Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, 1001 East Wooster Street,
Bowling Green, OH 43403, e-mail:
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.
To cite this article: Jaak Panksepp (1999) Drives, Affects, Id Energies, and the Neuroscience of Emotions: Response
to the Commentaries by Jaak Panksepp (Bowling Green, Ohio), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for
Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 1:1, 69-89, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.1999.10773248
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.1999.10773248
Response to Commentaries
- - - - - - Freeman, T. (1989), Development and Psychopathology: Studies in Psychoanalytic Psychiatry.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
69
Clifford Yorke
Fieldings South Moreton, Nr Didcot
Oxon OX]] 9AB
England
e-mail: scbyorke@aol.com
70
Schore's Commentary
Schore provides a provocative commentary slanted
more toward the modern contributions of neuroscience
than those of psychoanalysis. In my estimation, this
is the proper emphasis: Perhaps for the first time, we
can interpret key psychoanalytic ideas in ways that
are testable in traditional scientific ways. Schore focuses on two key themes: the nature of the dynamic
Jaak Panksepp
Response to Commentaries
71
Jaak Panksepp
72
tention grabbing as one matures, the epigenetic landscape of our adult lives may be developmentally
biased toward cognitive forms of consciousness and
various forms of ego-protective emotional repressions,
projections, and sublimations. This may help explain
why so much xenophobia prevails in scientific discussions of internal affective experiences. Special experimental procedures, perhaps variants of psychoanalysis
and subtle behavioral choice measures in animals,
need to be implemented to study affective experiences
more systematically than they have been in the past.
In sum, affective and cognitive streams of consciousness may be at center stage of attentional processes under different circumstances, leading to a
fluctuation of what is subconscious at anyone moment
of time. Most current scientific experiments are designed in ways that view consciousness largely from
the cognitive, higher information-processing perspectives. This may tend to make many affective processes
seem more unconscious than they really are. For instance, maybe our brains tend to shift spontaneously
from right hemisphere processing to left hemisphere
processing or dorsal brain to ventral brain processing,
and vice versa, during the ebb and flow of social and
various other world engagements. If this is so, then
the right hemisphere may not be as fundamentally unconscious as Schore postulates. It may simply be more
likely to be in the subconscious mode when we are
actively communicating with strangers and casual acquaintances. Friendly therapeutic environments, especially of the psychoanalytic sort, may help the
conscious functions of the right hemisphere to emerge
(e.g., for some relevant issues, see Ross, Homan, and
Buck, 1994).
Although we know very little empirically about
those possibilities, we do need to entertain all reasonable possibilities and to map out empirical predictions
of the various views. Schore's analysis highlighted for
me the potential. need to broaden our concepts of the
nature of consciousness in order to clarify the underlying dynamics of mind. We are fortunate to live in an
era where many scholars are challenging us to think
about consciousness in more naturalistic and organic
ways than has been traditional in cognitive psychology
(e.g., Dretske, 1995; Cairns-Smith, 1996; Romijn,
1997; Searle, 1998).
Shevrin's Commentary
Shevrin raises a variety of critical issues regarding
attempts to bring Freudian theory in line with the types
Response to Commentaries
73
tures may emerge more from distinguishable emotional command systems (as well as social learning
processes), while many of the quantitative influences
may emerge not only from the degree of specific
arousal within each system, but also the degree of
more generalized arousal in those widely ramifying
norepinephrine and serotonin brain systems which
clearly modulate both cognitive and affective processes. Indeed, each of these systems has distinct limbs
which are more concentrated in cognitive and emotional areas of the brain.
Many of the difficulties that arise from the discussion of the functions of the mind postulated by Freud
will depend on how we define terms like consciousness, drive, pleasure, and unpleasure. Some of these
concepts may turn out to be little more than semantic
class-identifiers for a host of related neuropsychological processes, while others may represent processes
that are closer to the "natural kinds" that we hope to
obtain through a precise carving of nature at its joints.
Thus, I am prone to view the Freudian concept of
"drive" as a class-identifier, like the traditional psychological terms emotions and motivations, which
conceptually parse fairly broad domains of neuropsychological space. For instance, although there is no
unitary motivational system in the brain, there are a
variety of distinct interoreceptive systems that gauge
various bodily imbalances and contribute to specific
regulatory/motivational abilities of each organism. I
expended considerable effort earlier in my career seeking to characterize the brain systems that elaborate
the drive of hunger (Panksepp, 1974), and there are a
variety of interoreceptive inputs, both metabolic and
hormonal, that control these urges. Emotional systems
may have remarkably similar infrastructures, but instead of simply helping regulate bodily states, they
gauge internal brain homeostatic functions (i.e., how
well various circuits are reflecting and adapting to environmental challenges).
One now has to consider such complexities if
one is going to try to implement any global Freudian
concept like "drive" or "pleasure" in neuroscience
research. Shevrin provides a compelling analysis of
affect and "pleasure" with which I basically agree,
but to understand those from a neuroscience perspective, we may also need a more resolved concept of
"drive" than existed in Freudian theory. Psychobiologists who have tried to understand pleasure, recognize
that the intensity of hedonic experience in various situations is linked strongly to degrees of the specific homeostatic imbalances (Cabanac, 1971), which would
make the drive concept multidimensional, and perhaps
74
the pleasure principle also. Then again, it is sufficiently early in neuroscience research, that a generalized pleasure may yet emerge from brain areas such
as the shell of the nucleus accumbens which is important in mediating gustatory pleasure (Berridge and
Robinson, 1998). We must now determine whether
it is important in mediating other forms of pleasure
as well.
Hence, there are various maneuvers by which one
could try to make homogeneous "drive" and "pleasure" concepts compatible with the neuroscience data.
For instance, one emotional system participates in the
behavioral outputs of various regulatory-drive systems: The generalized "wanting" generated by
arousal of the lateral hypothalamic dopamine based
SEEKING system (Berridge and Robinson, 1998;
Panksepp, 1998a), is essential for organisms to become appetitively engaged with the world when they
have any of a variety of motivational urges, whether
eating, drinking, cruising for sex, retrieving lost babies, or seeking to play (Panksepp, 1981, 1986). This
emotional system has one or more distinct qualitative
dimensions-characteristic types of behavioral presentations as well as consciously accessible affective
feelings (e.g., energized eagerness)-but it also has the
quantitative dimension of "muchness" as reflected in
the overall degree of appetitive arousal an organism
exhibits. One could envision the arousal of this system
to generate psychic "drive," even though the system
obviously also mediates positive incentive functions-the energized appetitive engagement that leads
organisms to indulge in the various pleasures of consummatory activities.
However, there are many other basic emotive systems in the brain, presumably each having distinct behavioral outputs and feeling tones. Should we
incorporate all of them into a singular "drive" concept or should we distinguish among them? In anticipation of the comments made by Yorke and Green, I
favor the latter alternative. I do not believe the differentiation among these systems emerges simply from
ego or superego functions acting upon a single undifferentiated drive process. I would anticipate that the
various brain systems that contribute to distinct
"drives" and "pleasures" are mediated by distinct
genetic mechanisms. Even though social learning contributes enormously to how we utilize and experience
our affects in real life, social learning does not create
the various affects. In recognizing qualitatively different affects and brain emotional systems, we create
many opportunities for explaining the diversity of hedonic experiences in humans and the existence of sim-
Jaak Panksepp
Response to Commentaries
surely the only ingredients that can allow some of
Freud's original insights to be crafted into scientifically testable ideas that continue to evolve.
Of course, comparable conceptual needs exist in
modern neuroscience. One of the most poignant failures of neuroscience has been its inability to deal effectively with global state variables such as emotions
and other affective states of the brain. Traditionalists
in neuroscience, just like their behavioristic predecessors, are still trying to weed and discard affective concepts from brain research. This makes some of
Shevrin's questions even more meaningful: "Affect
informs us of what's doing in our minds and bodies.
But why do we need to be so informed? ... what evolutionary event made the development of affect adaptationally advantageous?" In a rigorous scientific
sense, we do not know the answers to these evolutionary quandaries. However, the revelations of molecular
biology and advances in population genetics during
the past half-century, in combination with the recognition of the deep neural homologies that bind us to
our animal ancestors, give us glimmers of potential
answers. Affects may be the ways that certain genes
and their various interactions inform us of fundamental evolutionary values that are not only the harbingers
of intended actions, but also the processes that allow
social creatures like mammals, who depend on each
other for survival, to communicate efficiently and urgently their needs, desires, and intentions to others.
I do not think it can be overemphasized that the
basic affects need not be learned: They emerge directly from the evolutionary epistemology of the brain.
And it is not just individual survival that is at issue
here. Affects help bind individuals spontaneously into
communities in ways that may dramatically facilitate
the survival of certain groups over others (Sober and
Wilson, 1998). If this analysis is on the right track,
the therapeutic enterprise needs to be imbued with a
much greater appreciation for affective processes
(e.g., Greenberg, 1993). In psychoanalysis, it may no
longer be sufficient for the therapist to be a passive
repository for the affective turmoil of clients, but he
or she may also take more active responsibility for
being mentors in the affective dynamics of clients'
lives. In any event, as Shevrin's provocative commentary makes clear, how we will scientifically categorize
and taxonomize the basic and derivative affects and
their relations to consciousness will remain a major
challenge for neuroscientific and psychoanalytic
thought for some time to come. My personal take on
such issues, recently summarized (Panksepp, 1998a),
75
may be one reasonable framework for further developments.
Yorke's Commentary
Yorke raises many critical issues for any substantive
rapprochement between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. He emphasizes the need for' 'a clear comprehension of each other's basic positions" and highlights
places where we may already have failed to see eye
to eye. Before I address those issues, let me first agree
with the didactic view Yorke ascribed to Freud which
is not sufficiently appreciated, namely that Freud
"himself always thought his ideas open to modification and even replacement in the light of further discoveries." Hence, we should not be doctrine-bound on
any issue. Since Freud's death, the number of relevant
neuroscientific discoveries has been so vast that it will
require concerted efforts, sometimes against the grain
of long-standing traditions, to bring psychoanalytic
thinking and practice in line with those findings, and
all interested parties should become skilled at navigating the brain as well as the mind. I will try to defend
some of my seemingly transgressive views that Yorke
so eloquently criticized.
Let me take Yorke's last concern first-that the
psychoanalytic situation is not the place where psychopharmaceutical agents (poisons?) can yield any
useful new knowledge. In this context, I would note
that one reason behaviorism fell into disfavor as a
major intellectual force in psychology was due to a
similar fencing-in of a discipline so that potentially
useful contacts with other fields of knowledge were
often arbitrarily precluded. Although we should all
question the wisdom of cavalierly using patients as
subjects in psychopharmacological experiments, I
think many ongoing drug studies in normal individuals, difficult as they are to implement, might greatly
benefit from the empirical application of new psychoanalytic tools. As Yorke indicates, psychoanalytic approaches have the potential to capture the mind in
deeper and more meaningful ways than the simple paper and pencil scales that are the preferred tools of
experimental psychologists. In this era of biological
psychiatry, we do need to probe more deeply how
the widely used psychotherapeutic drugs modify the
emotional dynamics of human personality and the
other dimensions of the human mind (e.g., Klein,
1987). Psychoanalysis could help craft the needed
tools.
76
This is not the place to try to detail relevant methodological issues, but to emphasize that there will soon
be a major new generation of psychotropics based on
the study of peptide systems which modulate specific
affects, moods, and other motivations (Panksepp,
1993). A demonstration of the efficacy of Substance
P antagonists in the treatment of depression, based on
animal work analyzing separation distress, has
emerged since I wrote my original commentary on the
present target article (Kramer et aI., 1998). It would
be a pity if the full complexity of human emotional
life were not explored as more and more novel chemical agents become available. The many drugs that have
much less specific effects on emotional processes (i.e.,
the current mainstays of biological psychiatry) also
deserve the careful experiential scrutiny of psychoanalytically oriented investigators. At proper doses, these
agents are simply not "poisons" but rather specific
modulators of neurochemical processes. Empirical
studies of how human minds respond to specific neuroactive agents in various emotionally interesting situations remain scarce (for an excellent recent example,
see Knutson et aI., 1997). It is now generally accepted
that low brain serotonin activity makes both animals
and humans more emotionally temperamental and
more likely to exhibit various antisocial acts (Coccaro,
1996). These types of studies could enrich the viewpoints of those who ascribe to either the "classical"
or the "romantic" approach to understanding the human mind.
Certain emerging views of the mind can be seen
as blends of the best findings of idiographic and nomothetic approaches. Indeed, I see my own integrative
effort in "affective neuroscience" as an attempt to
bridge the findings of those who would "split living
reality into its elementary components" and those who
recognize the importance of accepting the complexity
of the complete organism. The combination of these
views can lead to a materialism without any simpleminded reductive physicalism-a scientific view
where one does not simply try to reduce complexity
into "nothing but" the component parts but seeks
"supervenience" relationships among viewpoints. Supervenience is a philosophical concept of establishing
linkages between levels of analysis (see Kim, 1993;
Dretske, 1995, for thorough discussions). The stronger
those relationships, the better! However, weaker relationships, such as those that might typically be observed during the systematic study of human
subjective experiences following carefully selected biological interventions, should also be invaluable for
guiding our thinking into productive frames of refer-
Jaak Panksepp
ence. In my estimation, the study of the quantum properties of matter, as has become popular in certain
branches of consciousness research (e.g., Penrose,
1994), is unlikely to provide compelling relationships
at the present time. In any event, in these cross-disciplinary enterprises, we should remember that we must
initially seek necessary rather than sufficient communalities between levels of understanding.
The more quantitatively these supervenience relationships can be established, the more likely they are
to have impact on the broader intellectual community.
Indeed, experimental psychologists have taught us that
there is practically no aspect of human experience that
cannot be quantified through appropriately constructed scales, and psychoanalytic research should
not eschew these approaches simply because they are
not within their time-solidified traditions. Every approach to mind has to increase the breadth of its empirical nets in order to capture reality.
Since as Freud asserted, all of our ideas should
be "open to modification and even replacement in the
light of further discoveries," I entertained the radical
notion of discarding the "drive" concept, in practice if
not in principle. Obviously, it has caused considerable
confusion for many. Admittedly, my own understanding of the concept may not be sufficient and hence
subject to a host of potential misunderstandings.
Yorke gracefully clarified certain key issues, but difficulties seem to remain. Some may simply be semantic ones, but the problem goes deeper, especially if
Yorke is correct in concluding that "Freud held firmly
to the view that the nature of the drives cannot be
known." I hope that Freud only made this assertion
for his own intellectual era. The neurobiological nature
of certain' 'drives," at least as I understand them from
a neuroscientific view (namely, the homeostatic ones
related to body energy, water, temperature, and sexual
issues), have been clarified during the second half of
this century to a remarkable degree of precision. This
could also be said for a broader conceptualization of
"drive," if one is willing to view the basic emotional
systems not only as representatives of "drive" but the
very instantiation of the concept. Since no comparable
precision has emerged in the psychoanalytic conceptualization of drive, I will continue to be brash enough
to advocate the more restricted use of the drive concept and to distribute the essential strengths of the
concept under a larger array of constructs.
The key, and seemingly insoluble, problem is that
Freud used a monolithic drive concept in ways that
could be seen to be substantially compatible with neuroscientific knowledge but, in the final accounting, it
77
the requisite neuroscientific knowledge. At present,
maybe a broad term such as id energies would be an
appropriate concept with which to start some useful
revisionism. Indeed, "affective neuroscience" has
now provided an empirically based set of neuropsychological conceptualizations by which some of the
subcomponents of the id can be more systematically
discussed (Panksepp, 1998a). These kinds of resolved
discussions were not possible when the id was simply
an amorphous psychic wellspring for everything else
that emerged along "developmental lines." By accepting the existence of a variety of affective brain
functions, we are in a much better position to describe
how various "epigenetic landscapes" of the mind unfold as organisms absorb the lessons of various life
experiences through the interplay of nature and
nurture.
It should go without saying that the underlying
neural issues and resulting psychobehavioral functions
need to be studied in some detail at the hard (i.e.,
nomothetic) scientific level. In no way should this type
of knowledge be deemed incompatible with idiographic views, as long as we acknowledge that we are
seeking supervenience relationships as opposed to the
types of nothing but radical reductionism that captivated physics-enthralled positivists of a previous generation. We now know that straightforward causal
simplicities are not likely to be found in the seemingly
infinite complexities of the brain-mind sciences. Most
simple psychological concepts are instantiated by
massive neural complexities.
In sum, I appreciate Yorke's lucid clarification
of Freud's views on drive. The concept contains issues
of great importance, as do the concepts of "motivation" and "emotion" in psychology. Unfortunately,
to the best of our current knowledge, there are no
unitary substrates for any of those concepts in the
brain. In an evolutionary ontological sense, these
broad concepts are little more than class-identifiers
or "intervening variables" that help us organize our
observations. I would not discourage anyone from
seeking to measure such entities empirically, but I suspect that as soon as they do, they will find multiplicity
(i.e., many drives or affects), with perhaps only a generalized aminergic arousal that accompanies all emotional states.
We should continue to aspire to "measure the
immeasurable," especially if our romantic insights
suggest there is truly something fundamental out there
to be discovered. By being willing to pursue these
goals with nomothetic approaches, we have recently
discovered what we believe is a form of primitive
78
laughter in "lower" animals (Panksepp and Burgdorf,
1998). We suspect that an understanding of the underlying neural circuitry may tell us a great deal about
the nature of human joy. Although radical work like
this is often hard to publish in conventional outlets,
we are committed to describing our findings in ways
that can be replicated by others (Panksepp and Burgdorf, in press). We are at present struggling with difficult neuropsychological concepts like the SELF
(Panksepp, 1998b), which may eventually lead us to
some interesting empirical measurements (Panksepp,
in press). These explorations of mind are always done
with the assumption that every conclusion in science
is provisional and "open to modification and even
replacement in the light of further discoveries." To
grow fruitfully, modern psychoanalytic thought and
research must embrace similar ground rules. Otherwise, it will remain isolated from the mainstream approaches to mind that are presently undergoing a
renaissance in our aspirations for understanding.
LeDoux's Commentary
LeDoux's cautious analysis emphasizes several potential linkages between neuroscience knowledge and
psychoanalytic insights with which I generally agree.
However, his brief comments on my overall views
regarding the study of affect also serve to remind us
that there is as much controversy left within neuroscientific levels of analysis as among the intellectual
intersections of neuroscientific and psychoanalytic
points of view. In short, neuroscientists simply do not
agree how affective states are generated by the brain,
and all three of the basic neuroscience commentators
participating in the present discussion have offered
distinct views on the matter: (1) Damasio (1994) has
suggested that feelings are created by "somatic markers," which reflect bodily changes that accompany
emotions (this is a modern variant of the James-Lange
perspective, with the added recognition that body representations also exist in the brain). (2) LeDoux (1996)
argues that feelings arise from various subcortical systems interacting with higher "working memory" systems. (3) Panksepp (1998a) suggests that feelings
emerge from the intrinsic neurodynamics of emotional
command systems interacting with a neurosymbolic
"virtual body" depicted in the brain (perhaps most
concentrated in the PAG), which may constitute a primordial representation of "the self,' , providing a
mechanism whereby basic values can interact with as-
Jaak Panksepp
cending reticular activating systems that control exteroceptive consciousness (Panksepp, 1998b).
I suspect that all three perspectives will contribute to future understandings of affective states, but it
is unlikely that all will be of equal importance in any
final synthesis. At present, we cannot partition the
variance among these perspectives, but we can indulge
in some forthright discussion of how all of the evidence stacks up and which avenues of research will
be most productive. Neuroscientists with divergent
perspectives will need to clearly enunciate the apparent problems with other views and possible solutions.
Through the resulting dialectics, we may eventually
be able to reach some consensus on how to resolve
critical issues empirically. Thus, even though I am
convinced that working memory has a lot to do with
human emotions, especially in the cognitive triggering
and regulation of affective states, I doubt if working
memory actually creates emotional feelings and the
associated forms of action readiness. Hence, let me
gently challenge some of LeDoux's ideas.
As I understand it, LeDoux suggests that consciously experienced emotional feelings are pieces of
information, quite comparable to other sensorial and
perceptual pieces of information, churned together
within the cauldron of working memory that presumably creates consciousness itself. The emotional inputs
presumably arise from the types of emotional command circuits that I have been conceptualizing for the
past several decades, as well as from various bodily
reafferents that have been the stock in trade for the
intellectual descendants of James-Lange type perspectives on felt emotionality. This is an eminently logical
perspective that gets around many conceptual difficulties (e.g., how an affect might be created by neural
processes within lower reaches of the brain). Although
I have little doubt that emotional systems constitute
core processes in memory systems, perhaps those
which help create various habitual psychobehavioral
structures of organisms, I think it is shortsighted to
see emotional systems simply as pieces of information
that operate in working memory. That view leaves us
with a host of problems and dilemmas and paradoxes
that would need to be addressed coherently. Let me
mention half a dozen that come quickly to mind. Unfortunately many come from folk psychology, rather
than a systematic experimental analysis of affective
experience-a lacuna that only goes to show how desperately modern cognitive-informational agendas of
brain organization still need to be supplemented with
more pervasive affective views.
79
behaviors in humans, as in animals, are evoked by
direct electrical stimulation of subcortical emotional
circuits (Panksepp, 1985; Gloor, 1997). The specific
stimulation sites in humans and animals match remarkably well. Although one could claim that these
affects are achieved only because we are stimulating
the input systems to working memory, that remains
an enormous supposition. If that were simply the case,
direct stimulation of working memory fields should
produce stronger affective effects than has yet been
achieved.
More recently, there has been some success in
global activation of frontal areas of the brain with
rapid Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS;
George, Kettner, Kimbrell, Steedman, and Post, 1996),
but because of the strong connectivities of frontal
brain areas with emotion integrators of the PAG
(Shipley, Ennis, Rizvi, and Behbehani, 1991), it remains possible that those affective effects require subcortical patterns of arousal to be recruited. In my
estimation, it remains most likely that lower systems
in the brain, especially areas such as the PAG and
surrounding tectal and tegmental tissues, are essential
for creating the fundamental neurodynamics that constitute affective consciousness (Panksepp, 1998b).
Of course, the full mental spectrum of an emotional episode must recruit an enormous amount of
the brain, including, most certainly, working memory
tissues of the frontal lobes (Goldman-Rakic, 1995),
but I believe those tissues primarily help regulate and
channel emotional episodes. It is an obvious fact of
human life that when an emotional state has been
aroused, the mind has great difficulty in dwelling on
anything else than how to resolve the affective tension,
whether via truthful, existential actions in the world
or the many deceits and subterfuges in which the human mind becomes so skilled. i also believe that this
is where repression mechanisms enter if the emotional
conflicts are too large for straightforward cognitive
processes to resolve. It may be more adaptive to suppress some of the ideas and feelings that cannot be
accommodated in waking life than to continue to dwell
on them. In dreaming, as frontal lobe inhibition diminishes, such repressed .material may leak out both affectively as well as cognitively (i.e., symbolically). It
seems to me that those cognitive--emotional strategies
and interactions may require a great deal of neurocomputational space, but I would be surprised if they actually create feelings rather than using them as an artist
uses paint. In other words, there appears to be no sustained line of evidence to suggest that the fundamental
integrative mechanisms for emotional feelings reside
80
in those higher brain tissues that generate ideas and
external perceptions.
5. If cortical working memory were so important
in generating affective feelings, we would expect frontal cortical damage to have much more dramatic effects on the capacity of individuals to get emotionally
aroused.. If anything, the evidence suggests that humans and animals that have suffered frontal damage
get emotionally aroused more easily than before. Although their emotional episodes are psychologically
more shallow and of shorter durations (suggesting a
childlike lack of regulation by cognitive deliberations), this only affirms the importance of higher brain
areas in sustaining the object-related patterning of
emotions in space and time. In other words, frontal
lobe damage diminishes the desire and ability of individuals to dwell on their emotional troubles in complex and persistent ways. In contrast, damage to limbic
cortical and subcortical areas has much more dramatic
and sustained effects on the emotional arousal of animals and humans (Panksepp, 1985; Gloor, 1997).
6. If the basic emotional feelings were created
from working memory, we might expect adults to have
much stronger emotional feelings than children. It is
well established that young children cannot maintain
information in working memory as readily as adults,
but it seems evident that they also become emotionally
aroused more easily, albeit for shorter periods, than
adults. This highlights an issue on which LeDoux and
I agree-working memories help sustain and regulate
emotions in time and space, often in inhibitory, repressive ways, perhaps via direct connections to the more
primitive emotion-generating systems of the brain
stem (Shipley, Ennis, Rizvi, and Behbehani, 1991).
Higher brain areas surely blend and modify basic emotions so as to markedly increase the subtlety and complexity of emotional life, giving us. the ability to have
cognitive types of feelings like sh:ame, guilt~ and jealousy. However, to my knowledge there is at present
no evidence that the affective qualities of those more
subtle socially constructed feelings are created within
the cortical working-memory banks of the brain. Perhaps only the naturally associated thoughts of those
socially derived emotional states require working
memory.
In sum, working memory has a great deal to do
once emotions are aroused. It helps us ruminate on
the various conflicts of life, to formulate plans for
dealing with emotional episodes, for blending the information from specific circumstances with possible
regulatory maneuvers, and for many other important
interactions between internal emotional feelings and
Jaak Panksepp
Green's Commentary
I was moved by Green's passion to maintain Freudian
traditions in their original form, resembling LeDoux's
desire to keep affective issues out of animal behavioral
brain research. This reflects a key human dilemma-how do we refurbish and refresh intellectual
traditions that offer some powerful insights but lack
the wherewithal to convince the rest of the scientific
world that the insights truly reflect animate reality.
In the act of censoring his own Project, Freud surely
realized that neurobiological knowledge of his time
could not convince others of the clarity of his vision.
Still, he believed in that clarity, and he left us a psychology that, in order to survive as a scientific tradition, must now establish empirically defensible
supervenience relationships with modern neurosci-
81
ence. Conversely, neuroscience must try to deal with
psychological subtleties for which its tools are ill-prepared. The establishment of relationships between
mental views and neural views will be the most difficult theoretical task that both neuroscientific and psychoanalytic thought must face. Too many on both
sides are still willing to deny that such relationships
can or should be sought. Having been a participant at
the Society for Neuroscience meetings since its inaugural gathering in 1971, I realize how resistant neuroscientists remain to even discussing the existence of
psychologically meaningful global-state variables in
the brain. In a sense, Green's commentary reflects a
comparable type of denial from the other side.
Thus, I resonate in perplexity with Green's frustration when he says "almost everything Freud wrote
seems in fact doubtful in the light of neuroscience."
I choose to take this declamation tongue-in-cheek, as
was my juxtapositioning of E. O. Wilson's (1998) call
for consilience with his rather harsh and unconciliatory quote concerning Freud's theory. Perhaps Green
missed my intent in using that quote, and my intent
on some other key issues as well. My highlighting of
the Freudian drive concept was to help emphasize the
types of problems we must face in trying to retain, in
their original form, all the insights that Freud shared.
At the risk of repeating my response to Yorke, let me
again emphasize that something like "drive" surely
exists in the brain. However, in the crucible of neuroscience it may fragment into many subsidiary processes, so that it only becomes a class-identifier like
"motivation," retaining no more unified brain substance (at least at the neuroscientific level) than many
other psychological concepts. In other words, all too
many of the concepts of psychology are the cultural
creations of our minds rather than the creations of
nature. I, like the young Freud, am much more interested in the latter, and believe that will provide a solid
foundation for understanding the former. Of course,
there is no final word on any of these questions, so
my aim was only to highlight the types of concerns we
must face if there is to be any substantive consilience
between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. It is a major conceptual dilemma on both sides. If most are
struggling with learning and various cultural inventions while only a few are focusing on the neurally
ingrained nature of evolutionary processes within the
brain, we will miss many opportunities for fruitful hybridization. The idea that there are important relationships to be clarified among very different levels of
analysis is one that we must learn to cultivate among
all the relevant views.
Jaak Panksepp
82
Damasio's Commentary
The constructive remarks by Damasio promote the
kind of attitude that should be increasingly cultivated
83
hypotheses that can be confirmed or disconfirmed.
Otherwise important empirical work will be impeded.
However, we should not delude ourselves that an understanding of the essential executive structures begins
to fully depict the consequences of emotions as they
percolate, perhaps chaotically, through many brain areas, as well as individual lives and cultural activities.
The neuroscience work in animals can only clarify the
necessary substrates of mammalian emotions; it has
little to say about what is sufficient to construct the
many other complexities of our emotional lives. Psychoanalytic theught is much more attuned to those endeavors.
We will gradually have to develop conceptual
structures that can handle the full complexity of emotions in the brain, and we may eventually have to implement dynamic systems approaches to the study of
emotions (Freeman, 1995; Lewis and Granic, in
press.) At that level, there has been much talk but
little empirical action; adequate data sets for nonlinear
analyses are notoriously difficult to harvest (see Panksepp, in press). In pursuing such difficult computational goals, we should also remember that it is equally
important to have accurate depth psychological descriptions of individual lives and to study how early
experiences lead to different life trajectories. In any
event, Damasio encourages us to clearly envision the
magnitude of the empirical and conceptual tasks before us. We are like children, playing on the shores of
yet unimagined complexities and confronted by depths
that will take many generations of arduous research
to fathom. Our ideas, like our modern PET and MRI
images of the functioning human brain, are like cartoon toys that barely resemble reality. Accordingly,
we must remain open to new ideas even as we cultivate
critical attitudes in our evaluation of the evidence.
As Yorke emphasized more than anyone in these
discussions, Freud would also have agreed that in our
attempts to understand the internal dynamics of the id
and the resulting affective complexities, the doors to
further understanding, most especially a neuroscientific understanding, should never be closed. Freud quietly sustained his love affair with the brain throughout
his life, but only occasionally explicitly proclaimed
his continued devotion to the Project (1950): "The
theoretical structure of psychoanalysis that we have
created is in truth a superstructure, which will one day
have to be set upon its organic foundation. But we are
still ignorant of this" (Freud, 1916-1917, p. 389, as
cited by Kitcher, 1992, p. 53). It is a pity that Freud
did not continue to link his thinking credibly to the
emerging findings of neuroscience, but we are now in
84
a much better position to do just that. Thus, it would be
a greater pity if we do not capitalize on the wonderful
opportunities that are available to us.
Jaak Panksepp
1993). Also, as noted, an empirical focus on the coordinated activities of subcortical cell ensembles rather
than the firing rates of individual neurons may turn
out to be the most informative for understanding how
emotional integration and affective states are generated by neural tissues. Indeed, the sustained dendritic
potentials from large groups of neurons, reflected in
EEG measurements, still has great potential to clarify
emotional neurodynamics (Panksepp and Bekkedal,
1997), even though the issue of how electrodes need
to be oriented within relevant systems and how the
exceedingly rich data streams need to be computationally handled remain to be resolved (Panksepp, in
press).
I do not think it can be overemphasized that there
has been an enormous bias during the twentieth century to view practically everything of importance in
the mind as being constructed from the projectile experiences and memories of organisms. This is because
humans and other mammals are obviously information hungry organisms with a great capacity to remember what has happened to them. Although an
understanding of memory formation is essential for
understanding most major psychological issues (explaining the popularity of that focus), it is not simply
through memorial abilities that most animals survived
during the early evolutionary emergence of mind, especially when the instinctive (periconscious?) emotion
coordinating systems of the brain stem first evolved.
The refinement of rapid-fire cortical and cerebellar
response abilities, presumably became highly useful
only when the values represented by more global behavioral-state capacities had already emerged in
brain evolution.
To some extent the millisecond view of traditional cognitive psychology is being countered by
modern evolutionary views, but even those new approaches have yet to come to terms with the genetically provided, global-state epistemology of the lower
reaches of the nervous system. The critical issue for
understanding affect is simply: What is the most accurate conception of all the relevant underlying neural
organizations? If both humans and other animals share
similar primitive brain substrates for organizing neurobiological values, even though we are not yet able to
empirically monitor the resulting internally experienced affects directly, we must still try to implement
the indirect strategies that are available to us (Panksepp, in press). Too many neuroscientists remain skeptical of the potential fruitfulness of these possibilities
on the basis of a traditional denial of emotional sentience to other animals (e.g., Budiansky, 1998). I think
we need to move past such perennial and epistemologically unresolvable polarities to accepting multiple
points of view as logically reasonable and pluralistically desirable starting points for our inquiries, and
thereby to integrate all of the fruits of our various
research endeavors.
To my way of thinking, the critical issue is
whether credible predictions-both of human feelings
from animal behavior, and conversely, animal behaviors from a careful analysis of human feelings-ean
be made by accepting the potential reality of animal
feelings. On the basis of a great deal of research, I
believe they can (Panksepp, 1998a), and emerging
new strategies to treat psychiatric disorders are affirming this view (Panksepp, 1995; Kramer et aI.,
1998). If it were not for the existence of deep neural
homologies and our ability to access human subjective
experience through verbal self-reports, then I would
not be willing to speak of affective processes in other
animals. If no cross-species predictions could be made
in the broad arena of affective processes, especially
from the neural causes of animal emotional behaviors
to the causes of human feelings, then all of us who
have a commitment to the scientific worldview, might
be best advised to abide by the traditional type of scientific skepticism that many neuroscientists continue
to advocate. If, on the other hand, we find that our
emerging knowledge concerning certain brain circuits
and neuromolecules help us to generate reasonably
accurate predictions from animal behaviors to human
feelings (which has certainly been my overriding experimental goal since I started to conceptualize the
possibility of an affective neuroscience 30 years ago),
then we should persist in our efforts to span the transspecies gulf concerning the existence of affective experience in other animals. Of course, these kinds of
scientific undertakings are bound to be difficult as well
as conceptually risky and initially fuzzy, but no more
so than the attempts of particle physicists to estimate
the mysteries hidden in the underbelly of the visually
evident material world.
Fortunately, many of these issues, perhaps for the
first time, can now be approached empirically, but the
critical work remains scarce. Partly this is because so
many human investigators, including some neurobiologically oriented ones, still believe that all human
emotions are fundamentally socially constructed
(Brothers, 1997). Obviously some are, but others are
not. Although the human mind is certainly rich enough
to construct practically anything it can imagine, in my
estimation, those kinds of constructionist biases continue to retard some important scientific lines of work
85
Summation
As in all human intellectual affairs, there are those
who would claim that our glass of knowledge is rapidly becoming half full and those who say that it will
never be more than half empty. No doubt, this has
something to do with one's emotional temperament-whether one is fundameritally outgoing and optimistic or introverted and pessimistic (the brain
substrates for which are gradually beginning to be understood: e.g., Gray and McNaughton, 1996; Depue
and Collins, in press). In my chosen arena of empirical
and conceptual inquiry, I tend to side with the yeasayers, for they are the ones that open up new and
important vistas of empirical work and conceptual investigation. There is now strong evidence that the basic affective processes can be studied scientifically,
even in animals. However, anyone who has done any
substantial empirical work on the brain knows full
well how seemingly infinite are the complexities that
need to be faced. The brain mechanisms which underlie simple psychological concepts are remarkably
complex. Likewise, those who have journeyed deeply
86
Jaak Panksepp
cepts that we must use to understand the psychodynamics that emerge from those special tissues that
reside behind our eyes and between our ears. Unless
the fundamental psychological constructs are linked
to brain matters, they will always remain as slippery
as ever.
Since the brain is hierarchically organized, I believe we must workout the more ancient foundation
issues before we can really see how more recent evolutionary developments emerged. For this reason, I have
been attracted to the subcortical domain that we still
share homologously with the other mammals. Clarification of the organizing principles within the lower
substrates, a task that can only be accomplished
through animal research, may be essential for understanding the regulatory functions of higher cortical areas. Indeed, we must remember how much longer it
took for evolution to construct the foundations than
the mushrooming of the surrounding cerebral canopies. This should inform us and warn us of the difficulties that may emerge if we disregard those
foundation issues. As Freud appeared to have realized,
the higher functions depend critically on the integrity
and nature of the lower functions, but the reverse is
not as true. Of course, the higher functions, especially
in humans, now provide a subtle as well as insistent
cognitive texture to the emotional mind, almost seamlessly, from our internal subjective perspective.
Although it has become attractive to view emotions as little more than another type of cognitive
structure within the vastness of our mental lives (e.g.,
Gray, 1990; LeDoux, 1996), this type of homogenization may impede an emergence of a true understanding
of the deep nature of emotionality (Panksepp, 1990a,
1998a). It is equally misguided, I believe, to deny the
likelihood that other mammals are emotionally sentient. Unfortunately, we have few integrative frameworks in neuroscience where the ancient mysteries,
that took so long for evolution to create, are given
their due. Perhaps a greater acceptance of the likelihood that an understanding of animal emotions can
clarify the nature of our own passions, perhaps more
clearly than any other available research strategy, may
provide that framework. In any event, powerful valenced states, of positive and negative affect of various
forms, are built into our brains. First we need to know
in understanding the relationships between their patients' suffering, affect, cognition, and behavior, and
if good psychotherapy alters the brain, then psycho-
87
References
Baars, B. J. (1996), Understanding subjectivity: Global
workspace theory and the resurrection of the observing
self. J. Consciousness Studies, 3:211-216.
Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. (1998), What is the role
of dopamine in reward: Hedonic impact, reward learning
or incentive salience. Brain Res. Rev., 22:347-354.
Brothers, L. (1997), Friday's Footprint: How Society
Shapes the Human Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Budiansky, S. (1998), Animal Intelligence and the Evolution
of Consciousness. New York: The Free Press.
Cabanac, M. (1971), Physiological role of pleasure. Science,
173: 1103-1107.
Cairns-Smith, A. G. (1996), Evolving the Mind: On the
Nature ofMatter and the Origin of Consciousness. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Coccaro, E. F. (1996), Neurotransmitter correlates of impulsive aggression in humans. Ann. NY Acad. Sci.,
794:82-89.
Damasio, A. R. (1994), Descartes' Error. New York: G.
P. Putnam.
- - - (1998), Emotion in the perspective of an integrated
nervous system. Brain Res. Rev., 26:83-86.
- - - Grabowski, T. J., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Ponto,
L. B., & Hichwa, R. D. (1998), Neural correlates of
the experience of emotions. Abs. Soc. Neurosci., 24:258
(Abst. 104.1).
Depue, R. A., & Collins, P. F. (in .press), Neurobiology of
the structure of personality: Dopamine, facilitation of
incentive motivation, and extroversion. Behav. &
Brain Sci.
Dretske, F. (1995), Naturalizing the Mind. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Freeman, W. (1995), Societies of Brain: A Study in the
Neuroscience of Love and Hate. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Freud, S. (1916-1917), Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis. Standard Edition, 16. London: Hogarth
Press, 1961.
- - - (1950), Project for a scientific psychology. Standard Edition, 1:281-391. London: Hogarth Press, 1966.
Gazzaniga, M. S., & LeDoux, J. (1978), The Integrated
Mind. New York: Plenum Press.
George, M. S., Kettner, T. A., Kimbrell, T. A., Steedman,
J. M., & Post, R. M. (1996), What functional imaging
88
has revealed about the brain basis of mood and emotion.
In: Advances in Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 2, ed. J. Panksepp. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp. 63-114.
Gershon, M. D. (1998), The Second Brain. New York:
HarperCollins.
Gloor, P. (1997), The Temporal Lobe and Limbic System.
New York: Oxford University Pres.
Goldman-Rakic, P. A. (1995), Architecture of the prefrontal
cortex and the central executive. In: Structure and Functions of the Human Prefrontal Cortex, ed. J. Grafman,
K. J. Holyoak, & F. Boller. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, pp. 71-83.
Gray, J. A. (1990), Brain systems that mediate both emotion
and cognition. Cognit. & Emot., 4:270-288.
- - McNaughton, N. (1996), The neuropsychology of
anxiety: Reprise. In: Perspectives on Anxiety, Panic, and
Fear. Vol. 43, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, ed.
D. A. Hope. Omaha:' University of Nebraska Press, pp.
61-134.
Greenberg, L. S. (1993), Emotion and change processes in
psychotherapy. In: Handbook of Emotions, ed. M.
Lewis & J. M. Haviland. New York: Guilford, pp.
499-536.
Hohmann, G. W. (1996), Some effects of spinal cord lesions
on experienced emotional feelings. Psychophysiology,
3:143-156.
Kim, 1. (1993), Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Kitcher, P. (1992), Freud's Dream. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Klein, D. F. (1987), Depression and anhedonia. In: Anhedonia and Affect Deficit States, ed. D. C. Clark & J. Fawcett. New York: PMA, pp. 1-14.
Knutson, B., Panksepp, J., & Burgdorf, J. (1998), Anticipation of play elicits high-frequency ultrasonic vocalizations in young rats. J. Compar. Psychol., 112:65-73.
- - - Wolkowitz, O. W., Cole, S. W., Chan, T., Moore,
E. A., Johnson, R. C., Terpstra, J., Turner, R. A., &
Reus, V. I. (1998), Serotonergic intervention selectively
alters aspects of personality and social behavior in normal humans. Amer. J. Psychiatry, 155:373-379.
Konner, M. (1982), The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints Over the Human Spirit. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Kramer, M. S., Cutler, N., Feighner, J., Shrivastava, R.,
Carman, J., Sramek, J. J., Reines, S. A., Liu, G., Snavely,
D., Wyatt-Knowles, E., Hale, J. J., Mills, S. G., MacCoss, M., Swain, C. J., Harrison, T., Hill, R. G., Hefti,
F., Scolnick, E. M., Cascieri, M. A., Chicchi, G. G.,
Sadowski, S., Williams, A. R., Hewson, L., Smith, D., &
Rupniak, N. M. (1998), Distinct mechanisms for antidepressant activity by blockade of central substance P receptors. Science, 281:1640-1645.
Kramer, P. D. (1993), Listening to Prozac. New York:
Vilong.
Jaak Panksepp
LeDoux, 1. (1984), Cognition and emotions: Processing
functions and brain systems. In: Handbook o.l Cognitive
Neuroscience, ed. M. S. Gazzaniga. New York: Plenum
Press, pp. 359-368.
- - - (1996), The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Lewis, M. D., & Granic, I. (in press), Emotion, Self-Organization, and Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.
MacLean, P. D. (1990), The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role
in Paleocerebral Functions. New York: Plenum Press.
Morris,1. S., Ohman, A., & Dolan, R. J. (1998), Conscious
and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala. Nature, 393:467-470.
Newman,1. (1997), Putting the puzzle together, Part I: Towards a general theory of the neural correlates of consciousness. J. Consciousness Studies, 4:47-66.
Ohman, A. (1993), Fear and anxiety as emotional phenomena: Clinical phenomenology, evolutionary perspectives,
and information-processing mechanisms. In: Handbook
of Emotions, ed. M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland. New York:
Guilford, pp. 511-536.
Panksepp, J. (1974), Hypothalamic regulation of energy
balance and feeding behavior. Proc., 33: 1150-1165.
- - - (1981), Hypothalamic integration of behavior: Rewards, punishments, and related psychobiological process. In: Handbook of the Hypothalamus, Vol. 3, ed. P.
1. Morgane & J. Panksepp. New York: Marcel Dekker,
pp. 289-487.
- - - (1985), Mood changes. In: Handbook of Clinical
Neurology, Vol. 1, ed. P. J. Vinken, G. W. Bruyn & H.
L. Klawans. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, pp. 271-285.
- - - (1986), The anatomy of emotions. In: Emotion,
Theory, Research and Experience, Vol. 3, ed. R. Plutchik. Orlando: Academic Press, pp. 91-124.
- - - (1988), Brain emotional circuits and psychopathologies. In: Emotions and Psychopathology, ed. M.
Clynes & 1. Panksepp. New York: Plenum, pp. 37-76.
- - - (1990a), Gray zones at the emotion/cognition interface: A commentary. Cognit. & Emot., 4:289-302.
- - - (1990b), Can mind and behavior be understood
without understanding the brain?: A response to Bunge.
New Ideas in Psychology, 8:139-149.
- - - (1993), Neurochemical control of moods and emotions: Amino acids to neuropeptides. In: The Handbook
of Emotions, ed. M. Lewis & J. Haviland. New York:
Guilford, pp. 87-107.
- - - (1995), The emotional brain and biological psychiatry. In: Advances in Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 1, ed. J.
Panksepp. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp. 263-286.
- - - (1998a), Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations
of Human and Animal Emotions. New York: Oxford
University Press.
- - - (1998b), The periconscious substrates of consciousness: Affective states and the evolutionary'origins of the
SELF. J. Consciousness Studies, 5:566-582.
89
Response to Commentaries
- - - (in press), The neurodynamics of emotions: An evolutionary-neurodevelopmental view. In: Emotion, SelfOrganization, and Development, ed. M. D. Lewis & I.
Granic. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- - - Bekkedal, M. Y. V. (1997), The affective cerebral
consequence of music: Happy vs sad effects on the EEG
and clinical implications. Internat. J. Arts Med., 5:18-27.
- - - Burgdorf, J. (1998), Laughing rats? Playful tickling
arouses 50 KHz ultrasonic chirping in rats. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr., 24:691.
- - - - - - (in press), Laughing rats? Playful tickling
arouses high frequency ultrasonic chirping in young rodents. In: Toward a Science of Consciousness, Vol. 3,
ed. S. Hameroff, D. Chalmers & A. Kazniak. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
- - - Newman, J. D., & Insel, T. R. (1992), Critical conceptual issues in the analysis of separation distress systems of the brain. In: International Review of Studies on
Emotion, Vol. 2, ed. K. T. Strongman. Chichester, U.K.:
John Wiley, pp. 51-72.
Penrose, R. (1994), Shadows of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Rinn, W. E. (1984), The neuropsychology of facial expression: A review of the neurological and psychological
mechanisms for producing facial expressions. Psycholog. Bull., 95:52-77.
Romijn, H. (1997), About the origin of consciousness: A
new, multidisciplinary perspective on the relationship
between mind and brain. Proc. Koninklijke Nederlandse
Akademie van Wetenschappen, 100:181-267.
Ross, E. D., Homan, R. W., & Buck, R. (1994), Differential
hemispheric lateralization of primary and social emo-