Psychoanalysis is certainly an art, but this paper makes a case that it should be more of a science by focusing on a neuroscientific taxonomy of seven basic emotional systems. These emotional systems direct our visceral responses (i.e., blood pressure, pupil dilation, sweating, etc) as well as our behavior (i.e., approaching, smiling, caressing, grimacing, freezing, running away). They also direct our affective responses—our conscious affective feelings of pleasure and pain (Panksepp, 1998a; Damasio, 1999). Jaak Panksepp delineated these seven systems using simple descriptive words for each one, but he wrote the descriptive words in capital letters to highlight the fact that emotional systems are physical entities rather than metaphorical descriptions (Panksepp, 1998a).
Emotional systems are found in and around the brainstem and in midline regions of the cortex. The brain evolved from the bottom up and from midline to more lateral areas, meaning that subcortical structures evolved before the cortex and that midline parts of the cortex evolved before its lateral parts. The position of emotional systems indicates that they evolved a very long time ago. As animal brains have evolved, these ancient systems have been retained. Thus, all mammalian brains contain the seven basic emotional systems and all mammals are affective creatures. The brains of many other vertebrates contain some of these systems—young birds, for example, display distress when separated from their mothers (Panksepp, 1998a).
In contrast, more recently evolved parts of the cortex differ dramatically from one species to another, which is why mammalian species have different perceptual acuities and levels of intelligence. Emotionally however, we are all cousins, which is why research about the emotional life of animals tells us about human emotions (Panksepp, 1998a; Damasio, 1999a).
We will start with a description of each emotional system, followed by a
discussion of ten ways that they impact on our understanding of human emotions and on the practice of psychotherapy.
1 The SEEKING system has been alternately described as a “foraging /exploration /investigation /curiosity/ interest/ expectancy” system (Panksepp, 1998a p 145). SEEKING arousal is characterized by a persistent exploratory inquisitiveness and a willingness to take risks. It engenders energetic forward locomotion—approach and proactive engagement with the world—as an animal probes into the nooks and crannies of interesting places, objects, and events in ways that are characteristic of its species. Rats, for example, typically sniff vigorously when they explore new environments. The SEEKING system holds a special place among emotional systems, because to some extent it supports and attends all of the other emotional systems. When in the service of positive emotions, the SEEKING system engenders a sense of purpose, accompanied by feelings of interest ranging from enthusiasm to euphoria. For example, when a mother feels the urge to nurture her offspring, the SEEKING system will motivate her to find food and shelter in order to provide this care. The SEEKING system also plays a role in negative emotions, for example providing part of the impetus that prompts a frightened animal to find safety.
2 The FEAR system generates a negative affective state from which all people and animals wish to escape. It engenders tension in the body and a shivery immobility at milder levels of arousal, which can intensify and burst forth into a dynamic flight pattern with chaotic projectile movement to get out of harm's way.
3 The RAGE system causes animals to propel their bodies toward offending objects, and they bite, scratch, and pound with their extremities. Rage is fundamentally a negative affect, but it can become a positive when it results in victory over one's opponents or in the control and subjugation of others.
4 When animals are in the throes of the LUST system they exhibit abundant courting activities culminating in urgent copulation with a receptive mate and ending with orgasm. Arousal of LUST can be pleasurable even when ultimate satisfaction is not obtained, but excessive
arousal can result in an unpleasant craving tension. LUST is one of the sources of love.
5 When people and animals are aroused by the CARE system, they have the impulse to envelop loved ones with gentle caresses and tender ministrations. Without this system, taking care of the young would be a burden. Instead, nurturing can be profoundly rewarding. In extreme circumstances, CARE arouses the impulse to protect others even at the expense of one's own safety. Mother's, for example, will sacrifice their lives in order to protect their young. The CARE system is typified by maternal nurturance, but it is not limited to mothers or to women. For example, soldiers on the battlefield are often willing to sacrifice life and limb for the sake of their comrades in arms. CARE is another source of love.
6 The GRIEF system (which Pankepp sometimes calls the PANIC or SEPARATION DISTRESS system) might be called the GRIEF/SOCIAL BONDING system because it generates feelings that are good as well as bad (Toronchuk & Ellis, 2012). The bad feelings are panicky misery when people and animals are socially isolated or rejected. Social isolation produces stress chemicals like corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) that contribute to the feelings of misery.
The negative arm of GRIEF generates a deep psychic wound—an internal psychological experience of pain. When young children and young animals are in the throes of the negative side of GRIEF, their misery reaches a panicky level and they cry insistently, urgently trying to reunite with their caretakers—usually their mothers. If reunion is not achieved, the baby or young child gradually begins to display sorrowful and despairing bodily postures that reflect the brain cascade from panic into a persistent depression.
The same system, however, produces feelings of joyful contentment when people and animals benefit from the affectionate support of family and friends. This sense of social belonging produces comfort chemicals, oxytocin and opioids (endogenous opiate-like brain chemicals), that engender the sense of well-being. The positive side of GRIEF is yet another source of love.
Although the positive arm of GRIEF is actively enjoyable, the negative side helps to cement positive social relationships because close social bonds alleviate the psychic pain that attends negative GRIEF arousal. Thus, positive social bonds are cemented from two directions. The positive side of GRIEF feels good and the negative side, which feels terrible, is assuaged by close and supportive relationships. Close and positive social relationships are especially important early in life, when young children and animals need the protection of their parents in order to survive. Children value their parents and stay close to them because this fosters positive affects and because it avoids the negative affective experience that attends separation from them.
7 The PLAY system is expressed in bouncy and bounding lightness of movement, where participants often poke—or rib—each other in rapidly alternating patterns. At times, PLAY resembles aggression, especially when PLAY takes the form of wrestling. But closer inspection of the behavior reveals that the movements of rough-and-tumble PLAY are different than any form of aggression. Furthermore, both participants enjoy playing. When children or animals play, they usually take turns at assuming dominant and submissive roles. In controlled experiments, researchers found that one animal gradually begins to win over the other (becoming the top dog, so to speak), but the play continues as long as the loser still has a chance to end up on top thirty percent of the time. When both the top dog and the underdog accept this kind of handicapping, the participants continue to have fun and enjoy this social activity. If the top dog wants to win all the time, the behavior approaches bullying. Even rats clearly indicate where they stand in playful activity with their emotional vocalizations: When they are denied the chance to win, their happy laughter-type sounds cease, and emotional complaints begin. PLAY system probably helps young animals to learn basic skills. For example, a kitten chasing a ball or yarn is also developing skills that will eventually enable it to catch mice. Additionally, PLAY provides an arena for learning about social roles (Bekoff and Byers, 1998; ; ). PLAY amongst human children is crucial to their socialization (Peterson, 2019b). The PLAY system is one of the main sources of friendship. (Panksepp, 1998a; Pankespp & Biven, 2012).
Emotional systems respond only to a small repertoire of stimuli. Rats, for example, are inherently afraid of well-lit open spaces, where they are typically vulnerable to predators. They are also innately afraid of the smell of cat fur. If a rat has been raised in captivity and has never before been exposed to a cat, it will become wary if you place a pinch of cat fur into its cage. The rat will not respond to a photograph of a cat or to the sound of a cat's maiow. Only the smell of cat fur will cause the rat's movements to become constricted, cause it to go off its food and off sex (Panksepp, 1998a).
Other stimuli innately engender an emotional response. Human beings and other animals innately fear pain (Panksepp, 1998a) and loud noises (Clasen, M. (2017). Most young animals, including human babies, are innately afraid of heights (Gibson & Walk, 1960) and of spiders and snakes (Pappel, 2017). Other stimuli are species specific. Rodents fear the light, while many human children are afraid of the dark (Panksepp, 1998a).
This small repertoire of stimuli to which we have an innate emotional response expands exponentially mostly because of conditioning experiences that occur on a regular basis throughout life. Suppose that an urban rat lived near a house with a pet cat. The rat would stay away from the cat because it is innately afraid of the cat's smell. If the cat wore a bell around its neck, the rat would soon learn to fear the sound of the bell.
Seminal experiments by Joseph LeDoux provide a template that explains how conditioning happens. LeDoux's experiments, which focused on fear-conditioning, subjected rats to a mild shock to the foot and the simultaneous exposure to an innocuous auditory tone. These experiments demonstrated that the amygdala which lies at the uppermost regions of the FEAR system (Panksepp, 1998a) is essential for fear conditioning. Like most brain structures, the amygdalae are bilateral, and are situated largely in subcortical brain regions just behind the temples (Bourtchouladze, 2004). Each amygdala has 13 sections or nuclei and the “central nucleus” plays a crucial role in generating fear (Maren & Quirk, 2004; LeDoux, 2008).
An innate neural pathway, which encodes the pain of the electric shock, leads to the central nucleus of the rat's amygdala, which generates a fear response. This is why the rat is unconditionally afraid of the shock. Prior to conditioning, the neural pathway encoding the sound of the tone does not lead to the central nucleus. If the tone were to play on its own, the rat would take little notice. However, if the sound of the tone occurs when the rat receives a foot shock, the rat learns to fear the tone.
LeDoux discovered that conditioned learning creates a molecular/chemical process that allows the neural pathway encoding the tone to gain access to the central nucleus of the rat's amygdala. Once the tone-encoding pathway projects into the central nucleus, the rat is afraid of the tone. LeDoux revealed that in addition to learning to fear the tone, the rat learns to fear all manner of contextual stimuli. The neural pathways encoding contextual stimuli take a somewhat different rout within the amygdala, but they too project into the central nucleus. In addition to fearing the sound of the cat's bell, our urban rat might also learn to fear the sound of the cat owner's voice and the sight of the cat's toys, etc. (LeDoux, 1996).
Ordinarily we think that conditioning is a thought or perceptual process. We assume that the rat somehow thinks that the tone heralds the shock or we assume that the rat somehow associates the sight of the cat with the sound of the bell because they occur together. This, however, is not the case. Decorticate animals that have been surgically deprived of their cortex can be successfully conditioned (Kolb & Wishaw, 2009). Without a cortex, people and animals cannot think, nor can they see, hear, taste, smell, or experience touch. Yet decorticate animals like dogs, and children born without a cerebral cortex can be conditioned to associate the unconditioned (i.e., shock) and conditioned (i.e., tone) stimuli (Culler & Mettler, 1934; ; Shewmon et al., 1999).
You might wonder how people and animals without a cortex can be conditioned when they cannot perceive or think about anything. Conditioning succeeds because sub-cortical structures can process information about stimuli (Solms, 2012). For example, cortically blind people often avoid objects in their path even though they do not see anything, a phenomenon known as “blindsight” (Weiskrantz, 1986). Neuroscientists believe that the superior colliculus, a subcortical structure found in the
brainstem, processes light-wave information that allows blind people to avoid objects in their path (Cowey, 2004; ). Similar studies demonstrate subcortical processing of hearing and touch (Garde & Cowley 2000; Rossetti, et al., 1995).
If conditioning is a non-cognitive, non-perceptual process, what is it? What does conditioning achieve? LeDoux demonstrated that conditioning allows people and animals to acquire an emotional response to previously neutral stimuli. When conditioning succeeds, the unconditioned stimulus (the shock) and the conditioned stimulus (the tone, along with contextual stimuli) become associated because they evoke the same emotional response, namely fear. That is the nature of their association (LeDoux, 1996).
Of course, intelligent species like our own have thoughts about conditioning experiences. If I were subjected to a simultaneous foot-shock and auditory tone, I might think that the tone caused the shock. However, the fact that decorticate animals can be conditioned demonstrates that my thought process does not create the association. I associate the tone and the foot shock because I am afraid of them both.
This observation allows us to make sense of the free associative process. As a general principle emotional arousal inhibits cortical activity (Salzman & Fusi, 2010) and the cortex inhibits emotions (Liotti, & Panksepp, 2004). During conditioning experience, when emotions run high, they influence the ideas that the cortex creates. Because human beings are intelligent, we have a host of ideas when we are emotionally aroused and these ideas center around the emotion that we are feeling. We all know this from personal experience. When you are in love, the whole world is beautiful but if you lose love, your thoughts turn dark.
Here is a simple example of my own free associations. Everyone in our family was excited and happy during the days leading up to my daughter's wedding. I recall that she and her fiancé had trouble finding a cake that they liked, that we all arranged flowers the night before the wedding, that her best friend, who got ordained on the Internet, officiated at the ceremony, and that there was a din of conversation during the wedding meal. These associations: cake, flower arrangements, wedding official, and noise may appear to be disparate thoughts, but they are all
connected by a central emotion, namely my happiness at my daughter's marriage. When clients talk about different thoughts and ideas that appear to be unconnected, psychoanalysts can be confident that there is an underlying connecting emotion, which is why free associations are so instructive.
Freud maintained that libido (LUST) and aggression (RAGE) are basic drives. Bowlby (1969) added the need for attachment (GRIEF) and Kohut (1971) claimed that we also have a need for narcissistic affirmation. The neuroscientific taxonomy provides a much wider repertoire of basic drives than does psychoanalytic theory. Panksepp stipulates that his taxonomy may not be complete and that other emotional systems may be discovered. Some researchers have tentatively proposed the existence of DISGUST and SOCIAL DOMINANCE systems which may eventually be included in the existing taxonomy (Toronchuk & Ellis, 2012). Notwithstanding, the current list is more complete than any other existing taxonomy (Panksepp, 1998a).
Additionally, the psychoanalytic drives are based on behavior and verbal reports, both of which are open to interpretation and subject to disagreement (Killingmo, 1985). Emotional systems, however, consist of identified brain structures that are fuelled by specific chemicals that we can observe and on which we can agree. Thus, Panksepp's taxonomy provides a broad and scientifically credible understanding of our basic motivations.
Panksepp's taxonomy resolves a psychoanalytic disagreement about the status of attachment as a drive (Killingmo, 1985). According to Freud's formulation children are attached to their parents because parents meet the child's libidinal needs and are the objects of the child's libidinal desires (Freud, 1926). However, psychoanalytic theorists like Suttie (1935), Fairbairn (1952), and predominantly Bowlby (1969) maintained that the need for attachment and secure object relationships, especially in early childhood, is a drive that is independent of sexuality (Grossman, 1995).
Panksepp's neuroscientific emotional taxonomy corroborates Freud's view that libido (LUST) and aggression (RAGE) are basic drives, but it also supports Bowlby's assertion that attachment (GRIEF), especially in early childhood, is a basic non-sexual drive (Panksepp, 1992).
Panksepp's taxonomy reveals two types of anxiety, each emanating from different systems. One type of anxiety emanating from the FEAR system concerns any anticipated adverse event. The FEAR system is typically aroused in the face of physical injury or death, but we can also be afraid of a final exam or a tax audit. This type of anticipatory anxiety is attended by arousal of the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which speeds up bodily processes critical to survival and shuts down those that are not. Sympathetic arousal is attended by an infusion of stress chemicals which accelerate heart rate and respiration, cause pupil dilation and the release of glucose to fuel muscles. Gastro-intestinal and excretory systems, on the other hand, shut down. Sympathetic arousal also generates the fight/flight response to danger that is typical of FEAR arousal .
The GRIEF system generates another type of anxiety that typically occurs when young children or animals are separated from their mothers and cry in distress. GRIEF is also aroused to a lesser extent when adults are deprived of social support and feel lonely, abandoned or rejected (Panksepp, 1998a). The parasympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system attends this type of anxiety. Parasympathetic arousal causes a slowing of heart rate and respiration, muscle relaxation, and an increase in digestive function. Ordinarily, parasympathetic arousal prompts animals to “feed and breed” . However, extreme parasympathetic arousal can have pathological consequences (Porges, 1997). When people and animals are isolated and lonely, parasympathetic arousal contributes to a sense of weakness and depression along with a tightness in the chest, a lump in the throat and an urge to weep (Panksepp, 1998a).
In addition to the difference in autonomic participation, FEAR and GRIEF respond to different medications. Benzodiazepines like Valium are effective in assuaging FEAR, but they have only a modest effect
on quelling panic attacks. The anti-depressant, Imipramine, however, quells panic attacks (Klein, 1964) and separation cries in young animals, but is ineffective in reducing FEAR arousal (Panksepp, 1998a). This indicates that anticipatory anxiety which responds to benzodiazepines is a symptom of FEAR arousal, while panic disorders and separation distress, which respond to imipramine, emanate from the GRIEF system (Panksepp, 1998a).
It is also likely that there are different sub-divisions in emotional systems. For example, as we noted above, rats are inherently afraid of well-lit open spaces. Researchers test anxiety in rodents using an elevated plus-shaped (+) maze, which is an apparatus with two open and two enclosed arms (Pellow et al., 1985). Ordinarily rats stay in the enclosed arms where they are more protected, this being a sign of anxiety. When rats are treated with benzodiazepines they remain in the enclosed arms indicating that they continue to feel anxious. When treated with morphine, however, anxiety abates and they are willing to venture into the open arms of the maze. The fact that different drugs quell different levels of anxiety indicates that there are different neurochemical levels of FEAR (Panksepp, 1998a).
The seven systems also highlight a dichotomy of good/bad pairs of affects, each pair stemming from different emotional systems. The positive arm of the GREIF system generates feelings of comfort and joy that we feel in the company of friends and family. Conversely if we are abandoned or betrayed, we endure the misery of loneliness and rejection, emanating from the negative arm of GRIEF (Panksepp, 1998a).
The SEEKING system generates a different pair of good and bad feelings. The good feeling is an energized focus on a goal and a euphoric sense of being an effective agent who can make things happen in the world. However, when SEEKING arousal is at a low ebb, we feel hopeless and depressed.
Thus, we see that depression has two sources, one the miserable sense of isolation stemming from GRIEF arousal and the other a hopelessness emanating from the relative absence of SEEKING arousal (Panksepp, 1998a).
Most psychoanalysts are aware of the importance of secure attachments, particularly in early childhood. However, there has been far less attention on the needs and joys of the SEEKING system. SEEKING arousal imbues people with a euphoric sense of anticipation, a feeling of being able to effect changes in the world, as well as a willingness to take risks (Panksepp, 1998a). The urge for achievement, independence and personal agency might be seen as the opposite of attachment, but it is as important to human fulfilment and happiness .
Neuroscientific research demonstrates that neutrality on the part of a psychoanalyst should not extend to an emotional neutrality toward the patient. People experience neutral facial expressions as ambiguous (Cooney et al., 2006), resulting in arousal of the amygdala which generates feelings of anxiety (FEAR) (Balderston et al, 2011). In other words, people feel ill at ease when they think that other people do not care about them. An apparently “neutral” psychoanalyst is not neutral at all.
Although there has been much disagreement about the role of aggression in psychoanalytic theory (Dennen, 2005), many modern psychoanalysts believe that aggression, like libido, is a source of instinctual pleasure (Hartmann, H., Kris, E., Loewenstein, R. (1949). Neuroscientific research, however, opposes this view. Animals avoid places where their RAGE systems were electrically aroused, indicating that RAGE arousal is an unpleasant experience —except, of course, when one is about to win the day (Panksepp, 1998a). When a client is chronically angry, a therapist can be confident that this is not a wishful pleasant state.
Psychoanalysis distinguishes between a problem and a conflict. A problem arises when you know the variables involved: do you want to go out for pizza or sushi? You weigh the pros and cons of each and make your decision. Conflict arises when at least one variable is unconscious. Then you cannot make a rational decision.
According to the classical Freudian view, our drives always strive for pleasurable gratification (1923c). Conflict arises when the drives run into opposition either from the demands of reality or the superego (Thornton, 1995). Then the ego institutes defences that keep drives unconscious (A Freud, 1936). The aim of psychotherapy is to remove the defences and thereby reveal hitherto unconscious element(s). When this happens people can make more rational and adaptive decisions (Nagera, 2018).
Rationality, however, is often unattainable due to reasons like secondary gain that clients obtain from their symptoms (Fishbain, 1994) and co-dependent relationships that preserve and/or foster symptoms and pathological attitudes (Cullen & Carr, 1999). Most frequently, however, psychoanalysts fail to successfully treat people with severe personality disorders (Katz, 2003). Neuroscience offers some reasons why such clients are difficult to treat.
We noted above that the neocortex, which roughly corresponds to the psychoanalytic ego (Solms & Panksepp, 2012), generally serves to inhibit emotional systems, while emotional systems generally arouse the neocortex/ego. There are many more connections from emotional systems to the neocortex than there are in the reverse direction, which means that emotions, especially when they run high, control our thoughts and that our neocortices are relatively ineffective in inhibiting emotions (LeDoux, 2013).
As therapists we hope that when an emotion becomes conscious, the client will be able to find a better outlet for its expression or to quell it in other ways. If, for example, a client's envy becomes conscious, he will abandon it, usually because of superego condemnation and find a means of achieving success that will quell the feelings of envy. This kind of solution takes time and involves a measure of cortical inhibition.
Unfortunately, clients with severe personality disorders, tend to be emotionally unstable, impulsive and often suicidal (Paris, 2005). They fail to exhibit a capacity or willingness to inhibit their feelings even when unbridled emotional expression only worsens their plight. In these cases, the revelation of a hitherto unconscious emotion may make matters worse by increasing emotional arousal and exacerbating a client's inability to
think rationally . Indeed, one study indicates that 20% of clients deteriorate during psychotherapy (Lambert, 2007). In neuroscientific terms, this happens when emotional systems overwhelm the rational and strategic capacities of the neocortex.
Psychoanalytic studies indicate that even when clients improve and therapy is considered to be a success by both client and therapist, cure is incomplete. Although therapy may improve the lives of clients, problems are weakened rather than eradicated (Pfeffer, 1963; Oremland, et al., 1975). Neuroscience offers reasons why psychotherapeutic cure is incomplete.
After fear-conditioning, a rat will be afraid of the conditioned stimulus (i.e., the tone) for the rest of its life. However, conditioning can be extinguished if the rat is repeatedly exposed to the tone without any following shock. Extinction, however, is not the same as forgetting. In order to forget, neural circuitry needs to be destroyed.
Neuroscientific research demonstrates that this does not happen. Following extinction, conditioning circuitry remains intact, which is to say the pathway encoding the conditioned stimulus (the tone) continues to have access to the central nucleus of the amygdala. Why then is the fear extinguished? Extinction is achieved by the creation of new circuitry that is created when the animal learns that a shock does not follow the tone. When people and animals learn anything, the learning process creates new circuitry that encodes the learned information (Kandel, 2006). In the case of FEAR extinction, the new circuitry inhibits the activity of the central nucleus of the amygdala .
The learning process is inaugurated by circuitry in medial parts of the rat's prefrontal cortex and by circuitry within the amygdala itself. Once created, this new circuitry inhibits the activity of the central nucleus and the rat no longer exhibits FEAR when exposed to the conditioned stimulus (the tone) (Sotres-Bayon, et al., 2004). Instead of erasing conditioning circuitry, extinction is an active form of learning that creates new circuitry.
This new circuitry competes with existing conditioning circuitry (Davis, et al., 2003),
and FEAR extinction is rarely permanent. Fear of the conditioned stimulus can re-emerge spontaneously at any time, for example, if the animal is returned to the cage where it was initially conditioned, or if it is subjected to an unexpected presentation of the unconditioned stimulus (i.e. a shock) (Myers & Davis, 2007; Chang, et al., 2009).
People with emotional problems have had conditioning experiences that have caused them to learn maladaptive ways of dealing with their problems. A man with a dictatorial father may learn to hate and oppose his father. In later life this circuitry will cause him to argue with his boss and be fired from a series of jobs. Psychotherapy reveals the client's unconscious anger with his father and helps him to see his irrational opposition to his boss. This is a learning process that is much like extinction because the analytic insights allow the client to learn a new and better way to behave at work. However, because the neural pathways encoding his old ways of behavior still exist, the client remains vulnerable to relapse during periods of stress. Thus, while psychotherapy can be a life-changing and even life-saving experience, it does not eradicate pathological tendencies.
I have indicated some of the ways that neuroscience can inform psychotherapy. No doubt there are many more. I hope to have convinced the reader that neuroscience offers objective facts about the ways that the emotional brain functions. These facts allow us to escape from relying so heavily on extrapolation from behavioral and verbal reports, which different clinicians interpret in different ways. Neuroscience is scientifically robust and Panksepp's taxonomy of seven basic emotional systems is a good starting point for understanding the emotional brain.