Alerith's Theoretical Castles

What Are Emotions?

Generally, an emotion is the psychic comprehension of an unconscious conclusion. It is an imprecise way of navigating our reality, based on archaic information and the immediate impression we gain from our senses.

Emotion is the most immediate method with which the body interfaces with the environment. It guides us in our response to a situation in a similar way to how conscious deduction helps guide our actions. Unlike conscious thought, however, emotions are abstract, non-literal sensations. Their meanings are general and usually at least partly derived from incorrect or wholly fantastical conclusions, which makes them less reliable guides for behavior than rational thoughts.

Emotion is, in a sense, the language of the body and its intrinsic instincts as it communicates to the mind. We ‘feel’ things, and can interpret what that means in order to gain some sense of the reality of our internal self. The intrinsic logic of emotions plays a major role in the way we organize ourselves socially. Even though this emotional logic is irrational in many ways, we’re quite accustomed to its operation and don’t expect it to be rational or efficient. This shows how innate emotional causality is to us, and how long-standing it is to our species.

Emotion is a nuanced, multi-layered way of experiencing our environment which leads to the phenomenon of human creativity. The reason why music and colors evoke an emotional response is because they are things brought into our psyche through the senses. They relate directly to our unconscious notions of the world and therefore evoke emotional sensations; our recognition of the meaning in the unconscious. Without the irrational conceptions which underlay our emotional responses, there may not be such things as music and art.

The sensation of an emotion may be quite literal and physical in a way. It may be that the sensation is the nervous system’s direct perception of its own chemical state. If this is so, it would offer an explanation for why emotions are such temporary phenomena which are subject to one’s physical state and environment. The chemical state of our brain – really, our whole body – is constantly changing in response to what’s happening both outside and inside of ourselves. With these changes, our mood also shifts, sometimes in subtle ways.

Emotional states fade with adaptation to a stimulus. This correlates with what we see in the long-term use of drugs, the longer a certain chemical is used, the more tolerance we build toward it. Just like an administered drug, one would need perpetually greater amounts of neurotransmitters – dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin, and the like – to perpetually maintain an emotion. There seems to be a natural threshold of neurotransmitter levels which results in the transience of any psychological state. It’s possible that neurotransmitters become depleted over time with greater degrees of use as well, and so we could expect the sensation of an emotional state to not just plateau, but to decline over time.


What Constitutes Emotional Deductions?

According to the theory of analytical psychology (and my own personal observations), we are born with perhaps thousands of unconscious preconceived notions about how the world works. Some of these notions manifest as the Archetypes which Jung described, but I believe there are countless others of lesser importance to the psyche which work to form the intricacy of our thoughts every day. These notions are a primary basis of our intuition and emotions.

Added to these collective, universal concepts are our personal notions formed through interaction with our culture and the rest of the world. These alter the way we approach our instincts – the collective notions – and make their manifestation more unique to us. And so, the potential meanings of an object - a certain color or symbol, etc. - are narrowed into a selected few. This is why different people will have different emotional reactions to the same thing depending on their personal development.

Emotions aren’t just formed from unconscious notions, however, they are obviously affected by our conscious thoughts as well. Our conscious mind interacts with the unconscious, and we feel our own thoughts, and react emotionally to our conscious conclusions. These conscious conclusions also shape our worldview, which directly affects the unconscious content within us.

As noted, sense perception plays quite directly into our emotional responses as well. Physical sensations are perhaps the most direct evocation of emotional states; for example, pain often induces fear or anger, human touch produces feelings of calm, warmth and satiety. These reactions are involuntary and in large part universal, they are intrinsic to the body and mind from the time we're born.

And so, with the congealing of all this information, our nervous system produces a plethora of feelings and moods; the unconscious conclusions which define our experience.