The Origins of Our Emotional Life: Our Earliest Feelings

“'Once I asked Mr. Darwin which of the years of a child’s life were the most subject to incubative impressions,’ said Richmond [Darwin’s portrait artist]. His answer was, ‘Without doubt, the first three.’" –Browne, 2002, p. 451

• How are we to understand what motivates individuals and groups of human beings?
• How do feelings and reason fit into this process?
• What about development and the self and character structure?
• What leads us to think or perceive as we do, or to act or not act?
• How do we understand our behaviors?

We can probably agree that these are very complex issues and that there are a variety of perspectives that can be brought to bear on them.

Tomkins suggested “… that what we ordinarily think of as motivation is not a readily identifiable internal organization resident in any single mechanism but is a rather crude, loose, approximate conceptual net we throw over the human being as she or he lives in her or his social habitat” (in Demos, 1995, p. 52).

Data from the worlds of neuroscience, cognition, psychology, philosophy, clinical work, and so on have contributed to our exploring these questions. Plutchik (1962), Piaget (1969), Knapp (1987), Basch (1988), Lichtenberg (1988), and others provided summaries and ideas from various fields. Recently, discoveries in biology have led to contributions by evolutionary biologists (e.g. Mayr, 2001) and neuroscientists (Panksepp, 1998; Panksepp and Biven, 2012). For example, Panksepp and Biven (2012) have combined biological drives and affect psychology to hypothesize seven major motivational patterns: SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY (caps are from Panksepp and Biven).

We turn now to the embryology of our emotional life, our inborn feeling patterns—our “primary affects.”

Primary Affects

We have suggested that our earliest, nine inborn feelings—“primary affects”—are key to our understanding human development and our emotional life. The baby has very few early expressions of feelings. What are they? How do they work?

Tomkins (1981, in Demos, 1995) asks us to:

“Consider the nature of the problem. The innate activators had to include the drives as innate activators but not to be limited to drives as exclusive activators. The neonate, for example, must respond with innate fear to any difficulty in breathing but also be afraid of other objects. Each affect had to be capable of being activated by a variety of unlearned stimuli. The child must be able to cry at hunger or loud sounds as well as a diaper pin stuck in his or her flesh. Each affect had, therefore, to be activated by some general characteristic of neural stimulation, common to both internal and external stimuli, and not too stimulus-specific like a releaser” (Demos, 1995, p. 45, emphasis in original).

Psychology has many ways of trying to understand emotional life and human interactions. These range across emotional and cognitive theories, classical psychoanalysis, ego psychology, object relations, intersubjectivity, self-psychology, attachment theory, and others. It appears that our earliest feelings underlie all these concepts. The primary affects form the foundation of emotional development and the theories and therapies which result.

Consider, for example, the importance of early attachment issues. Demos (1989) contends that primary affects underlie attachment ideas:

“…attachment theory as represented in the works of Bowlby (1969); Ainsworth et al. (1978); Sroufe and Waters (1977)… argues that there is a preorganized behavioral, emotional, perceptual system specialized for attachment which has been inherited from our primate ancestors and is designed to decrease the physical distance between the infant and the caregiver in time of danger. By contrast, the view presented here [that is, Tomkins and colleagues] speaks of highly organized and coordinated systems at a more basic and general level, for example, the perceptual, cognitive, affective, motor, and homeostatic systems, which are designed to function equally well in the inanimate or animate world, and in safe as well as dangerous moments” (p. 293).

So, let’s now examine these earliest feelings—what they are and how they work.

The Origins of Our Emotional Life: Our Earliest Feelings

In our discussion of feelings up to this point, we have briefly explored how feelings have been understood and studied up to the present time. As we examined last month, there is a huge literature in this field—appropriately so due to the significance of our emotions in influencing our actions and character structure.

Now, we are interested in exploring the embryology of our emotions, what feelings exist at the beginning of our lives, and how they work. We have described how humans have innate, inherited feelings. These are called “primary affects.” We will discuss the idea that these earliest feelings are built-in responses to stimuli which then become our more commonly understood feelings.

The early caregiving processes are crucial for emotional development going well or getting derailed. There are, of course, serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression which appear to have a strong biological component. However, even in these illnesses, twin studies and other data suggest there is some element of “nurture” which is involved. In any case, we are focusing here on emotional development in the approximately 95% of the population which does not have a biological tendency to these major illnesses.

We previously discussed the tremendous advances in understanding feelings made especially in the latter half of the 20th Century. These advances include both psychological and neurobiological aspects.

To review: Why this focus on feelings? Two reasons in particular. First, feelings motivate us. Feelings lead to action. Feelings combine with self-reflection and reason to cause behaviors. Second, feelings are crucial because they allow for communication.

Back to Darwin
We must return to Darwin for a moment. In his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin explored various expressions of emotions and concluded that some were innate and universal. He made the case that these universal expressions of emotions were present in Homo sapiens and evolved from animals.

As Paul Ekman noted:

“I believe most scientists consider the universality of facial expressions of emotion to be well established... Darwin’s central point is well established: a number of emotions have a universal expression. This would have pleased Darwin, for he acknowledged that not every emotion has an expression, let alone a universal one. But to find evidence of universals for six to eight emotions is consistent with an evolutionary view” (1998, pages 390-391, emphasis in original).

The data supporting universal, inborn expressions comes from a variety of sources: infant development, anthropology and cross-cultural studies, and neurophysiology. As children develop, they may be able to control their facial expressions to some extent, although high-speed film will still document the original expression. In addition, cultural differences can affect the later expression of emotions. For readers interested in these nature/nurture issues, Paul Ekman’s Foreword and Afterword to Darwin’s 1872 book are well worth reading.

What Feelings Are There? And How Do They Work?

So, now we turn to Silvan Tomkins and his colleagues. Tomkins has been especially helpful in advancing our understanding of feelings. Tomkins was born in 1911. He studied and worked at a variety of educational centers: University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Princeton, City University of New York, and Rutgers. He published extensively, with most of his writing contained in a four-volume work titled Affect Imagery Consciousness (1962, 1963, 1991, 1992).

He was diagnosed with cancer in 1990 and died in 1991, shortly after his 80th birthday. His younger collaborators are all important contributors in their own right.

They include: Virginia Demos, Paul Ekman, Carroll Izard, and Don Nathanson.

Tomkins said essentially this:

“There seem to be a small number of built-in feelings, and I want to tell you what they are and how they work.”

Or, in the extended version:

“I agree with Darwin, the neurobiologists and the infant researchers who suggest there are a discrete number of inherited, innate feelings with corresponding facial and bodily expressions. These feelings link up with experience and combine with each other to form our more complex emotional life and personality. I think I can tell you what these earliest feelings are and how they operate.”

However, a few caveats before we start. There is lively scientific controversy about how many of these earliest feelings exist, and even about how to conceptualize and think about them. So we do not need to get too hung up on whether there are six or eight or 10 of these earliest built-in feelings (e.g. see Panksepp, 1998; Panksepp and Bevin, 2012). It is the larger picture—seeing these feelings and appreciating them as the embryology of our emotional life—which is important. Tomkins himself shifted from eight to nine later in his life (Tomkins, 1991).

Also, Tomkins was well aware of the distinctions between conscious and unconscious feelings, between cortical cognitive processes and subcortical processes, and between drives and feelings. For example, in this model affects are seen as amplifiers of drives. Some of this is technically and clinically important and is discussed elsewhere (e.g. Izard, 1977; Holinger, 2008). But, for our purposes here, we need to focus on these built-in feelings, how they may work, and how they motivate human behavior.

So, back to the question: What are the earliest feelings (“primary affects”) of human beings?

Tomkins and others (e.g. see Gedo, 2005, and Basch, 1988) defined these earliest feelings, or affects, as biological responses to stimuli. These responses are seen in the skin, vocal apparatus, musculature, autonomic nervous system, and particularly in the face.

The Face

The face turns out to be a remarkable signaling system. It has many muscles that create nuances of expression, and later in his life Tomkins emphasized the importance of the skin of the face in communication. Babies tend to focus especially on the eyes and mouth of the person at whom they are looking. This makes sense, in that so many of the feelings are communicated through the small muscles surrounding the eyes and mouth. [See illustrations of facial anatomy from: Darwin C (1872). The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Third Edition (P. Ekman, ed), New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pages 29-30.]

Darwin and Tomkins were both intrigued with the evolution of the face, the expression of feelings, and communication (Ekman, 1973). Tomkins also became particularly concerned with the role feelings played in the motivation of human behavior (1991).

The Earliest Feelings

Ultimately, Tomkins suggested research showed humans had nine such innate universal feelings:

1. Interest
2. Enjoyment
3. Surprise
4. Distress
5. Anger
6. Fear
7. Shame
8. Disgust (a reaction to noxious tastes)
9. Dissmell (a reaction to noxious smells)

There are also lower and higher levels of these feelings. Thus, the feelings tend to range from low to high as follows:

• Interest—Excitement
• Enjoyment—Joy
• Surprise—Startle
• Distress—Anguish
• Anger—Rage
• Fear—Terror
• Shame—Humiliation
• And greater levels of Disgust and Dissmell

How Are These Feelings Expressed?

What do these “feelings” look like? Remember, at this point in infancy, they are referred to as biological reactions to various types of stimuli. Only later will the person be able to put into words her subjective sense of what is going on inside and link that with a facial expression.

So what are these facial, bodily, and vocal manifestations?

Interest is shown with the eyebrows slightly lowered or raised; there is concentrated looking and listening; the mouth may be a little open.

Enjoyment elicits a smile, with lips widened up and out.

Surprise is associated with eyebrows up, eyes wide open and blinking, and the mouth in an “O” shape. Because affects occur rapidly—in milliseconds—the characteristic surprise expression is often seen tinged with, e.g. the expression of distress or fear or enjoyment.

Distress is revealed by crying, arched eyebrows, the corners of the mouth turned down, tears, and rhythmic sobbing.

Anger is shown by a frown, eyes narrowed, a clenched jaw, and a red face.

Fear is signaled by the eyes frozen open; skin pale, cold, and sweating; facial trembling, and hair erect.

Shame is revealed by the lowering of the eyelids, and loss of muscle tone in the face and neck causing the head to hang down.

Disgust (a reaction to noxious tastes) elicits protruding lip and tongue.

Dissmell (a reaction to noxious odors) causes the upper lip and nose to be raised and the head to be turned away.

These are our earliest feelings. They are the embryology of our emotional life. Now we need to discuss what triggers these feelings—i.e., how they work.

Good news: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently and formally come out with policy asserting that physical punishment is child abuse and should be banned (2016). This stance is in response to consistent data showing physical punishment to be associated with increased violence and emotional disorders. Thus far, 49 countries have banned physical punishment in all settings and more than 100 countries have banned it in schools.

Book of the Month: No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame
Author: Janet Lansbury | JLML Press, 2014 (This is a wonderful book for parents. It insightfully discusses feelings, behaviors, discipline, and socializing.)

About me

I am the former Dean of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Professor of Psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center, and a founder of the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy. My focus is on infant and child development. I am also the author of the book What Babies Say Before They Can Talk.