The Act of Creation

by Arthur Koestler

  The third contrast is between bodily postures and motions. The person who laughs tends to throw his head back by a vigorous contraction of the elevators in the neck; the person who weeps 'lets the head droop' (into the hands, on the table, or on somebody's shoulder). Laughter contracts the muscles and throws the body into violent motion -- banging the table or slapping one's knees; in weeping, the muscles go flabby, the shoulders slump forward, the whole posture reflects a 'breaking down', a 'letting go'.

  In the fourth place, vocalization in laughter -- roaring, giggling, chuckling, etc. -- is expressive of joie de vivre with aggressive overtones; but if weeping is accompanied by crying, the sounds express lament, appeals for sympathy.

  Finally, in laughter tension is suddenly exploded, emotion debunked; in weeping it is drained away in a gradual process which does not break the continuity of mood; there is no dis-owning of emotion -- thought and sentiment remain united to the end. Moreover, the gradual relief in weeping does not prevent the simultaneous generation of more emotion of the same type, so that the influx may balance the overflow, and relief is incomplete, or not even experienced as such.

  Why do we Weep?

  Let me discuss a few typical situations which may cause the shedding of tears.

  A. Raptness. Listening to the organ in a cathedral, looking at a majestic landscape from the top of a mountain, observing an infant hesitantly returning a smile, being in love -- any of these experiences may cause a welling-up of emotions, a moistening or overflowing of the eyes, while the body is becalmed and drained of its tensions. A few steps higher on the intensity-scale, and the "I" seems no longer to exist, to dissolve in the experience like a grain of salt in water; awareness becomes de-personalized and expands into 'the oceanic feeling of limitless extension and oneness with the universe'.*

  Here, then, we see the self-transcending emotions displayed in their purest form. Once you start fondling the smiling baby and making a fuss of it, an active, possessive element enters into the situation and the spell is broken. The purely self-transcending emotions do not tend towards action, but towards quiescence, tranquillity, and catharsis. Respiration and pulse-rate are slowed down, muscle-tone is lowered; 'entrancement' is a step towards the trance-like states induced by the contemplative techniques of Eastern mysticism and by certain drugs. The experience of 'the blending of the finite with the infinite' can become so intense that it evokes Faust's prayer: O Augenblick verweile -- let this moment last for eternity, let me die. But there is nothing morbid in this; it is a yearning for an even more complete communion, the ultimate catharsis or samadhi.

  The reason for their passive, quietistic nature is that the self-transcending emotions cannot be consummated by any specific voluntary action. You cannot take the mountain panorama home with you; the surest method to break the charm is clicking your camera. You cannot merge with the infinite or dissolve in the universe by any exertion of the body; and even in the most selfless forms of love and communion each individual remains an island. To be 'overwhelmed' by love, wonder, devotion, 'enraptured' by a smile, 'entranced' by beauty -- each verb expresses a passive state, a surrender; the surplus of emotion cannot be worked off in action -- it can be comummated only in internal, visceral and glandular, processes.

  These observations are again in keeping with the character of the two divisions of the autonomous nervous system. We have seen that the self-assertive emotions operate through the powerful adrenal-sympathico system which galvanizes the body into action under the stress of hunger, pain, rage, and fear. The parasympathetic division, on the other hand, never goes into action as a compact unit; it does not dispose of a powerful pep-hormone like adrenalin, acting directly on the body as a whole. The sympathetic division has been compared to the pedals of a piano, which affect all the notes sounded; the parasympathetic to the separate keys which act locally on various organs. In the main, its function is to counteract and to complement sympathico-adrenal excitation: to lower blood-pressure and pulse-rate, neutralize excesses of blood-sugar and acidity, to facilitate digestion and the disposal of body-wastes, to activate the flow of tears, etc. In other words, the general action of the para-sympathetic system is inward-directed, calming, and cathartic. All this, and other arguments of a more technical nature, point to the correlation of the participatory emotions with the parasympathetic system.*

  B. Mourning. A woman is notified of the sudden death of her husband. At first she is stunned, unable to believe the news; then she finds some relief in tears.

  Again, it is a situation in which nothing purposeful can be done, which does not beget action, but passive surrender -- 'giving in to grief'. And, again, the emotion originates in the experience of 'belonging to', 'belonging together', of a communion which transcends the boundaries of the self. Resentment, guilt, unconscious gratification, may, of course, enter into the widow's mixed feelings, but we are concerned at the moment only with her experience of identification and belonging. That experience, and the emotions generated by it, have not come to an end with the husband's death; on the contrary, they have at the same time become more intense and frustrated. The overflow of tears is insufficient to relieve her from this surplus of emotions; she weeps 'in grief', whereas the euphoric experiences of the previous section caused 'weeping in joy'.

  But the difference is in fact a matter of degrees. The moist eyes in the transfigured face of the young mother also reflect an emotion which cannot be completely consummated, lived out; the urge to transcend the self's boundaries, to break out of its insulation always carries a certain amount of frustration. Saints and mystics spend their lives trying to escape the prison of the flesh; Hemingway, who was not a saint, wrote of the 'heart-breaking profile' of his young Venetian contessa; and to be overwhelmed by beauty may indeed be as 'heart-breaking' as a widow's tears sweetened by self-pity. A long, enforced separation may be as painful as a final one; and there are cases of mourning where worship of the dead partner, with or without hope for a reunion in after-life, creates a more harmonious, if imaginary, communion than the actual partnership ever did.

  These continuous transitions between 'weeping in joy' and 'weeping in sorrow' reflect the relative nature of 'pleasure' and 'unpleasure' (Unlust, disphoria, as distinct from physical pain). Emotions have been called 'overheated drives'. A drive becomes 'overheated' when it has no immediate outlet; or when its intensity is so increased that the normal outlets are insufficient; or for both reasons. A moderate amount of overheating may be experienced as a pleasurable arousal, thrill, excitement, or appetite -- while anticipating (or imagining) the consummatory act. Even physical discomfort and pain are readily tolerated (for instance, in mountain-climbing or trout-fishing on an icy morning) in the pleasurable anticipation of the reward. But when the 'overheating' exceeds a critical level it is experienced as tension, stress, frustration, suffering. However, the pleasure-unpleasure tone is determined not only by the intensity of emotive pressure; it also depends on whether the pressure is increasing or decreasing. Intense frustration changes into incipient relief the moment the consummatory action has started -- or has merely come into sight. Decrease of tension is pleasurable -- up to a point. If the water-level, so to speak, falls below a critical point, there is a sensation of drying-up, of boredom and restlessness. At this stage increases of emotion are induced by various methods of seeking out thrills -- from wild-game hunting to horror comics and other forms of what one might call 'emotional window-shopping': the vicarious satisfactions derived from reading the social gossip columns or watching a strip-tease. In these cases the pleasurable experience is derived not from anticipating, but from imagining the reward; and the satisfaction obtained -- such as it is -- consists in the 'internal consummation' of those components in the complex drive which can be lived out in fantasy.

  Thus pleasure-unpleasure form a continuous scale of 'feeling-tones' which accompany emotion: the former indicating the progress (real, anticipated, or imagined) of a drive towards its consummation, the latter indi
cating its frustration.

  This leads us to a quasi three-dimensional theory of emotions (which sounds involved, but is probably still a woeful over-simplification). In the first place, we must obviously differentiate between the various emotions according to the nature of the drive, originating in various physiological, social, or 'psychogenic' [1] needs and urges -- hunger, sex, protection of offspring, curiosity (the 'exploratory drive'), conviviality, etc. To use a coarse but comfortable analogy, let each of these be represented by a different tap in a saloon-bar, which is turned on as the demand arises, each serving a beverage with a different flavour. In the second place, we have the pleasure-unpleasure scale, corresponding to the pressure in the tap -- whether the liquid flows smoothly, or gurgles and splutters because of air-locks or excess pressure. In the third place, we have the polarity between the self-assertive and participatory tendencies which enter into each emotion (for instance, possessiveness versus identification in maternal love); this could be represented by the relative proportion of alcohol and water in the liquid. We can thus distinguish between three variables or 'parameters' in every emotional experience: 'flavour' (hunger, love, curiosity); 'pressure', pleasant or unpleasant; and 'alcohol-content': toxic, i.e. aggressive-defensive, or soothing and cathartic.

  C. Relief. A woman whose son has been reported by the War Office as missing suddenly sees him walking into her room, safe and sound. Again the first reaction is shock and rigidity; then she flings herself into his arms, alternately laughing and weeping.

  Obviously there are two processes involved here. The first is the sudden, dramatic relief from anxiety; the other an overwhelming joy, love, tenderness. Some writers on the subject are apt to confuse these two reactions -- to regard all joyous emotion as due to relief from anxious tension. But clearly a tender reaction would be expected in any case from the mother on her son's return -- even if he were merely returning from a day at school, and there had been no previous anxiety. Vice versa, relief from anxiety in itself, though always pleasant, does not create tender feelings overflowing in tears. What happened in the present case is that the agony the woman endured had increased the intensity of her yearning and love; and that relief from anxiety had increased out of all proponion the gratification she would have felt on his return after an absence under normal circumstances.

  Let me be a little more explicit -- for the situation has, as we shall see, a direct bearing on the emotional reactions induced by works of dramatic art. The mother's sudden relief from anxiety could be verbalized as 'thank God you are not dead'. Up to that moment she had tried to control her fears, to banish from consciousness the terrible images of what may have been happening to her boy. Now she can let herself go, allow her emotions a free outlet. Hence the manic display of hugging, bustling, laughing, calling in the neighbours, and upsetting the tea kettle: she is working off the adrenalin of all that pent-up and suddenly released anxiety. But in the middle of these hectic activities there are moments when she glances at the embarrassed prodigal with a kind of incredulous, rapt expression and her eyes again overflow with soothing, peaceful tears. The alternation and overlapping of the two patterns -- one eruptive and agitated, the other gradual and cathartic -- indicate the now familiar two processes and the nature of the emotions acted out.

  These become even more evident in exclamations such as 'How silly of me to cry', followed by more bustling and merriment. The unexpected return of the boy was like a the 'bolt out of the blue' which cut short the tense narrative of her anxious fantasies; the tension has suddenly become redundant, and is disowned by reason. At other moments she is still unable 'to believe her eyes' and emotion wells up again. This may even include some unconscious resentment against the cause of so much needless worry, who stands in her room, sunburnt and grinning, unaware of the suffering he has caused: 'What a fool I have been to worry so much' may be translated as 'What a fool you have made of me'.

  'Laughing through one's tears' is caused by quickly oscillating mental states, where reason and emotion are alternately united and dissociated. A sudden shock which demands a major emotional readjustment is often followed by such oscillatory phases in which the subject alternately believes and disbelieves her eyes, until a full grasp of reality is reached on all levels. If instead of the happy ending, there had been a tragic one -- a telegram informing the woman of her boy's death -- then, instead of disbelieving her eyes, she would have been tempted to disbelieve the news; and while the happy mother behaves at moments as if the boy were still in danger, the bereaved mother may behave at times as if he were still alive. In the former case, the successive flashes of reality which disrupt the web of illusion bring happy relief; in the latter, each flash brings renewed despair. A person with psychotic dispositions may, however, cling to the illusion, and it will be the matrix of reality which disintegrates instead. The 'hollow' laughter in certain forms of insanity seems to echo the effort of reversing the process of adjustment -- the effort of going mad in the teeth of a world that is sane.

  In the milder forms of paranoia induced by the stage and screen, the oscillations between illusion and reality are deliberately created and prolonged. The cathartic effect of the antique mysteries and of the modern drama alike are derived from man's unique faculty of believing and disbelieving his eyes in the same blink.

  D. When a woman weeps in sympathy with another person's sorrow (or joy), she partially identifies herself with that person by an act of projection, introjection, or empathy -- whatever you like to call it. The same is true when the 'other person' is a heroine on the screen or in the pages of a novel. But it is essential to distinguish here between two emotional processes -- although they are experienced simultaneously and mixed together.

  The first is the act of identification itself -- the fact that the subject has for the moment more or less forgotten her own existence and participates in the existence of another, at another place and time. This in itself is a self-transcending, gratifying and 'ennobling' experience for the simple reason that while it lasts, the subject, Mrs. Smith, is prevented from thinking of her own anxieties, ambitions, and grudges against Mr. Smith. In other words, the act of identification temporarily inhibits the self-asserting tendencies.

  The second process is mediated by the first: the act of identification leads to the experiencing of vicarious emotions. When Mrs. Smith is 'sharing Mrs. Brown's sorrow' there is in the first place the sharing, and in the second, the sorrow. The first is an unselfish participatory experience which makes her feel 'good' -- in the literal, not in the cheap sense (when self-congratulatory or gloating sentiments are present, there is no true identification). The second is the sorrow -- a vicarious experience, but genuinely felt. It may of course be joy or anxiety instead. The tears of Mrs. Smith at the happy ending when the lovers on the screen are reunited or the baby's life is saved in the nick of time, are released by the same process as the tears of the woman whose son has suddenly returned: relief from anxiety, and a hot surge of joy.

  The anxiety which grips the spectator of a thriller-film, though vicarious, is nevertheless real; it is reflected in the familiar physical symptoms -- palpitations, tensed muscles, sudden 'jumps' of alarm. The same applies to the anger felt at the machinations of the perfidious villain on the screen, whom Mexican audiences have been known to riddle with bullets. This leads us to an apparent paradox which is basic to the understanding of all dramatic art forms. We have seen that on the one hand the self-transcending emotions -- participation, projection, identification -- inhibit the self-asserting tendencies: they soothe, calm, eliminate worry and desire, purge body and mind of its tensions. On the other hand, the act of self-transcending identification may stimulate the surge of anger, fear, cruelty, which, although experienced on behalf of somebody else, nevertheless belong to the self-assertive, aggressive-defensive class and display all their bodily symptoms. The mother's bustling, laughter, agitation on her son's return, shows the classic 'adreno-toxic' pattern, characteristic of the self-assertive emot
ions -- although her anxiety was centred not on herself, but experienced on behalf of her son. Anger, fear, and the related 'emergency-reactions' use the same physiological mechanism whether the threat is directed at one's own person, or the person with whom one has identified oneself. They are always 'self-assertive' -- although the 'self' has momentarily changed its address -- by being, for instance, projected into the handsome and guileless heroine on the screen. Righteous indignation about injustices inflicted on others can generate behaviour just as fanatical as the sting of a personal insult. Self-sacrificing devotion to a creed bred ruthless inquisitors -- 'the worst of madmen is a saint run mad'.

  The glory and the tragedy of the human condition are closely related to the fact that under certain circumstances the participatory tendencies may serve as mediators or vehicles for emotions belonging to the opposite class; whereas under different circumstances the two tendencies counteract and harmoniously balance each other. We shall return to this subject, from a different angle, in the next section; but let me note in passing that the preceding remarks on the various ways in which the two tendencies interact on the psychological level are again in keeping with the facts (as far as known) about the different modes of interaction between the two divisions of the autonomous nervous system, which may be antagonistic, compensatory, cathartic, or catalytic, according to conditions. [2]