The cognitive unconscious

• Digby Tantam

• New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling

SEX

• we perceive that the censor in order to apply its activity with discernment must know what it is repressing. In fact if we abandon all the metaphors representing the repression as the impact of blind forces, we are compelled to admit that the censor must choose and in order to choose must be aware of so doing [my emphasis]. [… I]t is not sufficient that it discern the condemned drives; it must also apprehend them as to be repressed, which implies in it at the very least an awareness of its activity.

• Being and Nothingness, pp 75-76

ELECTRICITY

Cognitive unconscious

Cognitive unconscious

The psychopathology of everyday life

Cartesian Meditations

• Lectures at Sorbonne, in 1929

• Remove everything that is alien by reduction

• Still cannot account for the other, who exists as a subjectivity in their own right

• Can only account by empathy

• Perceptions of the other’s body

On the problem of empathy

Edith Stein

St. Teresa Benedicta al Cruce

On the problem of empathy

• Empathy is primordial

• It is neither memory, imagination or expectation

• We experience another’s emotional experience directly, but not as our own although we experience the other person as a primordial being: Stein distinguishes between empathy and ‘contagion of feelings’

• It is the basis of our understanding of God, and God’s abiity to understand us completely

• She agrees with Lipps that there is a ‘negative empathy’ that blocks empathic sharing, and a reflexive empathy that augments or rehearses feeling: conscious control

• She considers affective empathy and also motor empathy e.g. going through the actions of the acrobat in our mind

• Edith Stein on her fellow research fellow’s work:

• “The uninhibited investigation of this ‘solus ipse’, however, again and again comes up against references testifying to the fact that it is itself not the ultimate: not ultimately fundamental and not the ultimate light.” extract from a translation of ‘Martin Heideggers Existentialphilosophie’, in Edith Stein, Endliches und Ewiges Sein. Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins, Gesamtausgabe, bd. 11/12 (Freiburg: Herder, 2006), ‘Anhang’, pp. 445–500

Alternative formulations

• Jung’s collective unconscious

– Folk lore

• ‘Memes’: Dawkins and followers

– Words e.g. ‘nerd’, or images. Regularly used in social media

• ‘Extended minds’: Andy Clark and David Chambers

– Books, the internet

• Trevarthen

– Signalling or ‘messaging’ (similar to Daniel Stern)

– Mirroring of mothers and infants (with Brazelton)

– Mimesis

• Learning theory

– Looking glass self of Cooley

– The ‘tell’

The orbitofrontal cortex as cache? fNIRS evidenceBrink, T. T., Urton, K., Held, D., Kirilina, E., Hofmann, M. J., Klann-Delius, G., et al. (2011). The role of orbitofrontal cortex in

processing empathy stories in 4- to 8-year-old children. Front Psychol, 2, 80.

Negative affective empathy

Positive affective empathy

Logical cognitive empathy

Non-logical cognitive empathy

Schurmann M, Hesse MD, Stephan KE, Saarela M, Zilles K, Hari R, et al. Yearning to yawn: the neural basis of contagious yawning. Neuroimage. [doi: DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.10.022]. 2005;24(4):1260-4.

08/04/2023

24www.nspc.org.uk

The Wright brothers

Armies, churches, organizations, and communities often engage in activities for example, marching, singing, and dancing that lead group members to act in synchrony with each other.….Across three experiments, people acting in synchrony with others cooperated more in subsequent group economic exercises, even in situations requiring personal sacrifice. Our results also showed that positive emotions need not be generated for synchrony to foster cooperation. In total, the results suggest that acting in synchrony with others can increase cooperation by strengthening social attachment among group membersWiltermuth and Heath, 2009, Psychological Science

Synchrony

Gaze following and the interbrain

22 May 09 ARC club and book launch

Jan Swammerdam, Author of De Bybel der Natuure

Location and overlap of brain lesions according to emotional versus cognitive empathy impairment-groups.

Shamay-Tsoory S G et al. Brain 2009;132:617-627

© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Tantam, D. (2003). The flavour of emotions. Psychology and Psychotherappy, 76, 23-45.

Emotions in psychotherapy are considered in the light of contemporary emotion theory, of neuroimaging, of narratives about emotion, and in relation to emotional disorder. One difficulty in comparing these different theories is that the term "emotion" is itself used differently. According to some theories, emotions are discrete conscious experiences, but according to others, a person may have and be influenced by emotions of which they are not aware. "Unconscious" emotions are of particular interest to the psychotherapist. The wide range of happenings that are associated with them are considered, and a general term proposed for them-"emotor". The main point of the paper is to establish that emotors may have an emotional flavour which is capable of inducing an emotion in a person who experiences the emotor, and that this is not the same process as a person reacting emotionally to an emotor. Emotors may acquire their emotional flavour, and their capacity to induce emotions, independent of a subject experiencing the emotion. This, it is argued, is one reason why we may experience emotions not just as reactions, but as given to us by the world. It may also be an explanation for some aesthetic or religious feelings being experienced as both transcendent and real

Moral scenarios

• second cousins engaging in consensual incest

• a man eating his already-dead dog,

• a congressman accepting

• bribes

• a lawyer prowling hospitals for victims

• a person shoplifting,

• a student stealing library books

Fig. 1. Mean moral judgments as a function of beverage taste.

Eskine K J et al. Psychological Science 2011;22:295-299

Copyright © by Association for Psychological Science

• Herz, R. S., Eliassen, J., Beland, S., & Souza, T. (2004). Neuroimaging evidence for the emotional potency of odor-evoked memory. Neuropsychologia, 42(3), 371-378. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.08.009

• Kadohisa, M. (2013). Effects of odor on emotion, with implications. Front Syst Neurosci, 7, 66. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2013.00066

• Larsson, M., & Willander, J. (2009). Autobiographical odor memory. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1170, 318-323. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.03934.x

• Matsunaga, M., Bai, Y., Yamakawa, K., Toyama, A., Kashiwagi, M., Fukuda, K., . . . Ohira, H. (2013). Brain-immune interaction accompanying odor-evoked autobiographic memory. PLoS ONE, 8(8), e72523. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0072523

• Skarlicki, D. P., Hoegg, J., Aquino, K., & Nadisic, T. (2013). Does injustice affect your sense of taste and smell? The mediating role of moral disgust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 852-859. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.03.011

• Willander, J., & Larsson, M. (2007). Olfaction and emotion: the case of autobiographical memory. Mem Cognit, 35(7), 1659-1663. Herz, R. S., Eliassen, J., Beland, S., & Souza, T. (2004). Neuroimaging evidence for the emotional potency of odor-evoked memory. Neuropsychologia, 42(3), 371-378. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.08.009

• Kadohisa, M. (2013). Effects of odor on emotion, with implications. Front Syst Neurosci, 7, 66. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2013.00066

• Larsson, M., & Willander, J. (2009). Autobiographical odor memory. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1170, 318-323. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.03934.x

• Matsunaga, M., Bai, Y., Yamakawa, K., Toyama, A., Kashiwagi, M., Fukuda, K., . . . Ohira, H. (2013). Brain-immune interaction accompanying odor-evoked autobiographic memory. PLoS ONE, 8(8), e72523. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0072523

• Skarlicki, D. P., Hoegg, J., Aquino, K., & Nadisic, T. (2013). Does injustice affect your sense of taste and smell? The mediating role of moral disgust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 852-859. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.03.011

• Willander, J., & Larsson, M. (2007). Olfaction and emotion: the case of autobiographical memory. Mem Cognit, 35(7), 1659-1663.

Skarlicki, D. P., Hoegg, J., Aquino, K., & Nadisic, T. (2013). Does injustice affect your sense of taste and smell? The mediating role of moral disgust.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 852-859.

Listen to the Muzak

“…Over a two week period, French and German music was played on alternate days from an in-store display of French and German wines. French music led to French wines outselling German ones, whereas German music led to the opposite effect on sales. Responses to a questionnaire suggested that customers were unaware of these effects of music on their product choices…” North, A., Hargreaves, D., & McKendrick, J. (1997). In-store music affects product choice. Nature, 390, 132.

10-11 April 2008, Sydney

Pre-conference workshop

Thanks for listening

• Slides on Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/md1dt/

• Information about NSPC at www.nspc.org.uk

• Information about clinical service at www.dilemmas.org

• Information about me on Wikipedia

• That’s as far as we go, folks

• So, thanks for listening