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Emotions are perhaps the most important topic to understand in relation to the brain. Not just because they are so personal, so self-involving, but also because they are the source of much human suffering. The World Health Organization has said that mental health is currently a global crisis, and emotional disorders are a central part of the problem.
This is not due to a lack of research on emotion. Emotions have been extensively studied, both psychologically and neurobiologically. But the question is, what have we learned? The answer depends on a far deeper question. What is an emotion? Until we answer that question, knowing what we have learned will remain out of reach, since we have to know what we are looking for in order to find it.
One answer was provided in the 19th century by Darwin, according to whom, emotions are mental states that we have inherited from our animal ancestors by virtue of having inherited some feature of their nervous system. He in fact often described animal behavior in human emotional terms: cheerful, proud, scornful, content, jealous, contemptuous. A reporter once asked him why he talked this way: He replied that it was kinder, and that the public was more likely to accept animals being like humans than humans being like animals. Another kind of answer came from Williams James, who argued that emotions are conscious experiences that result when the signals from body responses feed back to the brain. A third view is that emotions are cognitive interpretations of situations, which in some ways also goes back to James. All three positions have active adherents today.
Mark Solms' book, The Hidden Spring, is squarely in the Darwinian tradition with regards to emotions, but with a very strong Freudian slant to both the topic, and to the history of psychology. Solms is an excellent writer, and his book tells an engaging story about his scientific career. Before reading it, I was aware of his general approach to the mind but enjoyed learning more a