There are millions of emotions in psychotherapy

Photo by Jon Moore on Unsplash

You may be familiar with the idea that there are a small number of basic emotions. Paul Ekman and his colleagues proposed six: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. These were linked with cross-cultural facial expressions and non-verbal behaviours. The field moved on a lot since then, and various researchers (including Ekman himself) created longer lists, often using different methods to classify these basic emotions. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp conducted animal research that concluded that mammals tend to have seven distinct innate affective systems (he called them command systems): SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY. His results proposed that when these brain systems are activated, we tend to show the relevant behaviours.

Of course, these ideas have been challenged, and there are more complex models of emotion, and I will mention one or two shortly. However, this idea that there is a core set of basic emotions influences what a lot of therapists do in their work. Having taught psychotherapists for a couple of decades, I can share that I find many of my students arrive in training already with the idea that people struggle to experience some of these basic emotions for whatever reason, and that the goal of the therapist is to help the client experience those particular emotions. It is common that so often we (therapists) may experience it as a kind of breakthrough when client finally allows themselves to cry, and experience their pain, when previously they have avoided it.

Some of my students are influenced by Freud’s idea of the unconscious in psychoanalysis, and think that these basic emotions are what is repressed by the client. Others are influenced by Leslie Greenberg’s ideas from emotion-focused therapy, which suggest that basic primary emotions are avoided and masked by secondary emotions more easily integrated into the pattern of ourselves. Others again are influenced by Carl Roger’s ideas from client-centred therapy, who may view some sorts of emotions as incongruent with our self-concept.

To be clear, I admire the work of these theorists, and I know they are definitely onto something, not least because of my own personal and professional experiences. But I do think something is lost when we frame our main goal as therapists as helping the client experience avoided basic (or primary) emotions.

To show as an example, I may often hear trainees express the idea that a client ‘has trouble expressing anger’. Their thought seems reasonable because we see their client engage in people-pleasing behaviour towards their spouse, and fail to respond with (probably) appropriate anger to a variety of situations that unfolded with their spouse. But a brief exploration of the rest of their client’s experience shows that they may have little trouble expressing anger towards their children, their cousins, nearby drivers or while venting online. The problem doesn’t seem to be that they can’t express anger, not exactly. What’s more is that this client often spends considerable time in therapy describing their spouse’s inconsiderate or selfish behaviour precisely because they (the client) are angry, and may well know it, but don’t express it in towards their spouse in a way we typically associate with anger. Sometimes, the client may even hope to make the therapist angry on their behalf.

It is possible that the idea that there are basic emotions (or core affective systems), is slightly misleading to therapists, and we need some ideas about emotions that go a little further. Certainly, some thinkers in the field of emotions, have challenged this idea of a core set of basic emotions.

Famously, the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett has taken aim at this idea. In her thought, the brain (and body) is a thermodynamic system which — when out of equilibrium — create a signal which is experienced through the filter of cultural and linguistic norms. In other words, as we develop into adults, we are mastering a cultural and linguistic system for self-understanding, with the point being that there can be big gap between the map and the territory when it comes to experiencing ourselves. The same uncomfortable body signal might be understood as anxiety or illness depending on how we interpret it. This idea has been put forward as part of the reason why AI is not so good at reading our emotions, though it’s good at predicting our behavioural intentions, which are certainly an aspect of emotion.

Professor Barrett ideas about emotion, and those of Doctor Panksepp (who wrote about seven core affective systems in the brain), have come into conflict of some kind, with mutual critique of each other’s methodology. Clearly there does seem to be an issue. Either I’m born with a brain system that drives angry behaviour regardless of my upbringing and culture, or I’m not, goes the logic. However, it has always seemed to me that they are likely both right.

I appreciate the metaphor of a tree, in thinking that brain organization is a hierarchy with affective systems like RAGE and PLAY as the roots or stem, while the complex, differentiated experiences mediated by language are like the branches and leaves.

Of course, a tree metaphor already appears in the history of emotion theory. ‘Subtypes’ of emotion been connected to a common core, such as in Parrott: joy differentiates into cheerfulness, zest, contentment, pride, optimism, enthrallment and relief! These further divide again: zest becomes enthusiasm, zeal, excitement, thrill and exhilaration. But this tree’s hierarchy is made of logical categories, not processes moving through a system.

The tree metaphor I like describes a mental process that connects the innate affective systems at our root, with the branches, the complex, interpretive structure through which we experience emotions. For me, Freud’s idea that our most basic drives connect with ‘objects’ (mental representations which inhabit my mind), creates the link between these levels.

So, the first reading glasses that age made me buy, carry the soft whisper of death, while also a rite of passage into advanced adulthood, and conferment of a scholarly aesthetic that is prideful, ridiculous and comforting, all at the same time. Ask me how my glasses make me feel! Then ask me how I feel about footballs, hit songs, feeling alone in a crowd, and large language models. In this way, even the simplest of drives in us inhabit — in complex ways — our experiences of life.

There are things deep in us, that we may well avoid, as Freud thought, and they are certainly emotional. But in the tendrils through which they reach into our daily experience, and into our therapy sessions, are complex, unique, and innumerable.

There is a quote I’d like to take out of context, by author Neal Stephenson:

“But this was how the mind worked. The mind couldn’t think about the End of the World all the time. It needed the occasional break, a romp through the trivial. Because it was through trivia that the mind was anchored in reality, as the largest oak tree was rooted, ultimately, in a system of rootlets no larger than the silver hairs on the president’s head.”

The tree metaphor was upside down, but never mind.

Even with the simplest roots in affective systems in the brain, through becoming anchored in complex ways to our experience, might our emotions be beyond counting.