; and moral masochism, 93, 95–97; and need for punishment, 96–97, 99, 101; and negative therapeutic reaction, 94; and obsessive disorders, 88–89, 98–99; as penalty imposed by conscience, 95; as potentially misfelt feeling, 107 (see also anxiety); reasons for focus on, 77; and three destinies of quotas of affect (felt, misfelt, unfelt), 110; two modes of unconscious guilt (Žižek’s conception), 162; unconscious guilt as instance of Gefühl, not Empfindung, 113; unresolved questions about, 78. See also conscience

  haptocentrism, 21

  Harari, Roberto, 122, 134�
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  Harvey, William, 13–14

  hatred, 9, 12, 146

  heart, 13–14, 21

  Hegel, G. W. F., xviii, 85, 190–91

  Heidegger, Martin, xi, xvi, 5–6, 20

  heteroaffection, xvi, 7; auto-heteroaffection, 55; and biological basis of subjectivity, 55; and conatus, 42; Damasio and, 34, 65–66; defined, 20–21, 63; Deleuze and, 49, 65, 68–69; Derrida and, 19, 20–21, 24, 25, 58, 64–65, 68–69; and generosity, 25; and Nancy’s nonmetaphysical sense of touch, 23–24; and neural maps, 55; and pain, 65–66; and “self-touching you,” 24; and source of affects, 21; and spatiality of the psyche, 69; Spinoza and, 42; and wonder, 9, 11, 63–64

  hetero-heteroaffection, xvi, xviii, 11

  homeostasis: and autoaffection, 31, 64; and the cerebral unconscious, 220–21; consciousness as awareness of a disturbance to an organism’s homeostasis caused by an external object, 30; Damasio and, 30–33, 50–51, 64, 168–69; role of emotions in homeostatic regulation, 31, 50–51, 217–18; and structure of the self, 33, 220–23; and symbolic activity in the brain, 219–23

  homunculus, 222–23

  honte, 82, 157–62

  Husserl, Edmund, xi, 20

  hysteria, 86–87, 103–4

  hystericization of the analysand, 140–41, 153

  icon, 47, 49

  id: as intercessor between the brain and the psyche, 203; and SEEKING emotional system, 201; and spatiality of the psyche, 69. See also id-ego-superego triad

  ideas: affects without ideas as blind/ideas without affects as empty, 121; ideas as only entities ever repressed, 155 (see also Lacan, Jacques: denial of unconscious affects); inextricable entanglement of the affective and the intellectual, 120–22, 163; unconscious ideas, 110, 164

  ideational representations, 84; affects as aftereffects of interactions of signifiers, 123; cross-resonating relations between multiple representations, 128–29; and defense mechanisms, 103, 107–10, 125–26, 155; distinction between “affect” (Affekt) and “idea” (Vorstellung), 102–3; and drives, 105–6; and false connections, 107; Green and, 205; and instincts, 214–15; Lacan and (see signifiers); and misfelt feelings, 107; and obsessive disorders, 90; priority of signifier-ideas over affects, 122–24; representation and the confusion caused by translations of Vorstellungsrepräsentanz, Vorstellung, and Repräsentanz, 125–32. See also signifiers; Vorstellungen

  id-ego-superego triad, 101; and moral masochism, 95–97; and possibility of unconscious guilt, 78–80, 88, 91–93; relation to conscious-preconscious-unconscious triad, 78, 92; structural dynamics between ego and superego, 92–93, 99–101; superego distinguished from conscience, 92. See also ego; id; superego

  identity: conatus and origins of personal identity, 52; personality transformation due to brain damage, xiii–xiv, 57–61; and the protoself, 219–20; self-model and a new conception of materialism, 72; and the unconscious, 92, 221

  immediacy, 85–86, 134–35, 151, 192

  instincts, 182, 190–91, 213

  International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, 28

  intuition, 44–45, 69

  Irigaray, Luce, 226n15

  Jablonka, Eva, 188

  Jacob, François, 176

  jouis-sens (Lacan’s neologism), 143–46, 165, 167, 196–98

  joy: neural maps associated with, 54; as one of six primitive passions (Descartes’ conception), 9, 12; and power of acting, 39–40, 53; Spinoza’s definition, 39, 54; and states of equilibrium, 54; and variability of conatus, 39–40; and wonder, 40–41

  Kant, Immanuel: and autoaffection, 5–6; Freud and, 69; and intuition, 69; Panksepp and, 190–91; and “plastic force,” 53; relationship between affects and ideas, 121; and socialization, 196; and subjectivity, 170

  Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Heidegger), 5–6

  Kantbuch (Heidegger), 20

  Kludge (Marcus), 176

  knowledge: intuition, 44–45, 69; knowledge from random experience, 44; knowledge from signs, 44–45; Spinoza’s conception of three kinds of knowledge/ideas, 44–45, 66–67

  Lacan, Jacques, x, 117–49, 195–200; agalma and the gaze, 70–71; and alienation, 129–30; and anxiety, 82, 133, 151–52, 213; and beauty, 160–61; contrast to Pulver, 114; Copjec and, 154–58; and deceptive nature of signifiers and affects, 206–9; denial of unconscious affects, 76, 84, 111, 119, 122, 129, 134, 149, 212–13; dichotomy between the signifier and jouissance, 155; distinction between “dupery” and “deception,” 207–8; and events of May ‘68, 154–55; formations of the unconscious, 108, 111; and free association, 166; Freud and, 84, 103, 119, 148–49 (see also Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis); and the intersection of the biological and the social, 202–3; lack of references to Freud’s German terminology for affects, emotions, and feelings, 119, 134, 151, 156; and language and translation issues, 155–56; and misfelt feelings, 152–53; and the nature of reality, 139; opposition between conscious affects and unconscious signifiers, 84; and resistance to attempts to reconcile psychoanalytic theory with neuroscience, 81; responses to criticisms of neglect of affects, 81–82, 123–24, 133–36, 150; seminars (see Lacan, seminars of); and shame, 153–62; signifiers (see signifiers); theory of the four discourses (analyst, master, university, hysteric), 139–41, 147; and thinking without thinking that one thinks/knowing without knowing that one knows, 84, 87, 149; and the unconscious, 82–83, 155, 179–80, 208; and wonder, 70–71; Žižek and, 162. See also Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis; Lacan-inspired metapsychology of affects; signifiers

  Lacan, seminars of, 212–13; 5th seminar, 158–59; 6th seminar (Desire and Its Interpretation), 122–23, 128; 7th seminar (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis), 123, 132, 160–61, 213; 9th seminar (Identification), 123; 10th seminar (Anxiety), 119–20, 133, 134, 150, 151–52, 213; 11th seminar (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis), 129, 132, 153; 17th seminar (The Other Side of Psychoanalysis), 119–20, 133, 137–38, 153–54, 156; 18th seminar, 146; 19th seminar, 141–42; 21st seminar, 206; 23rd seminar (Le sinthome), 124; 25th seminar, 143

  Lacan-inspired metapsychology of affects: and Agamben’s zoē-bios distinction, 193–94; Damasio and, 167–68; distinction between affect and emotion/feeling, 151; relationship between anxiety and doubt, 151–52; and shame, 153–62

  lalangue (Lacan’s neologism), 141–46, 167, 195–200

  Lamb, Marion J., 188

  language: and body-mind connection, 201; confusion caused by translation issues, 119, 125–32, 135–37, 155–56; and desynchronization in the brain, 177; and free association, 142–43; impact on experience of feelings, 189–90; imprecise vocabulary for affects, 198–200, 207; and inextricable entanglement of the affective and the intellectual, 120–22; lalangue neologism, 141–46, 167, 195–200; language acquisition, 195–96, 199–200; and neuroscience, 195–201; and structure of the self, 171

  Laplanche, Jean, 102, 136–37, 213

  learning theory, 195–98

  Leclaire, Serge, 136–37

  Lectures on Internal Time Consciousness (Husserl), 20

  LeDoux, Joseph, xvi, xviii, 174–79, 182, 187–90

  libidinal economy, 3–4, 109, 126, 201, 211

  life: Agamben’s zoē-bios distinction, 192–93; and autoaffection, 20; and conatus, 38; and debate between naturalism and antinaturalism, 172–74; survival promoted by emotions and feelings, 50–53; Žižek’s life 2.0, life 1.0, 172–73, 192–94, 197–98

  limbic system, 176, 218

  Linden, David J., 176

  logocentrism, 21

  Looking for Spinoza (Damasio), 4, 50, 53, 166

  love, 9, 12, 70, 174

  Lukács, Georg, xi, 86

  Luria, A. R., 27

  LUST emotional system, 186

  The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Sacks), 71

  maps, mapping, 64; and Damasio’s reading of Spinoza, 51–55; and Deleuze’s reading of Descartes, 45; and Deleuzian conception of autoaffection, 45; and feelings as perceptions, 166–67; interruption of mapping process (see affects, detachment from/absence of
; brain damage); maps between affects and concepts, 42; self-mapping in the brain, 164–67, 220; and structure of the self, 171, 219–20; and symbolic activity in the brain, 219–23

  Marcus, Gary, 176

  Marxism, 86

  masochism, 93, 95–97

  materialism, new conception of, ix, 72, 204

  McDowell, John, 85–86

  melancholy, 174

  memory, 32, 60–61, 168

  mental illness. See brain damage; hysteria; obsessive disorders; psychopathologies; psychosis

  Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 66–67

  Metzinger, Thomas, 72

  Miller, Jacques-Alain, 129, 153

  mind. See body-mind connection; consciousness; psyche; self; soul; subjectivity

  mirror neurons, xi, 256n20

  misfelt feelings. See feelings, misfelt

  modesty, 158–62

  The Movement Image (Deleuze), 43

  Nancy, Jean-Luc, 20, 23–24, 227n18

  Nature: and debate between naturalism and antinaturalism, 172–74, 180–84, 187–88, 190, 204; and self-preservation, 53; Spinoza and, 36, 53; Žižek’s life 2.0, life 1.0, 172–73, 192–94, 197–98

  neurobiology, x, 166; and autoaffection, 26; conflict with metaphysics, 7; and Damasio’s structure of the self, 31–32; and detachment from one’s own affects, 7 (see also brain damage); distinction between psychoanalytic unconscious and term as used in neuroscience, 177–78; evolution of field, 27; importance of emotions in neural regulation, 7, 217–18; and language, 195–201; neural maps, 51–55 (see also maps, mapping); neural plasticity, xi, 26–28, 56–58, 60–62, 190–91, 194, 199, 202; neurological difficulties analyzed in terms of functional systems, 27; reality of affective unconscious, 87; resistance to attempts to reconcile psychoanalytic theory and philosophy with neuroscience, x, 81. See also body-mind connection; brain; brain damage; homeostasis; specific philosophers and neuroscientists

  neuroscience-psychoanalysis relationship, xi–xii, 28–29; connection/overlap of neuroscience and psychoanalysis, 194–95, 200–202, 204–5, 213–14; and language, 194–95; neuropsychoanalysis, Anglo-American, xi–xii, 28–29, 80–81, 165, 183, 200 (see also Solms, Mark); neuro-psychoanalysis, new conception of, xv, 188, 198, 204; and problem of unconscious affects, 80–81; and resistance to attempts to reconcile psychoanalytic theory with neuroscience, 81