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On Preventing Another Century of Misunderstanding:

Toward a Psychoethology of Human Experience and
a Psychoneurology of Affect: Commentary by Jaak
Panksepp (Bowling Green, Ohio)
Jaak Panksepp

Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403,

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Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Jaak Panksepp (2000) On Preventing Another Century of Misunderstanding: Toward a Psychoethology
of Human Experience and a Psychoneurology of Affect: Commentary by Jaak Panksepp (Bowling Green, Ohio),
Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:2, 240-255, DOI:
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Most of our group were just tourists, peering at

one culture from the capsule of another. Only Bob
was prepared to live on the border. But he was full of
ambivalence. Like the Zairean medical students, he
did not much like Chinese society; for him it lacked
warmth. At the same time he was deeply attracted to
the tradition of Chinese medicine.
So, although it is perhaps a scandal that the two
aspects of psychology are distrustful of each other.
Whittle is right, these are not just aspects, but selfsufficient cultures. In Canada, for all our talk of multiculturalism, we have not yet managed to become com-

Jaak Panksepp
fortable with the fault-line that runs between the
Anglos and the French, let alone with our many other
cultural splits. Within psychology, we are not comfortable with our split, but perhaps by recognizing it as a
cultural one, we psychologists can know that the move
to make is toward multiculturalism.
Keith Oatley
Dept. of Human Development & Applied Psychology
OISE-University of Toronto
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Canada M5S IV6

On Preventing Another Century of Misunderstanding: Toward a Psychoethology of Human Experience

and a Psychoneurology of Affect
Commentary by Jaak Panksepp (Bowling Green, Ohio)

Whittle's gentle complaint provides fertile ground for

sharing some of my own thoughts on this contentious
topic-the chasm between analytic-dissective and
synthetic-integrative approaches to understanding the
mind. I will take this opportunity to share what has
been on my mind for the last 30 years rather frankly
concerning our continuing failure to have a unified
and coherent mind-brain-behavior science.
The one thing all might agree on is that the experimental psychology that emerged during the past century has yet to give us a lasting and coherent science
of the human or animal condition. In my estimation,
this is largely due to the fact that it never really came
to terms with the evolutionary dynamics and epigenetic complexities of ancient regions of the mammalian brain. All too often it skirted the most profound
and central issues of our lives-the clarification of the
many internal impulses and feelings that guide the
intentional actions and choices we routinely make
each day. For quite a while, neuroscience has also
followed that same pattern, pretending that the dynamic, evolutionarily provided integrative states of the
nervous system are of little importance for understanding what the brain does. In fact, the probability
is high that the brain generates a great deal of its
"magic" not simply through "information transmisJaak Panksepp is Distinguished Research Professor of Psychobiology,
Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University,
Ohio.

sion," but through massive, coordinated operations of

enormous ensembles of neurons that create global and
organic neurodynamics (states of being) that constitute
the forms of affective consciousness, not capable of
being reproduced, so far as we know, on digital computers. Those global, evolutionary dynamics are the
fundamental fabric of mind, which comes to be richly
embellished and besmirched by the vast complexities
of individual experiences-information that is more
readily reproducible computationally.
Psychoanalysis addressed many of these issues
but all too rarely in ways that helped create a rigorous
culture of consensual "truth" that is the hallmark of
modern scientific thought (Macmillan, 1997). Experimental psychology became a fledgling member of the
scientific community early in the twentieth century,
not because of any coherent sc'ientific insight and synthesis it generated concerning the nature of mind or
the natural behaviors organisms exhibit, but rather because of its willingness to implement generally accepted experimental and statistical methodologies in
its search for lasting knowledge. Indeed, its analytic
success during the twentieth century was largely based
on barring the door to the darker affective corners of
the mind and keeping its attention focused obsessively
on those peppercorns of behavioral and cognitive evidence that strict-minded experimentalists could agree
upon. Both behaviorism and cognitivism agreed, at
times all too explicitly, that emotions and other affective processes were issues too murky or difficult to

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Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

understand. Psychoanalysis never chose those paths of
psychic trivialization to create empirical consensus.
Its reputation suffered accordingly.
Considering the seemingly antithetical premises
of experimental psychological and psychoanalytic approaches, as well as the more-apparent-than-real dualities of the human brain-mind, the polarity between
the two disciplines was inevitable but it need not be
irreversible. However, a great deal of conceptual
stitching, often through some remarkably tough intellectual hides (e.g., see Uttal, 2000), will be needed
in order to mend the widening rift that has emerged
(Panksepp, 1999). This may be achieved more rapidly
if we better recognize the degree to which our mind
sciences are molded by personalities that are attracted
to the stark positivistic aesthetics of various intellectual--experimental schools, commonly well insulated
from each other, that today continue to rule the academic landscape in cognitive science and neuroscience. What may eventually coax investigators of
vastly different persuasions to return to a shared intellectual table is the increasingly evident fact that a comprehensive understanding of psychological and
behavioral subtleties cannot be achieved simply by
viewing them from a single vantage point, whether by
positivistic behaviorism, cognitivism, functionalism,
computationalism, eliminativism, naturalism, mentalism, or mysterianism. Multiple and synergistic nondualistic points of view are essential, including
behavioral, psychological, and neurological ones,
taken all together-a bitter medicine that most have
not been ready to swallow. However, the times they
may be changing. The idea that the way we can best
understand the brain-mind is by simply emulating the
physical sciences is gradually losing force. The recognition that the mind is not only caused by but also
realized in various brain activities, with unique types
of self-organizing' complexity not capable of being
replicated by silicone-based digital computers, is taking hold (Searle, 1992; Clark, 1997).

Slowly Toward a Coherent

Mind-Brain-Behavior Science
The failure of too many in the various psychological,
psychoanalytic, and neuroscience communities to concurrently embrace the full hierarchical complexity of
the human brain-mind with a full devotion to conceptual flexibility and scientific rigor, has saddened many
generations of students who wanted a deep and realistic understanding of the human condition. After a cen-

241
tury of remarkable research effort in experimental
psychology, almost five decades of cognitivism, and
three decades of modern neuroscience, we still have
no unified community of scholars that tries to bring all
the relevant issues openly into consideration-perhaps
the recently emerging consciousness studies programs
come closest. In any event, since we are close to solving some substantive psychological issues scientifically (e.g., the nature of attention, memory, and
perhaps even emotions), we should no longer ignore
the many remaining issues that have long been neglected-from the fundamentally affective dimensions
of mind to subtle feelings of volition and free-will. In
experimental psychology, the most poignant orphan
of our intellectual practices has been primary process
or core consciousness----our deeply animalian--emotional nature-an issue that psychoanalysis accepted
(see Solms and Nersessian, 1999) but which, at least
during the past century, it did not nurture toward a
vigorous scientific maturity. However, because of the
recent revolutions in neuroscience and molecular biology, along with emerging psychobehavioral and dynamic perspectives, we may finally be in a position to
deal credibly with some of those long-neglected issues
using rather standard, albeit somewhat more theoretically flexible, scientific approaches. The only thing
that should matter in this scientific game is the capacity to make predictions that can be empirically verified
or falsified, whether they be traditional third-person
measures or various indirect measures of first-person
experience.
A broad neuropsychobehavioral probing of the
nature of the basic emotional and motivational systems of the mammalian brain, and the layers of consciousness they regulate, has considerable potential to
help heal the rifts between these troubled fields of
ours. I think the evidence, read correctly, is overwhelming that our most immediate psychobehavioral
concerns, from our fundamental instinctual actions to
our more subtle life choices, are based upon fundamental biological values that our brains express as
feelings (MacLean, 1990; Panksepp, 1998a; Damasio,
1999). We will only make meager progress on a variety of higher mental issues (e.g., see Uttal, 2000) until
those foundational values are better clarified.
Unfortunately, the powerful cultural, intellectual,
and emotional forces that would seek to counter such
efforts remain alive and well. Indeed, those forces
probably arise naturally from the deep polarities and
animosities of human nature. The reactionaries who
brought Galileo to his knees four centuries ago, continue to thrive within our own scientific communities,

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242

although they no longer command the old tools of

torture. But all too often they do control the purse
strings for furthering empirical inquiries. Obviously,
the scientific community is not immune to everyday
power politics and the skewering influence of bullheaded, alpha-type personalities who have commonly
had too little hands-on experience with relevant aspects of life or laboratory to make the best scientific
choices. Indeed, all long-standing scholarly traditions
seem to be conservative in nature, with a class of illprepared "priests" who recite traditional catechisms
to protect the status quo.
To try to shed some light, admittedly dim, on
such issues, I will aspire to characterize (and shall, no
doubt, caricature) the personalities that may be impeding progress at the present time. My aim is not pejorative, but I would highlight the intellectual stagnation
that can result when too many scientific practitioners
take excessive pride in the rigor of their logic and the
precision of their methods rather than their willingness
to confront nature as she truly presents herself in animate life. I will here call them, perhaps rather too
gratuitously, left-hemisphere types, and contrast their
approaches with the growing minority who aspire to
grapple with the whole brain, with all of its diverse
and often irrational riches.

The Sociobiology of the Psychological Sciences

As Whittle emphasizes, there are many subtle reasons
for the schisms that characterize the various scholarly
traditions that aspire to understand the psyche, the
mind, and behavior. Although I largely agree with
Whittle's analysis, I will toy further with the possibility that rather straightforward human cultural and personality issues may lie at the heart of the various
intellectual disharmonies and discontents he described
so poignantly. I also believe many of our troubles arise
from ancient group dynamics that any competitive
group of highly intelligent anthropoid apes is bound
to exhibit when they are competing for limited resources and their minds are split between fundamentally different, culturally shaped worldviews, such as
the willingness to consider objective versus subjective
forms of data, experimental versus insightful-intuitive
approaches to human nature, and the resulting disputes
concerning the scientific credibility of third versus first
person points of view. I do believe that the mentalistic
position to which most intelligent people subscribe has
been so widely rejected by mind-brain specialists to
some extent for primitive group solidarity rea-

Jaak Panksepp
sons-partly because their limited but rigorous specialist positions set them apart as uniquely qualified
experts who supposedly have privileged perspectives
to adjudicate on the nature of psychological reality.
At some point, most investigators, probably because of their cognitive and emotional strengths but
also because of the reward structures in which they
must pursue their activities, select which approach
they most admire either for deep intellectual and, not
uncommonly, for straightforward opportunistic reasons. During the past half-century of advancing materialism, there have been clear and differential rewards
for selecting positivistic analytic paths over deeper integrative-synthetic ones. As a result, the middle way,
which accepts the importance of both approaches, of
both deductive reason and inductive insight, for any
coherent understanding, has become the road least
traveled. I remain puzzled at how little commerce currently exists on that byway, especially in my own field
of behavioral neuroscience, a powerful animal brainresearch discipline that has so much rigorous evidence
and evolutionary hypotheses to offer for the creation
of a lasting psychobiological understanding of the human mind (Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000).
It seems that to some yet unmeasured extent, prevailing intellectual positions reflect desires to establish
group and individual identities. Every human has a
need to feel that he or she is best at something. If one is
a farmer or builder, the evidence is often immediately
evident to the eye. Hence, grantsmanship all too often
becomes a skilled exercise in deceptive practices. If
one is an academic or a therapist, then it is only evident in the praise and attention that others are willing
to grant. Thus, in intellectual matters, the strengths of
our alliances may be as important as the coherence of
our ideas. Without social coalitions, we put ourselves
at risk of being marginalized in the competition for
the necessary resources to continue scientific work.
And it is much easier to agree on the factual peppercorns than the big-ticket integrative items. Accordingly, most scientists are committed to views held by
long-established scientific groups, most of which in
order to survive as traditions are bound to be intellectually conservative. Unless a field is in the midst of
technological-eonceptual breakthroughs (such as molecular biology during the past few decades), most investigators are bound to remain constrained by the
leaden weight of the status quo even if they have wonderful and productive ideas they would personally like
to pursue. The federal granting establishment in the
United States has become a remarkable exemplar of
a system that encourages conceptual conservatism and

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Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

rewards run-of-the-mill empIrICIsm (at least at the

funding application stage, since what one does scientifically with the provided support is rarely subject to
accountability).
One reason there has been remarkably little progress in understanding some of the key issues of human
nature is because the study of emotions and motivations has long been devalued in the biological, psychological, and brain sciences. For current cultural
reasons, emotions and psychoanalytic approaches are
deemed of much less importance than cognitions and
information processing approaches to understanding
the human mind. Although the reasons for that are
many (perhaps the most important being the ascendancy of the digital computer model of mind), the one
dimension that has rarely been discussed is the potential skewing influences of the typical personalities that
are attracted to scientific endeavors. I will now weave
a blunt hypothesis-that there has been a massive lefthemisphere bias operating in the scientific arena and
a right-hemisphere bias in the psychoanalytic one. Although this hypothesis remains to be empirically evaluated, the mere fact that it has been so difficult to
get substantive programs of emotion research off the
ground in mainstream psychology and neuroscience
will be taken as prima facia evidence that some rather
unusual personality and cultural forces have shaped
the ways in which the mind has been studied over the
past five decades.

Can Left-Brain Sciences Understand WholeBrain Minds?

As Whittle implies, the causes of the intellectual dissensions that have been evident in the twentieth-century mind sciences probably go deeper into human
nature than we are typically wont to admit. Temperamental style surely has an enormous influence on
guiding the scholarly and professional choices of the
participants. The scientific structures built by those
who enjoy the chaotic right-hemispheric play of divergent ideas and the resulting intuitive flashes, and those
who admire more rigorously straight-furrowed lefthemispheric forms of convergent thinking and the resulting logical inferences are bound to differ. Could
one of the major dilemmas in the brain-mind sciences
be that most practitioners, because of student selection
pressures, are remarkably proficient in left-hemisphere linear thinking skills while being rather impoverished in right-hemisphere pattern-recognition
abilities? Might it be largely the reverse in psychoana-

243

lytic circles, where open listening (surely a right-hemisphere attitude) must be cultivated? Might such biases,
if they could be demonstrated to exist, lead inexorably
to remarkably skewed conceptions of the brain-mind?
For didactic purposes, I will here utilize a vastly
oversimplified conception of right- and left-hemisphere functions to make some general points about
scientific personalities that may need to be made in
rather glaring terms. Although there is abundant evidence that the right hemisphere is more capable of
extracting nondominant patterns and meanings from
available information stores (Fiore and Schooler,
1998), the attitudinal dichotomy I will pursue surely
runs deeper in the brain-mind than just right-left hemispheric biases. Still, recent attempts to put everything
of obvious cognitive value into the left hemisphere
(Gazzaniga, 1998), without fully recognizing the psychologically more subtle and emotionally deep contributions of the right (Beeman and Chiarello, 1998),
encourage me to proceed with my oversimplified
tongue-in-cheek analysis.
A great deal of the controversy concerning
whether we can empirically study mental states is
based on our philosophical position concerning the
empirical accessibility of such states. Some claim that
such states, although they surely exist within the brain,
are simply not open to substantive empirical analysis
at the present time (Uttal, 2000). I suspect that such
philosophic positions are created as much by the affective inclinations, or lack thereof, of their purveyors
as the intellectual rigor of their arguments. In any
event, if we consider that the generation and appreciation of inductive inferences is promoted more by the
synthetic flow of right-hemisphere associations (mythos) while the power of deductive logic is promoted
more by left-hemispheric analytic skills (logos), we
may come to understand why linear, left-hemisphere
mental styles have prevailed so overwhelmingly in the
sciences, including those that have sought to understand behavior and mental life. The rules of scientific
agreement are much more certain and clear-cut for
deductively logical left-hemispheric thought than for
the creative inferential leaps that emerge more from
the right.
Indeed, the traditional linear analytic thinking of
the natural sciences has paid enormous dividends in
generating systematic understanding of our world and
in harnessing its material resources. However, those
modes of left-hemispheric thought that have worked
so well at unraveling the dynamics of the physical
world, have not succeeded as dramatically in the
brain-mind sciences. Perhaps this is because the brain-

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244

mind is not simply the unfeeling type of linear information processing computational device that many
left-hemisphere types would like to believe, but rather,
at its foundation it is a fundamentally organic and
globally holistic integrator and blender of past evolutionary solutions and present environmental challenges. Perhaps for any comprehensive understanding,
the two views need to be judiciously combined, so that
the capacity of a mode of thought to generate coherent
predictions rather than logically airtight arguments becomes the main arbiter of how we allow a fundamentally organic mind science to evolve.
We should also recall that left and right hemispheres have rather different affective styles and social
priorities. Most of us tend to present ourselves to the
world with our left-hemisphere linguistic skills, to the
point where we commonly speak out of one side of our
mouth----often remarkably logically in a propositional
left-hemisphere way, but quite unreasonably from a
more integrative right-hemisphere perspective. The
left hemisphere, in its appointed role of projecting an
image of positive social desirability into the world, is
not only an "interpreter" (Gazzaniga, 1998), but also
a skilled confabulator, especially when it comes to
trying to deal with emotional experiences, which are
felt more intensely by its more passive and silent partner. Clearly, it is the right hemisphere that provides the
greater depth to our emotional narratives and affective
experiences (Ross, Homan, and Buck, 1994; Ornstein,
1997; Beeman and Chiarello, 1998), and perhaps the
left hemisphere is a specialist in emotional repression.
If so, there is reason to believe that the left hemisphere, divorced from the fundamental anchoring of
the full spectrum of human emotional experiences
elaborated subcortically and within the other side of
the brain, could easily become adept at helping construct simple-minded "dreams of reason that create
monsters" -my least favorite examples being the
"radical behaviorism" that denied mind and brain any
place in the behavioral sciences and all "eugenics"
movements past and present. Also, the mere fact that
women are better than men in coordinating the activities of the two hemispheres (Shaywitz, Shaywitz,
Pugh, and Constable, 1995), may go a long way toward explaining why females are underrepresented in
the natural sciences, as well as why holistic and fluid
right-hemispheric modes of psychoanalytic thought
have prevailed in feminist theory and the arts.
There is much to be discovered about the personalities that are attracted to an uncompromisingly lefthemisphere (logic-reason) view of the world as well
as those who selectively view life through the prism

Jaak Panksepp
of the right (intuition-insight). I would wager that,
could it be empirically evaluated, the majority of traditional scientists would tend to fall in the former category, helping explain why twentieth-century
psychology offered us so many linear and logically
simplified, and ultimately incomplete views of human
nature. Indeed, might the stark Machiavellian egotism
that all too commonly prevails in high-powered lefthemisphere science (see Pert [1997] for a recent description of the take-as-you-can types that pervade so
much of present-day science), reflect a functional disconnection syndrome when the left-hemisphere abilities are excessively divorced from right-hemisphere
values?
To put the hypothesis bluntly: A larger than normal proportion of the most successful scientists, including experimental psychologists, may be
remarkably self-centered, highly competitive, and all
too often, not very agreeable types. As a population,
they may have less than normal levels of emotional
sensitivity, with a predilection for exhibiting noteworthy symptoms of "academic autism." They are satisfied to know more and more about less and less, with
little heed for social and emotional sensitivities that
concern most other people. Whether the incidence of
such personality styles is actually higher than that
found in the humanities or other professions would be
a most interesting issue to evaluate empirically, and if
the data support the hypothesis, to discuss psychoanalytically. To my knowledge, no substantive empirical
analysis of differential personality styles in different
academic disciplines has been conducted, but I suspect
the topic may be a rich mine for some eager psychologist, sociologist, or cultural anthropologist. In any
event, I offer this psychoanalytic hypothesis to explain
the chaotic state of our mind sciences only half in jest.
In any event, the Janus-faced nature of our cognitive
and affective proclivities has surely exerted yet unmeasured effects on the forms of our various
mind-brain science.

Future Speculations about the Personality

Styles of Scientists and the Sciences They
Create
If there is some type of selective funneling of different
personalities into different disciplines, it is bound to
have remar kable consequences for the way whole
fields of thought and inquiry are framed, most especially in the psychological sciences. For instance,
might the massive intolerance for talk about inner psy-

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Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

chological causes among behavioral psychologists be
based not only on the methodological difficulties
posed by the study of the subjective life, but also on
their lopsided emotional skills? From my own 40 years
of experiences in the field, that does not seems a farfetched possibility. Despite recent advances in deciphering how emotional learning transpires in certain
areas of the brain such as the amygdala (e.g., LeDoux,
1996), one is still hard put to find a behavioral scientist
who seems constitutionally able to openly discuss the
potential role of affective feelings in the instigation
and guidance of behavioral responses and regulation
of behavioral choices. The majority, at least in my
experience, tend to believe that type of talk borders
on the absurd. Only begrudgingly will most entertain
the idea that other animals actually experience pain
and fear-preferring to phrase their ideas in terms of
nociceptive stimuli and "anxietylike" behaviors.
The radical behaviorism of the middle part of the
twentieth-century-the mode of thought that aspired
to kill psychoanalysis-was an exemplar of that kind
of thought. It was deeply logical in its limited domain,
but in my estimation, it yielded a fundamentally misguided view of animate nature. Despite the behaviorist
desire to aspire to nothing but visually observable objectivity, there is still every reason to believe that animals' lives revolve around many comparatively
invisible inner causes, evolutionarily constructed, that
cannot be unambiguously observed in the behavioral
acts of organisms but must be neurotheoretically inferred. I did my part to coax Skinner to change his
radically antagonistic and limited ways of thinking
(i.e., Panksepp, 1990), but, in the final accounting, he
was not coaxed into reconsidering the possibility that
emotional and motivational feelings are not simply
"excellent examples of the fictional causes to which
we commonly attribute behavior" (Skinner, 1953, p.
160).
To this day, his ultrapositivistic way of viewing
the animate life prevails in behavioral neuroscience,
even though the more skilled thinkers will now tend to
espouse terminal agnosticism (typically of the' 'closed
door" variety) on the topic of emotional and motivational affective experiences in animals. In the face of
the massive amount of data indicating that various
subcortical areas of the mammalian brain mediate valenced affective states, arising from essentially the
same circuits in all species that have been studied
(Panksepp, 1998a), I find "closed door" agnosticism
to be either opportunistic or remarkably half-minded.
If physicists had taken such positions to the internal
structure of atoms, we would still be ignorant of the

245

physical nature of matter. We will remain as ignorant

of the true organizational principles of the mammalian
brain if we continue to ignore the central role of affective states in the governance of animal behavior
and human mind. Considering the deep neuroanatomical homologies in the organization of subcortical regions of the brain, it is likely that our capacity to
decipher the circuitry that generates emotional processes in animals (e.g., as indexed by approach and
avoidance, and conditioned place preferences and
aversions) can provide an essential platform for understanding which types of brain systems govern affective states, and perhaps the foundations of
consciousness, in humans. At least, it will yield coherent theoretical propositions that can be empirically
evaluated in humans using various biological (e.g.,
pharmacological) maneuvers. Thus, the type of agnosticism we should aspire to should be of the "opendoor" variety.
In any event, affective processes are still widely
considered insubstantial by most neuroscientists,
while considerably more dubious procedural concepts
such as "reinforcement" are commonly discussed as
if they are substantive biological realities simply because animal behavior in prisonlike environments can
be molded remarkably effectively by systematically
applied "whips" and "carrots," all too commonly
wielded by experimenters who relish the concept of
linear control as opposed to chaotic neurodynamics.
Need it be pointed out that to this day no one has yet
demonstrated a "reinforcement" process to be operate in molding the real-world behaviors of animals? If
one really looked at all the evidence, one would be
forced to conclude that concepts such as "reinforcement" are more likely to be the phlogiston of psychology than are the basic emotional value systems of
ancient regions of the mammalian brain.
The notion of reinforcement may simply be an
inevitable hangover of the assumption that we could
obtain clear conceptions of the major causes of animal
actions simply by studying stimulus-control of behavior in semistarved animals tested under conditions
where there were no effective behavioral alternatives
other than those provided by the experimenter. This
is a classic methodological flaw-an experimenter-imposed demand characteristic-that introductory psychology students are trained to recognize and avoid in
designing their own fledgling experiments. Although
it is understandable why many would deem it to be
an exquisitely desirable form of "experimental control," we should not accept the delusion that such
methodologies provide general insights into how the

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246
spontaneous behavior of animals is regulated.
Throughout the behaviorist era, the instruments of
measurement were essential for creating the systematic response patterns that were observed. The natural
spontaneous behaviors of animals were neglected, and
when those urges did rear their wondrous heads, they
were deemed to reflect the "misbehavior of organisms." Today, a similar type of control-oriented mindset is leading to a massive overdiagnosis of Attention
Deficit-Hyperactivity "Disorders" in our American
society (Panksepp, 1998c).
Obviously, when animals have no reasonable behavioral options, they are likely to take the single one
offered to them by the experimenter. The remar kably
robust and consistent patterns of behavior in starved
animals within Skinner Boxes did provide a clear image of how most organisms will behave under stringent economic constraints, but we should be under no
illusion that those methodologies provided powerful
and deeply meaningful "general laws of behavior."
Paradoxically, the realistic alternative-that evolutionarily provided instinctive feelings typically guide
behavioral choices in the real world-remains as rare
in the prevailing forms of dustbowl cognitivism as in
the preceding behavioristic varieties. Although affective explanations would require us to specify rather
precisely what we mean by internally valenced feelings, that is now an option that can be realistically
envisioned (Panksepp, 1998b; Berridge, 2000). Feelings are not simply vague concepts that emerge from
our linguistic abilities (Rolls, 1999) nor from our vast
abilities to remember events transpiring in our brains
(LeDoux, 1996) or to perceive events in our bodies
(Damasio, 1994). They appear to be fundamental birthrights of ancient centromedial regions of the human
brain (Damasio, 1999) that we share with all the other
mammals (Panksepp, 1998a).
I do believe that brain evolution represented the
animal's point of view much more than most behavioral neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists were
ever willing to consider. To the best of our knowledge,
all other mammals have basic emotional feelings and
neurosymbolic "selves" based on neural foundations
that are homologous to our own (Panksepp, 1998a,b).
Affective or core consciousness is a very old brain
function (Damasio, 1999; Panksepp, 1998a, 2000).
Once we begin to provisionally entertain and to experimentally evaluate the existence of such brain processes, a coherent psychological science may emerge
that is more accurate and more conceptually satisfying
than the ones we now have (Watt, 1999). Such approaches to mental life may also provide an intellec-

Jaak Panksepp
tual structure that can be more easily respected by
many other disciplines, and it can be incorporated
readily into revitalized forms of psychoanalytic
thought.

Continuing Intellectual Polarities

From a psychoanalytic point of view, the stark, skeletonlike structure of behavioristic thought often resembled a monstrosity that had not come to terms with
many essential aspects of either human or animal life.
As Whittle poignantly highlighted, the minds of students were all too often numbed at sacrificial altars of
intellectual traditions that disenfranchised themselves
from vast swaths of human experience and animal
existence. The absence of any substantive or evenhanded discussion of animate emotions in the behaviorist literature was only the most evident case in
point, and such attitudes remain alive and well today
in both cognitively and neuroscientifically oriented
disciplines. Indeed, our most recent attempt-to-publish
experience has revealed to us once more how vital the
antiemotional forces are within the scientific community-our discovery of what appears to be animal
"laughter" has been most difficult to publish in traditional scientific outlets (Panksepp and Burgdorf,
1999), as were our studies of animal "play" 20 years
earlier, and of separation-induced "crying" before
that (Panksepp, 1998a, chapters 14 and 15). The acceptance of coherent primordial forces in the animal
brain is apparently not welcome news in those disciplines, for many practitioners would still like to conceptualize animals as mindless, nonconscious reflex
machines rather than the spontaneously active agents
that they are.
The fact that basic emotions and motivations
were so thoroughly devalued in twentieth-century experimental psychology (including current cognitive
varieties) remains the most tangible symbolic token,
perhaps even a fundamental cause, of our' 'century of
misunderstanding." At present, there are a remarkable
number of investigators who still scoff at the idea that
a variety of affective feelings may be intrinsic functions of the mammalian brain. Since the study sections
of granting agencies are abundantly populated by such
skeptics, work on many of the most important basic
emotional systems of the mammalian brain, such as
those that mediate anger, grief, and joy, continue to
receive essentially no support, and thereby are receiving remarkably little experimental attention. Likewise,
pharmaceutical firms, whose research departments re-

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Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

main well populated by unreasonably radical behaviorists (who brought them many slick behavioral
technologies, but few productive ideas), are not devoting sufficient resources to trying to discover medications for regulating specific emotions. Meanwhile
exhorbitant amounts of money are being squandered,
to put it bluntly but symbolically, on severely stressing
animals to determine how nociceptive responses in
their tails are modified by local spinal mechanisms.
During the twentieth century, experimental psychology became a discipline that expected productive
minds to subsist at the meager table of facts with
which all reasonably alexithymic left-hemisphere
types can agree. At the same time, psychoanalytic
thought insisted that we must seek to deal with the
full complexity of the human condition, but sadly, it
did not encourage investigators to invest in compelling
new empirical paradigms to clarify the ideas and concepts it wished to disseminate. Through that failure,
it disenfranchised itself from the available sources of
scientific support and respect. All too often, psychoanalytic thought wished to capture the full circus carnival life, and thereby found its most welcome home
among literary theorists who felt no need to have their
thought tempered by the purifying fire of experimental
analysis. After all, humans do "love" a great story,
and as often as not, the facts be damned.
All too many proponents of psychoanalytic views
have insisted that the diversity of individual lives cannot (and often, should not) be subjected to the dehumanizing tools and perspectives of available
experimental disciplines; for the subtleness of mind
might not emerge unscathed from that. Indeed, there
is much to be said against human sciences that wish
to force the vast diversity of human mind and behavior
into statistically constructed pigeonholes such as fewfactor theories of personality and massive evolutionarily dictated modularities that all too often do not
respect the remar kable plasticities and potentialities
of the human brain. However, to the extent that psychoanalytic thought is to be taken seriously in scientific circles, it will need to be linked to empirical
observations. As many behaviorists might claim from
their starkly ascetic perspectives-it is better to have
an honest kernel of replicable knowledge rather than
a banquet of verbally generated' 'understanding" laid
out on quicksand. Fortunately, what was quicksand
only a few decades ago, has become firm ground for
theory building because of the neuroscience and molecular biology revolutions. The fact that many emotions and motivations have specific circuits and
molecular codes is the single most important finding

that allows us clear access into the neuronal nature

of a growing number of primitive mental processes
(Panksepp, 1986, 1993).
In any event, what is needed now is for us to
leave those old intellectual battles for dominance behind, and to seek new ways of thinking that allow
multiple viewpoints a voice around a widening intellectual table. As Freud suspected, fundamental mental
tendencies are realized within neuronal systems. As
we come to absorb the lessons from neuroscience, we
should also come to respect the need for accurate empirical descriptions of the human mind. We should
not allow established dogma to be the arbiter of what
constitutes generally accepted understanding-we
should be guided by prediction generated by our ideas.
Perspectives that yield no predictions must continue
to be deemed sterile or premature.

Toward Reconciliations
Thus, we now stand at an intellectual juncture where
there is enormous room for fruitful compromise, productive synthesis, and the development of robust new
hybrid research strategies. Psychoanalytic thought
without a new level of empiricism and experimental
psychology without a fuller confrontation with the ancient foundational value substrates of the mind, will
only sustain needless polarities. As long as our intellectual systems sustain and nurture those polarities
(e.g., in the structures of academic subdisciplines
where one area need not pay attention to the relevant
work of other areas), we will continue to discourage
and alienate the best students who come to us still
adept at using both of their cerebral hemispheres-at
times miraculously so, considering the current dominance of left-brain oriented educational systems
within our society. Thus, any future curriculum in psychoanalysis should absorb the best psychobiology,
neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology of the last
few decades. Indeed, all the social sciences must come
to terms with the evolved, epigenetically refined abilities of the brain.
In therapy also, we must better recognize that
there are two distinct personalities in each individual,
of both right and left hemispheric varieties (Ross et
aI., 1994; Schore, 1994), as well as deeper, subcortical
affective ones. One aim of therapeutic enterprises, as
well as our educational ones, should be to introduce
them to each other (Schiffer, 1998).
Obviously, the styles of both hemispheres need
to be acknowledged not only in therapy but also in

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248

our educational systems, as we reverse the sustained

"misunderstandings" that characterized the twentieth
century. Perhaps that can be achieved by all sides investing in new empirically based perspectives with
which all can agree. As argued eloquently by Uttal
(2000), a newly refined form of behaviorism must be
a player, but not the only player, in any future synthesis. I sometimes think that an emerging functional neuroscience, based on evolutionary principles, can
become a sufficiently robust and lasting foundation
where all modes of thought can consiliate within the
dynamics of the enchanted loom. The emerging evidence has now demonstrated that all brains contain a
set of emotional and motivational value-creating systems around which a great deal of behavior, both rational and irrational, revolves. The evolutionary
divergences and progressions within these core processes among mammalian lines have probably been so
modest that remarkable homologies still exist in brain
systems that help regulate basic human and animal actions.
The continuous historical thread of DNA that still
ties us to all other forms of life, is providing a richness
of underlying controls, shared with all other animals,
that should be satisfying to both hemispheres for many
millennia (Raff, 1996), especially when it is viewed
from the perspective of the environmental contexts in
which it must unfurl its magic in remarkably plastic
ways (Oyama, 1985). At the same time, the interactive
mind-brain processes allow us to envision, all too easily, evolved cerebral modules (e.g., Tooby and Cosmides, 2000) where only general cerebral abilities may
exist (Samuels, 1998; Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000).
Thus, the major danger of theoretical approaches, as
behaviorism always claimed (as a result of the multiplication of "instincts" at the turn of the century), is
the ease with which after-the-fact "just so" stories
can be generated. Without strong corroborative evidence of conclusions, they just constitute plausible examples of a vast number of theoretical possibilities,
and it should be the responsibility of each investigator
to cast potential explanations in ways that can be empirically falsified. Neuroscientific thought can anchor
our theorizing realistically better than any other constraint at the present time.
For the foreseeable future, a most important social and educational question will be: How shall we
build modes of thought and educational systems that
respect and convey the fullness of the shared seeds
that evolution has provided not only for us but all our
brethren creatures, without in any way demeaning the
sustaining environments, both natural and cultural,

Jaak Panksepp

that allow those seeds to grow fruitfully? Parenthetically, we must now consider, with renewed energy,
how we might discourage those who would flirt with
disasters-for instance, the new eugenicists who
would meddle with our germ lines, no doubt for the
betterment ofthe human spirit. Could we really genetically engineer humans who feel the hedonic caress of
bliss more than the sting of loss (e.g.,. wireheading.
com), without doing irreparable harm to the social fabric? Surely sociocultural problems require sociocultural solutions (e.g., Panksepp, 1998c), even though
there should also be many biological aids for individuals whose emotional processes are deficient or troublesome. But we are only at the verge of realistically
discussing such possibilities. The levels of genetic and
epigenetic complexity that we must deal with are staggering (Oyama, 1985; Raff, 1996), and many of us
find it troublesome that the analytically adept lefthemisphere types, with their dreams of reason, are
once again contemplating playing carelessly with our
most precious heritage.
New and refined versions of neuropsychoanalytic
thought could be one of the most powerful antidotes
to blindly meddling with the human spirit. But to be
effective, that may require a new and rigorous attitude
to take hold--one where the full array of analytic tools
from the experimental disciplines are fully implemented to demonstrate the general foundational outlines and the individual details of human minds. That
is exactly where experimental psychology has failed
quite miserably during our past' 'century of misunderstanding." It has given us rather little knowledge about
our ultimate concerns-the nature of the periconscious affective processes that surround and support
our more acute forms of awareness. We must come to
terms with the many deep and insistent feelings that
guide the life choices we must make. We need to create cultural supports for encouraging a full scientific
confrontation with those deep neuropsychological
issues.
We are now in a position to take some major
steps along the path that Freud sketched in sparse outline, and all too often in very preliminary and, at least
from our present vantage, rather perplexing ways. I
believe that we could have a major healing process-a
synthesis that takes full advantage of the scientificanalytic traditions of the twentieth century-if we
build a new and robust psychoanalytic science. I
would like to share two views, one philosophical, and
one practical, that may help us construct a unified science of human mind, based partly on animal brain
research, where neuropsychological and psychoana-

Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

lytic thought, not to mention scientific and humanistic
thought in general, can subsist and support each other's endeavors.

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Philosophical Issues
I am fond of the possibility that we may be able to
make progress if we only have a solid foundation of
knowledge about biological values with which most
reasonable thinkers could agree. I think that the neuropsychic world, at least in the long run, is constructed
largely as it appears to us subjectively-we make an
enormous number of life choices based upon the way
those choices make us feel. We avoid cold, hunger,
thirst, fear, and loneliness. We all aspire to engage
creatively with the world, seeking material and social
resources and interactions that produce pleasures and
satisfactions, to avoid all kinds of harm. Our adult
social behavior is often so confusing only because we
commonly do not follow the immediate dictates of our
feelings, but rather the paths that seem instrumentally/
cognitively most propitious for our long-term goals.
This leads to all varieties of conflicts and thwarting,
which establish layers of emotional complexity upon
our more basic urges. Accordingly, it has been a dilemma to conceptualize adequately what those more
ancient species of psychic activity, the basic feelings,
consist of. However, now we have some credible
hypotheses-they reflect the actions of ancient neural
systems that were constructed, during long-spans of
evolutionary time to generate various "intentions in
action" (Searle, 1983)-which are ultimately experienced as dynamic value codes (i.e., feelings with a
psychodynamic "shape") to guide our behavioral actions (for summary, see Panksepp, 1998a). With additional layers of cognitive evolution, as our ancestors
came to compete more and more for the same limited
resources, the options for effective behavioral action
became ever more complex, yielding the possibility
that we could have real intentions to act in voluntary
ways (Spence and Frith, 1999). And now we humans-the top predators-have hierarchically arranged neural systems unparalleled in brain evolution,
creating a subtlety of mind accompanied by a sense of
power and dominion over the world that is unrivaled.
This does not mean that the manner in which the
brain achieves psychological capacities is transparent,
and it is all too easy to acknowledge defeat, in principle, and regress to behaviorist solutions that were remarkably successful for helping us address certain
limited problems in rigorous empirical ways. It is all

249

too easy to have the type of psychobiological despair

recently expressed by William Uttal (2000):
However, behaviorists generally argue that all responses (or behaviors) are measures of the totality of
the experience or awareness of the behaving organism
and are the resultant of a combination of many different stimulus, organism, and response variables as well
as the past experiences and (to an unknown, but usually lesser, degree) the genetic heritage of the individual. The combination is irretrievably tangled,
according to behaviorists, and little if anything can
be done to disentangle the combination. According to
this viewpoint, behavior cannot tell us anything about
the component processes or mechanisms that underlie
the mental events. Indeed, because many possible
mechanisms could lead to the same psychological
event and there are many obscuring and transforming
factors between behavior and mental processes, the
barrier between the two domains is impenetrable as a
matter of both deep principles and practical considerations [po 5].

Well, true enough, as long as we choose to leave

the evolved circuitry of subcortical regions of the brain
out of our overall analysis. Clearly, it is our newfound
knowledge of the brain that can now save us from the
endless quandary of the behaviorist nightmare described so poignantly above. We do have one robust
path out of that bog of despair, and it is paved by
neuroscientific knowledge that recognizes that basic
psychological processes can be both caused by and
realized in complex brain systems (Searle, 1983)-a
path that has been resisted, until recently, by both psychology and psychoanalysis.
However, a true understanding of affective processes in the mammalian brain allows us a conceptual
path of remarkable clarity. The reality of both human
and animal minds is based upon the dynamics of our
ancient, and hence often shared, value systems. Those
behavioral actions that make us feel good internally,
in the many ways that have so rarely been discussed
in modern neuroscience and experimental psychology,
will be advanced. Those actions that make us feel
worse internally, in the many ways that have hardly
been discussed in modern experimental psychology or
neuroscience, will be diminished. It may be as "simpIe" as that.
Behaviorism may have had it backwards all
along--environments mold behavior only to the extent
that they can recruit the self-organizing affective functions of organisms. The only reason reinforcement

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250

procedures work so well, especially in highly constrained prisonlike circumstances, is because they tap
into the dynamics of various underlying emotional systems. There really is no unified brain function such as
"reinforcement," only environmentally induced
changes in our perception of world events, and our
endeavors to maximize positive feelings and to minimize distress within those perceptual fields. However,
as psychoanalytic thought has always recognized, to
feel better, sometimes we must make psychological
detours of enormous proportions, with many subtle
interactive and often conflictual layers of being. The
mind is like an onion. As we peel off the outside cognitive layers (many of which are less conscious and
less intentional than most believe) we get closer and
closer to the ancient animalian centers of gravity, the
basic emotional and motivational barometers, that
guided the evolution and epigenetic emergence of the
surrounding complexities. As we peel away the thick
cortical layers of cognitive potentials (the "tool
boxes" of consciousness), the evolved animal mind
(' 'id structures" full of a nonpropositional form of
affective consciousness) reveals itself within the human brain.
If this is a realistic picture, it will, of course,
be of foremost importance to come to terms with the
fundamental nature of feelings. That is a project that
has barely begun, and prominent investigators are still
trying to conceptualize feelings as epiphenomenal species within the higher memorial and linguistic reaches
of the brain (LeDoux, 1996; Rolls, 1999) where our
highest levels of intentionality are elaborated (Spence
and Frith, 1999), rather than in the evolutionary ancient emotional processes of the brainstem where the
core of mammalian consciousness emerged. I believe
those forms of neodualism, that are yielding such wonderful peppercorns of fact, are fundamentally misguided. They do not adequately recognize the natural
psychological kinds that arise from intrinsic, evolutionarily provided brain activities, and they continue
to be lumbered by a form of dualism that could be
resolved straightfowardly if they recognized how mental processes are not only caused by but also realized
in certain operations of the brain (Searle, 1983, chapter 10). But there is now a robust alternative view,
coherent with the general philosophic path laid out by
Searle-that our values are fundamentally created by
the ancient instinctual operating systems of the brain
that we share with other animals (Panksepp, 1998a;
Damasio, 1999).
I believe the evidence has become overwhelming-our basic feelings are fundamentally the reflec-

Jaak Panksepp
tions of certain brainstem neural systems in action.
The experience of thirst arises from plasma volume
and osmotic receptors in specific areas of the hypothalamus, and their influence is distributed widely in subcortical regions of the brain, including those specific
zones where many other forms of affect are generated
(Panksepp, 1998b). The pleasure of taste is instantiated by specific subcortical systems of the mammalian
brain (Berridge, 2000). Hunger, in both mouse and
man, reflects some yet uncomputed combination of
activities in brain Neuropeptide Y, dynorphin, orexin,
and melanocyte stimulating hormone, glutamate, and
GABA systems in action (Kalra et aI., 1999), with
general modulation of all systems by the biogenic
amines. Hunger and all the other basic feelings penetrate the higher layers of the brain-mind, making it an
issue of utmost cognitive concern when the primordial
psychic ' 'powers" are sustained for any length of
time. Also such feelings can also be "tokens," like
any perceptual tokens such as the redness of apples,
in our cognitive deliberations. However, it is fundamentally incorrect, at least in my reading of the evidence, to believe that evolution left such ultimate
concerns as biological values to be mere tokens within
cognitive planning systems. Evolution, just as our subjective experience would suggest, made them "powers" that are global state variables in diverse
parliamentary lobbies of the mind-brain.
Compelling hypotheses along these lines can finally be generated for a host of basic feelings-emotions. If we take these perspectives seriously, we may
finally be approaching a substantive understanding of
the shared foundations of human and animal nature,

although most of the hard experimental work and

novel neuro-psychoanalytic theorizing lie ahead. It
will be an exciting chapter of science when we learn
to sift the basic genetically guided abilities from derivative socially constructed processes in the analysis of
how brain generates mind stuff.
In any event, it would be most wonderful, if we
were willing to invest the effort to make sure that
we now head toward a century of mutually beneficial
understanding rather than a furtherance of the types
of polarization and misunderstanding that characterized our recent past. This may require an intellectual
rebirth-one that abandons outdated modes of thought
that were acceptable in a previous era. Perhaps the
most dangerous ghosts from the past are the varieties
of Cartesian mind-body dualism that attempt to fundamentally divide that which is indivisible (for review,
see Damasio, 1994).

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Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

The cabalistic delusion that mind can exist without material dynamics is, I believe, the single most
destructive idea that we have ever had in the
brain-mind sciences. Although humans can buffer
their affective processes, with volitional, working
memory processes of their frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices, and thereby withhold vario\ls primitive
emotional reactions, most animals do not have such
options, at least anywhere close to our human abilities,
for emotional repression and regulation. The sustained
emotional responses of animals probably reflect direct
read-outs of their emotional states. The reason such
isomorphisms are not accepted are largely because the
neuroscientific behaviorists still believe that an analysis of the behavioral and physiological responses are
the sole issues of importance in any neural analysis.
Affect, they believe, can be deemed to be a superfluous
issue. For some reason, they fail to accept or acknowledge that affect is the foremost personal concern that
people have when they are in emotional states, and
that animal affective neuroscience is essentially the
only way we can find out, in any detailed way, how the
basic human feelings are truly constructed in the brain.
In any event, mind, brain, and behavior are completely interpenetrant-and we cannot understand the
resulting integrated processes unless we are willing to
take all three perspectives concurrently to the study of
animate actions. If behaviorists continue to just study
emotional behaviors, with no concern for the affective
experiences of animals, we will continue to have a
dualistic view of the brain. If experimental psychologists and psychoanalysts choose to pursue only the
psychic reflections of brain processes, when the obvi~
ous three-pronged solution is readily available, we
shall surely continue with another century of misunderstanding. However, if we come to terms with the
full tridimensional complexities, accepting that there
are various unified psychic states arising from neurodynamic processes that arouse behavioral urges, then
we may eventually have unified approaches to knowledge that can truly nourish the intellectual curiosity
of future generations of students. In following such
paths, we may also eventually generate psychiatric diagnostic categories that are based on our knowledge
of brain emotional and motivational systems, and their
neural substrates (Panksepp, 1988, 2001), rather than
those that are simply based on catalogs of external
symptoms.

A Practical Proposal-A Psychoethology

Considering the high likelihood that all mammals
share the same fundamental value structures in their

251
brains, from various motivational processes to the
more subtle emotional ones, we can anticipate that
animal brain research will clarify the fundamental nature of our biological values with a remarkable degree
of clarity. Unfortunately, it will not be able to say
much about our wider concerns-the cognitive attitudes and strategies that constitute the details of our
mental lives. For that, there is no substitute for careful
and insightful exploration of the human mind, which
experimentally, at least, has barely begun. At the mental levels, there is bound to be much greater species
variability (Budiansky, 1998), especially among the
evolved cognitive adaptations of which evolutionary
psychologists speak so persistently and eloquently
(Tooby and Cosmides, 2000), even as they tend to
disregard the primitive evolved systems of the brainmind that have already been revealed (Panksepp,
1998a; Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000). Even though
the debate concerning the experimental analyzability
and accessibility of the mind is by no means resolved,
and despite the failures of previous introspective traditions (Uttal, 2000), in fact a credible form of experimental mentalism has barely started to be
implemented. We must study the human mind as it
naturally presents itself, and there is no better tool
than free association. Although the narrative data
streams that will need to be analyzed are bound to
be hypercomplex, it is time to begin evaluating the
affective-eognitive ramifications of the human mind
with the best empirical approaches available-not
only to describe group tendencies but also the uniqueness of individuals. New methodologies-naturalistic
approaches in which scientists and humanists can be
equally involved-may help in such endeavors. I
would call one such new approach psychoethology.
While traditional ethology consisted of the careful and detailed study of animal and human behavioral
actions, psychoethology could aspire to do the same
for the human mind. What is desperately needed is
a generally acceptable methodology whereby mental
contents can be observed without all the interference
that the flow of life provides. Of course, the prototypic
psychoanalytic couch, with a human actively listening
at the head but not intruding actively in the narrative
flow, seems to be an ideal methodology. The human
narrative, unhindered by the momentary pressures of
life, needs to be the initial database upon which additional layers of substantive analysis may eventually
be experimentally imposed.
The reason such data, especially from regular everyday folks, have not been collected is obvious-the
data stream is so rich, and an empirical analysis so

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252

complex, that only a few have had the heart to begin

(Dahl, 1998; Dahl, 1998). As always, there is the persistent problem-that the listener might unduly bias
the mental flow with their own remarks, with the
smallest nuance being able to sway the stream of free
associations into different eddies and currents. There
is also the possibility that without the natural verbal
give and take that can only occur between humans,
only a chaotic, unsystematic stream of data might
emerge. Perhaps a few well-placed standardized questions would help steer the mind into desired channels
that can be more easily analyzed. In any event, to my
way of thinking, we need to give the strategy a vigorous try, before abandoning hope. At present, the methodological problems are not insurmountable.
Now that we are in a computational age, where
voice-recognition technologies and automated transcription of ongoing narratives is possible, and content
analysis programs have been created, even for the
evaluation of emotional issues (Pennebaker, Mayne,
and Francis, 1997), the concept has a realistic chance
of being widely implemented. Also, for the more subtle psychodynamic issues, where layers of meaning
are embedded in the narrative that no computer could
yet decode, there may be many individuals, from the
humanities, with remarkable language skills, who
might be willing to participate as decoders in such
projects. The data stream also needs to be analyzed
from traditional psychoanalytic perspectives, and the
three types of analysis need to be contrasted. Obviously, participants in such studies would have to agree
to longer term time and emotional commitment than
is common in most psychological experiments, and
there might have to be a considerable learning phase
in order for people to become comfortable in such
situations. Participants will have to feel themselves to
be compatriots in the search for knowledge, as opposed to being mere "subjects" as has long been de
rigueur in more traditional psychological studies.
As experimental manipulations, one might consider various mood and motivational induction procedures prior to analytic episodes. Also, instead of
allowing a totally free stream of associations, it may
be wise to utilize a few existential questions (e.g.,
What kind of person would you like to be?) to help
guide the narrative flow onto some common issues.
Eventually investigators may be able to devise a variety of standard challenges to systematically evaluate
resulting emotional tendency. It would be important
to have good emotional-personality measures on subjects to evaluate output differences as a function of
temperament. It would also be good to monitor the

Jaak Panksepp
facial expressions and changes in vocal prosody as
people systematically share their lives. The utility of
drug manipulations will, of course, be enormous, especially if stable baselines can be established (e.g.,
Knutson et aI., 1998). Indeed, an enormous number
of psychobiological predictions from animal studies
can already be generated for such interventions (Panksepp, 1998a). The systematic study of psychiatric and
neurological patients should be highly informative
(e.g., Solms, 1997). In any event, the establishment of
adequate psychological descriptions of normal human
mental activities, in their full richness, seems to be a
project deserving a great deal of experimental attention. If such methodologies proved to be effective,
they may eventually be capable of being used for diagnostic and prognostic purposes in a new era of humanistic psychiatry.
The issue of how accessible the human mind is
to systematic measurement (i.e., Uttal, 2000) must remain an open issue until a great deal more research
has been conducted. I am optimistic that some credible
and replicable signals, especially in the study of basic
emotional systems, will emerge from such analyses
once they are adequately implemented. Psychoanalytic
approaches, as molded by the constraints of empiricism, provide an excellent model of how we might
proceed. Of course, it will be impossible to fathom
the internal structures of mind simply from an analysis
of input and output functions (since there are an infinity of intervening possibilities). However, with solid
neuroscience conceptions concerning the sources of
the basic emotions and motivations shared by all mammalian brains (e.g., MacLean, 1990; Panksepp, 1998a;
Damasio, 1999), we should be able to make great
strides in analyzing the Niagara of psychoanalytic data
that could be extracted from human narratives. It will
be fascinating to see how basic affective processes, the
natural kinds of the mind, guide the environmentally
constructed meanderings of the cognitive stream. It
will be interesting to see whether many psychoanalytic
concepts like the defense mechanisms of repression
and reaction formation can be demonstrated to be natural kinds of the brain-mind, or whether they are simply derivative processes of how memory fields are
constructed.
Also, when we begin to take a deep emotional-motivational perspective to human mind, the
notion that introspective reports have to be veridical
descriptions of relationships in the external world becomes less relevant than they might be from more
strictly cognitive vantages (e.g., Kahneman, Slovic,
and Tversky, 1982; Nisbett and Wilson, 1997). The

Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

human mind may have more affective "irrationality"
in it than logical clarity. Experimental psychologists
have too often wished to ignore that, but it should be
studied rather than being seen as a shortcoming. In
any event, to determine whether stable patterns of cognitive activities emerge during emotional states, psychoethology needs to be given a fair empirical hearing.

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Coda
I am in complete agreement with Whittle in his call
for a new pluralism in the way in which we approach
the systematic study of the human mind, especially its
emotional forces. Brain psychodynamics can only be
realistically approached from many concurrent, and
mutually respectful, points of view. A long time ago,
physicists realized that they could not understand the
hidden underbelly of nature by simply ascribing to one
perspective. Subatomic entities needed to be conceptualized not only as particles but also as wave dynamics.
We are now approaching a comparable stage of intellectual development in the brain-mind sciences. Every
brain-mind phenomenon must be approached from
multiple points of view. The idea that one should discard psychological analysis completely in preference
for a neural eliminativism (Churchland, 1995), although rather popular among neuroscientists and perhaps even appropriate for many brain phenomena, is
a view that encourages polarization of attitudes as opposed to a realistic, multidimensional confrontation
with many of the most important mind-brain issues.
Although mental events, as typically conceptualized in psychology, often do not help much in explaining specific behavioral acts, we often fail to
acknowledge that adaptive actions are often long-term
processes rather than ones that can be captured by brief
laboratory experiments. If we recognized that mind is
just another way of viewing the complexity of the
brain in action (Searle, 1983), we would be more
tempted to open up the intellectual campfire round
which we share our perspectives rather than narrowing
it. Unfortunately, a penetrating institutionalized
strength of will to stand behind the utility of pluralist
points of view has yet to emerge within our prevailing
scientific disciplines. This, I believe, simply reflects
our desire to divide and conquer rather than our desire
to create a rich banquet of mind-brain science that can
nourish our desire to understand the human condition.
The basic emotions are a poignant case in point.
Experimental psychology, especially its cognitive and
behavioral neuroscience forms, have not been able to

253

construct a realistic way to discuss and analyze such

important issues. We are stuck in dualistic modes of
thought where emotional feelings supposedly have no
causal efficacy (because they are matters of "mind")
and all of the weight of responsibility is placed on
supposedly nonfeeling neural circuits, with perhaps a
causally inefficacious (epiphenomenal) form of "feeling" emerging from higher cortical systems that deal
informationally with "tokens" of subcortical information (e.g., LeDoux, 1996).
Is it not much more reasonable, at least from an
evolutionary point of view, that emotional feelings are
part and parcel of ancient instinctual neural systems in
action? In other words, emotional feelings arise rather
directly from the arousal of certain primitive neural
systems (Panksepp, 1998b). That is the view that most
of the critical evidence is pointing toward. In my estimation, no dualistic-type readout by a higher mind is
needed to create affective states, even though higher
memorial abilities are surely able to extend those neural activities, those feelings, in space and time, as tokens in working memory so as to permit more
sophisticated cognitive strategies.
A moving image for one fundamental emotional
process that I have studied extensively by focusing on
the separation-distress circuitry of the vertebrate brain
comes from James Saunders' play Next Time I'll Sing
For You, and it goes like this:
There lies behind every thing, and you can believe
this or not as you wish, a certain quality which we
may call grief. It's always there, just under the surface, just behind the fa~ade, sometimes very nearly
exposed, so that you can dimly see the shape of it
as you can see sometimes through the surface of an
ornamental pond on a still day, the dark, gross, inhuman outline of a carp gliding slowly past; when you
realize suddenly that the carp were always there below the surface, even while the water sparkled in the
sunshine, and while you patronized the quaint ducks
and the supercilious swans, the carp were down there,
unseen. It bides its time, this quality. And if you do
catch a glimpse of it, you may pretend not to notice
or you may turn suddenly away and romp with your
children on the grass, laughing for no reason. The
name of this quality is grief.

By studying the neural shapes and dynamics of

these' 'carp" that glide under the surface of our everyday experiences, we can come to terms with the intrinsic coherences of the affective mechanism that
evolution created with the mammalian brain. We can

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254

finally understand the urges and pleasures of sex, the

pains of hunger and cold, and the pleasures of food and
warmth. We can come to terms with the fundamental
nature of our desires, our anxieties, our grief and joy.
We can understand what exhilaration and fatigue are
all about. They are the centers of gravity around which
the massive interweaving of higher cognitive activities
revolve and from where our spontaneous intentions in
action emerge.
Although we cannot always see those ancient
emotional "carp" as readily as the "supercilious
swans" of our cognitive activities, there should be
no question, they are there. They constitute universal
human and animal feelings that all normal mammals
experience. Their organic sources go back to an ancestral past with which we in neuroscience, psychoanalysis and evolutionary psychology are still struggling to
understand in scientific terms. Their nature can finally
be penetrated by pursuing the types of animal brain
research that Freud pursued as a young man. They are
issues that should not be shunned by any of the sciences of the mind, for the patterns of cognitive arousal,
as expressed in the natural meanderings of the human
mind, may tend to fall into place once we recognize
those forces.
There is a great deal to be learned from the past
"century of misunderstanding" but only if all of
us-Ieft-, right-, and both-hemisphere types-gather
respectfully around the same intellectual banquet to
discuss all relevant issues openly. As we do this, we
could plan rigorous studies that have a chance of revealing the multifaceted dynamics of the affective processes-the ancestral "voices of the genes" (Buck,
1999; Panksepp, 1998a)-that evolution built into our
brains a very long time ago.

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Jaak Panksepp
Department of Psychology
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OB 43403
e-mail: jpankse@bgsu.net

Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)

Whittle has written an incisive and often witty exploration of the ways to answer the question posed in his
title. Essentially he tells us to "mind the gap," an
expression familiar to London Underground passenHoward Shevrin, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Department of
Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

gers that warns them to avoid stepping into the space

between train and platform. But Whittle is doing more
than warning us about the "gap" between experimental psychology and psychoanalysis, he wants us to understand why there is a gap, and if it is worth closing,
or if the gap itself constitutes a potentially fruitful
divergence between the two fields.