William James

The last several nights have involved more crying and less philosophy than I might have liked.  After a couple of weeks of great digestion, it seems that Helena Iara has run into some bad colic.  Today, however, as we rocked back and forth on the hammock, I was able to get her to calm down as she listened to my voice, as I sang bossa nova and eighties rock (I don't have much of a repetoire of lullabies), and when I failed to have any more songs, I talked about whatever came into my head.  In this case, the psychology of William James.

Helena Iara already has an immense archive of facial expressions, ranging from the obvious and simple (the sucking movements that indicate hunger, a certain kind of cry for colic) to what seem much more complex and nuanced: many shades of happiness, a kind of curiosity, an introspective gaze, and several looks that seem rather like existential dread.  Now, not only will most experts in child neurological development insist that introspection is far beyond a baby of two weeks old, they will say that even smiles at this age are simple a reflex, not an expression per se.

And that's where we get to William James, who wanted to challenge that simple idea that facial "expressions" are, in fact, expressions or manifestations of some complex inner state.  Our common sense, he said, teaches that we first feel something, and then express this feeling on the surface of our body through gestures and expressions.  James wanted to see the phenomenon in a more materialist way: what if, he said, we think about the smile as the cause of the feeling, as opposed to the other way around?  Or as things that are so intimately linked that we cannot call one of them cause and the other effect?  Try forcing a smile onto your face, for instance, and observing the effect on your emotions; or the next time you jam your toe or hammer your finger, try not to scream.  Separating the "expression" and the "essence" has strange consequences.

The smiles that pass over Helena Iara's face, then... are they "real" expressions?  Or simply reflex?  Or does this reflection on William James let us say that they are both?  Her face moves through any number of gestures and movements as she tries them out and feels the results.  The smiles are not, probably, true expressions of inner happiness, but they may cause brief flutters of that feeling they are said to express.

I had plans to then move on to tell her about the debates in Revolutionary Russia on how to represent emotions on the stage, pitting Stanislavsky against Meyerhold... but her stomach started to hurt her again, so I passed her on to Rita to give the care that only a mother can.