Mabel and Larry focus on what I think is a key issue in
understanding
emotion. First, that emotions are generated in time, as a
process. It
is a process in which we ourselves are ACTIVE, and not, as in
some
folk theories taken over into psychological models, merely
reacting to
external events and conditions. Second, its genesis takes place
over
multiple timescales. There is the very short term, moment-to-
moment,
rise and fall of various feelings, their layering onto one
another,
the transitions from one to another. Then there is a longer-
term
tendency, closer to the mood of the "moment" (which is a much
longer
moment than the first timescale), which may define a trend in
the
progression of our feelings. And this in turn is coupled more
into the
situation and setting, who else is there, what is going on, what
is
the activity and the goals that we are engaged with. Then
further,
there are still longer term scales, over months or years of our
lives,
which merge more into social processes and the expectations of
the
culture and subcultures, the communities we operate within.
I very much like the idea of ethnographic neuroscience, and I
wish
there were more neuroscientists who did! but they are not
trained in
this way, and it requires a collaboration at least. It is so
much
easier for them to study only short-term, isolated, laboratory-
controlled events as they appear in their neuro-
physiological
correlates, which makes sense if they imagine that they are
looking at
universal processes, which occur in the same way every time.
But of course they don't, and how they appear is very
context
dependent. At least we know this is the case in terms of how
they feel
to us, and how they emerge over the shorter and longer
timescales of
relevance. It would be very interesting to know what is the same
and
what is different across cases and events, in different
situations and
settings, for "the same" emotional response. This will, I think,
be on
the agenda of the neuroscience of a decade or two from now.
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093
On Dec 1, 2009, at 1:58 PM, Mabel Encinas wrote:
Hi, Larry and all.
Thank you very much Larry, for having introduced Stern. I am
not
into psychoanalysis. I am a Gestalt psychotherapist, and
maybe
because this perspective emphasizes the 'here and now', I
realised
that I had to discuss the present moment, and the
performative
making sense of the situation when I faced the challenge to
analyse
my videos about classroom interaction. Also, I discuss
the
difference of actions that seem intentionally loaded, with
others in
which intentionality is quite contestable. My research is
based in
microanalysis. For being able to study emotions, I decided to
study
Vygotsy's understanding of emotions. Also I found in this
analysis
of video (I did not interview neither the teachers or the
students
about their emotional experience, although I did had
long
conversations with the teachers), that in order to
understand
videos, there was important to find 'whole' situations in
which
emotions were first of all 'evident'. The segments then were
from
about 1 to 4 minutes long, and I then describe them in
depth,
including drawings of the interactions. I study this excerpts
as
developmental in terms of emotions. I already said that the
metaphor
I use is that I study certain threads without taking them away
from
the tissue. In my descriptions, I present the richness of the
tissue
and I relay in the concept of context that weave together
(Cole,
1996). I discuss how emotions emerge and impact the situation,
and
how this impact 'informes' in turn the sense that individuals
keep
making of the situation instant after instant.
My conclusions are more about the way in which emotions can
be
studied, and I pose questions to neuroscience, as I see Stern
does!
I suggest to do 'ethnographic nueroscience'. Stern (2004) says:
" Two kinds of data are needed. First, accurate timing of
brain
activity correlated with phenomenal experiences. Second, the
timing
of th analogic shifts in intensity or magnitude of neural
firing
during the same phenomenal expereinces".
I have to read more about Stern, I would like to understand
what are
the similarities and differences with Vygotsky's thought, and
the
usefulness of Stern's contribution. So far, so good :)
Best wishes,
Mabel
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 12:45:44 -0800
From: lpurss@shaw.ca
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: [xmca] Emotions and culture
Hi everyone
I wanted to look at another level of the discourse on
emotions.
This is to add to the recognition of the other levels such
as
institutionally and historically contexts of emotion. This in
no
way minimizes the critical importance of these levels of
process
for understanding emotion.
But, in the same spirit of discourse analysis which loos at
the
micro level of conversation I believe we expand our horizon
of
understanding by exploring the microgenesis of emotions as
the
interface between biology and culture. I have posted before
on the
position of Daniel Stern and the moment by moment generation
of
emotion. Today I want to summarize the thoughts of a DONNEL
B.
Stern to this discussion in his book "Unformulated Experience"
(p.43)When we talk about content or structure or experience
it is
not a THING at all, but a PROCESS, one that has CONTINUITY
OVER
TIME. Some processes have more continuity (organization) some
less.
We act AS IF these discrete abstractions which our folk
psychologhy
labels thoughts, memories, feelings, are REAL but they are
socially
mediated constructions that locates experience in PARTICULAR
stable
ways. Psychoanalysis is interested in how these processes
keep
reproducing experience in similar shapes or patterns
through
interpretive organizing ACTIVITY.
Stern discusses a psychoanalyst "ROY SCHAFER" who attempts
to
translate all psychological events and language games into
ACTION
LANGUAGE to recognize these psychological events as
ACTIVITY.
Schafer chooses not to take this approach because
communication
becomes awkward.
However he does elaborate the processes of REFLECTIVE
EXPERIENCE
(where we stand back from and observe our
phenomicological
processes. Folk psychology (common sense) leaves the
impression
that thoughts and emotions just arrive or leap into
existence
without the DEVELOPMENT of the thought or emotion. In reality
each
moment of experience is a process of emergence (MICROGENESIS)
a
sequence of necessary steps that must occur as experience
UNFOLDS.
Microgenesis, applied to thought and emotion develops from
moment
to moment in a process Donnel Stern calls FORMULATIND
THE
UNFORMULATED. The microgenetic lens emphasizes the
developmental
life (Dewey's "arc") of each present moment OUT OF the
experience
of the recently formulated experience. Conscious,
explicit,
liquistically articulated experience (formulated)emerges
from
activity (verbal and nonverbal) that took place in the
preceding
(sociocultural) moments. This emergence of experience
INCLUDING
THAT PART THAT ARRIVES IN AWARENESS is ORGANIC and CULTURAL
and is
a continuous dynamic process. Sometimes AFTER THE FACT the
way one
moment developed from the PREVIOUS one COMES TO OUR ATTENTION
but
more often it does not.
Donnel Stern uses the terms thought and emotion as
heuristic
devices and stress that he sees these processes as a single
process
of COGNITION (which for him is emotional-thought or
thoughtful-
emotion) Cognition is formulated as a process of emergence
within
sociocultural activity.
William Blake's metaphor "seeing the world in a grain of
sand"
captures the spirit of this inquiry at the microgenetic
level. If
this is seen as the unit of analysis it posits
identity,
subjectivity, and self-ing as emergent in moment to
moment
enactments which become organized into cultural patterns.
I hope this captures the spirit of the relational frame
emerging in
psychoanalytic discourse. They also are elaborating how the
micro,
meso, and macro levels of process develop in particulat
historical
contexts.
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