Janus (21 page)

 

 

A similar contrast is noticeable in bodily postures and motions. In laughter
the head is thrown back by a vigorous contraction of the muscles in the neck;
the person who weeps 'lets the head droop' (into the hands, on the table or
on somebody's shoulder). Laughter contracts the muscles and begets agitated
movements; in weeping the muscles go flabby, the shoulders slump forward,
the whole posture reflects a 'letting go'.

 

 

The pattern of respiration in laughter consists of long, deep intakes of air,
followed by bursts of explosive exhalatory puffs -- ha-ha-ha! In weeping
the process is reversed: short, gasping inhalations -- sobs -- are followed
by long, sighing exhalations -- a-a-h, ah. . . .

 

 

These manifest contrasts between laughter and weeping, and their dependence
on two different branches of the autonomic nervous system, are in keeping
with their origin in opposite types of emotion. The Haha reaction
is triggered by the self-assertive, the Ah . . . reaction by the
self-transcending emotions. The first half of this statement should by
now be obvious, the second requires some further comment.

 

 

 

2

 

 

In
The Act of Creation
I discussed in detail various situations
which may lead to an overflow of tears -- mourning, pity, helplessness,
awe, religious or aesthetic rapture, etc. Only the last is directly
relevant to our subject, but it is worth noting that all eye-moistening
emotions have a basic element in common which is altruistic, i.e.,
self-transcending -- a longing to enter into a quasi-symbiotic communion
with a person, living or dead, or some higher entity which may be Nature,
or a form of Art, or a mystic experience. These 'participatory' emotions
are, as we have seen, subjective manifestations of the integrative
tendency, reflecting the human holon's partness -- its dependence on,
and commitment to, some more comprehensive unit on a higher level of the
hierarchy which transcends the narrow confines of the self. Listening
to the organist playing in an empty cathedral, or looking at the stars
on a summer night, may cause a welling-up of emotions which moisten
the eyes, accompanied by an expansion of consciousness, which becomes
quasi-depersonalized and -- if the experience is very intense -- leads
into 'the oceanic feeling of limitless extension and oneness with the
universe'* -- the Ah . . . reaction in its purest form.

 

* Romain Rolland describing the character of religious experience in
a letter to Freud -- who regretfully professed never to have felt
anything of the sort. [1]

 

Ordinary mortals rarely ascend to such mystic heights, but they are at
least familiar with the foothills. The self-transcending emotions have
an extensive scale of intensity and a wide range of variety; they may
be joyous or sad, tragic or lyrical. 'Weeping for joy' and 'weeping in
sorrow' reflect the relative nature of the hedonic tone superimposed on
all emotions.

 

 

A further contrast between the Haha and the Ah . . . reactions is worth
underlining. In laughter, we saw, tension is suddenly exploded; in weeping
it is gradually drained away, without debunking expectation, without
breaking the continuity of mood; in the Ah . . . reaction
emotion and
reason remain united
. Moreover, the self-transcending emotions do not
tend towards bodily action, but towards passive quiescence. Respiration
and pulse are slowed down; 'entrancement' is a step towards the trance-like
states induced by contemplative mystics; the emotion is of a quality that
cannot be consummated by any specific voluntary act. To be 'overwhelmed'
by awe and wonder, 'enraptured' by a smile, 'entranced' by beauty --
each of these words expresses passive surrender. The surplus of emotion
cannot be worked off by any purposeful muscular activity, it can only
be consummated in
internal
-- visceral and glandular -- processes
(cf. above,
Chapter III
).

 

 

Finally some additional facts about the autonomic nervous system are
pertinent to our theme. In strongly emotional or pathological conditions,
the mutually antagonistic, i.e., equilibrating action of the two divisions
(sympathetic and parasympathetic) no longer prevails; instead they may
mutually
reinforce
each other, as in the sexual act; or
over-excitation of one division may lead to a temporary
rebound
or over-compensatory 'answering effect' by the other
^[2]
;
lastly, the parasympathetic may act as a
catalyst
that triggers
its antagonist into action.*
^[3]

 

* See Appendix III.

 

The first of these three possibilities is relevant to our emotional state
in listening to a Wagner opera, where relaxed, cathartic feelings seem to
be paradoxically combined with euphoric arousal. The second possibility
is reflected in 'emotional hangovers' of one kind or another. The third
possibility is the most relevant to our theme: it shows in concrete
physiological terms how one type of emotional reaction can act as a
catalyst for its opposite -- as self-transcending identification with
the hero on the screen releases vicarious aggressiveness against the
villain; as identification with a group or creed releases the savagery
of mob-behaviour.

 

 

 

3

 

 

I have discussed the basic motivation of the creative scientist:
the exploratory drive. Yet every great artist also has an element
of the explorer in him: the poet does not 'manipulate words' (as the
behaviourists would have it), he explores the emotive and descriptive
potentialities of language; the painter is engaged, throughout his life,
in learning to see (and in teaching others to see the world the way
he does). Thus the creative drive has its unitary biological source,
but it can be canalized into a variety of directions.

 

 

This is the first point to retain, if we wish to overcome the deplorable
split into the 'two cultures' -- unknown to the Renaissance as it was
to antiquity -- and to reaffirm the continuity between the panels of
the triptych. Needless to say, continuity does not mean uniformity;
it means the gradual shading, without breaks or dividing lines, of one
colour of the rainbow into another.

 

 

The horizontal lines across die triptych of creativity are meant to
indicate the continuity of some typical combinatorial patterns -- some
basic bisociative processes which are found in all three panels. These
patterns are
trivalent
-- they can enter the service of humour,
discovery or art. Let me illustrate this by a few more examples,
in addition to those already mentioned earlier.

 

 

We have seen, for example, that the caricaturists' cartoon, the scientist's
diagram, and the artist's portrait employ the same bisociative technique
of superimposing selective grids on the optical appearance. Yet in the
language of behaviourist psychology we would have to say that Cézanne,
glancing at a landscape, receives a 'stimulus', to which he responds
by putting a dab of paint on the canvas -- and that is all there
is to it. In reality, perceiving the landscape and re-creating it
are two activities which take place simultaneously on two different
planes, in two different environments. The stimulus comes from a large,
three-dimensional environment, the distant landscape. The response acts
on a different environment, a small rectangular canvas. The two are
governed by different rules of organization: an isolated brush-stroke on
the canvas does not represent an isolated detail in the landscape. There
is no point-to-point correspondence between the two planes; they are
bisociated as wholes in the artist's creation and in the beholder's eye.

 

 

The creation of a work of art involves a series of processes which happen
virtually all at the same time and cannot be rendered in verbal terms
without suffering impoverishment and distortion. The artist, as the
scientist, is engaged in projecting his vision of reality into a
particular medium, whether the medium is paint, marble, or words, or
mathematical equations. But the product of his efforts can never be
an exact representation or copy of reality, even if he naively hopes
to achieve one. In the first place, he has to come to terms with the
peculiarities and limitations of his chosen medium. But in the second
place, his own perception and world-view also have their own peculiarities
and limitations imposed by the implicit conventions of his period or
school and by his individual temperament. These lend coherence to his
vision, but also tend to freeze into fixed formulae, stereotypes, verbal
and visual clichés. The originality of genius, in art as in science,
consists in a shift of attention to aspects of reality previously ignored,
discovering hidden connections, seeing familiar objects or events in a
new light.

 

 

In the discussion which followed a lecture at an American university
on the theme of the present chapter, one of the 'resident painters'
remarked angrily: 'I do not "bisociate". I sit down, look at the model
and paint it.'

 

 

In a sense he was right. He had found his 'style', his visual vocabulary,
some years earlier and was content to use it, with minor variations,
to express everything he had to say. The erstwhile creative process
had become stabilized into a skilled routine. It would be foolish to
underestimate the achievements of which skilled routine is capable,
whether in the chemical laboratory or in the painter's studio.
But technical virtuosity is one thing, creative originality another;
and we are only concerned here with the latter.

 

 

 

4

 

 

The trinity of caricature -- diagram -- stylized portrait provides
one of the horizontal connecting lines across the three panels of the
triptych. Some other such trivalent patterns have already been mentioned
earlier. Thus the bisociation of
sound and meaning
in its humblest
form yields the pun. Yet the
rhyme
is nothing but a glorified pun,
where sound lends resonance to meaning; while for the anthropologist
and linguist, sound provides effective clues to meaning. Likewise, when
rhythm
and
metre
invade meaning, they may produce a Shakespeare
sonnet or a limerick; while in the central panel the study of rhythmic
pulsations plays a vital role, from alpha waves to systole and diastole
-- the iambi and trochee of life. No wonder that metric verse carries
echoes of the shaman's tom-tom and, to quote Yeats, 'lulls the mind into
a waking trance'.

 

 

The triune character of other bisociative combinations appears almost
over-obvious once one has realized the underlying principle and perceives
the three domains of creativity as a continuum. Thus the tracing of
hidden analogies
yields the poetic metaphor, scientific discovery or
comic simile, according to the explorer's motivation. The dichotomies of
mind and matter, of spiritual being and/or hairless ape, yield endless
variations for scientific, artistic or comic treatment.

 

 

Less obvious is the trivalent role of
illusion
. The actor or impersonator
on the stage is two people at the same time. If the result is
degrading
-- Hamlet getting the hiccups in the middle of his monologue -- illusion
is debunked and the spectator will laugh. If he is led to
identify
with
the hero, he will experience the particular state of split-mindedness
known as the magic of the stage. But beside the parodist and the actor
there is a third type of impersonator who purposefully employs the human
faculty of being oneself and someone else at the same time: the therapist
or healer, who projects himself into the patient's mind and at the same
time acts as a wise magician or father-figure. Empathy --
Einfühlung
-- is a nice, sober term for the rather mysterious process of entering
into a kind of mental symbiosis with other selves, of stepping out
of one's skin, as it were, and putting oneself into the skin of
the other. Empathy is the source of our intuitive understanding --
more direct than language -- of how the other thinks and feels; it
is the starting-point of the science and art of medical diagnosis
and psychiatry. The medicine man, ancient and modern, has a two-way
relationship with the patient: he is trying to feel what the patient
feels, and at the same time he is acting the part of one endowed with
divine guidance, magic powers, secret knowledge. The tragedian creates
illusion; the comedian debunks illusion; the therapist uses it for a
definite purpose.

 

 

Coincidence
may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated
causal chains which -- miraculously it seems -- merge into a significant
event. It provides the neatest paradigm of the bisociation of previously
separate contexts, engineered by fate. Coincidences are puns of destiny.
In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into an acoustic knot;
in the coincidental happening two strings of events are knitted together
by invisible hands.

 

 

Moreover, coincidence may serve as a classic example of the trivalence
of bisociative patterns, as it is conspicuously represented on each of
the three panels. It is the mainstay of the type of
comedy
, or farce,
which relies on ambiguous situations created by the intersection of two
independent series of events so that the situation can be interpreted
-- and misinterpreted -- in the light of either one or the other,
resulting in mistaken identity or confusion of time and occasion. In the
classic
tragedy
apparent chance -- coincidences are the
deus
ex machina
by which the gods interfere in the destiny of man --
Oedipus is trapped into murdering his father and marrying his mother by
mistaken identity. Lastly, lucky hazards -- the gifts of