Emotions, needs and action tendencies

Emotions, needs and action tendencies

According to Laura Fielding the purpose of an emotion is to: Motivate an action that seems useful for survival. Make you aware of a need that you have Communicate to your group or tribe what you need Courtney Armstrong describes the needs and action tendencies...
Essay: Rhythm and regulation in cultural healing practices

Essay: Rhythm and regulation in cultural healing practices

In his book, ‘What is health?’ Peter Sterling recounts an Oliver Sacks story of ‘the lost Mariner’ – Jimmy, a former seaman, in his forties who has lost all his memories going back to 18. Jimmy could not form social bonds and was depressed and agitated....
Stress and self-regulatory capacity

Stress and self-regulatory capacity

Allan Schore describes stress as a change or threat of change which demands adaptation by the organism. Elsewhere Schore describes stress as the occurrence of an asynchrony in a relational interaction in infancy (and indeed at later stages of life). A period of...
Maternal deprivation in Rhesus monkeys

Maternal deprivation in Rhesus monkeys

Steve Sumoi’s laboratory has shown that in Rhesus monkeys that were maternally deprived grow up to be socially anxious in nature and develop reactive temperaments – a tendency to become aggressive, impulsive, fearful and over-aroused. They also tend to go to the...
Thoughts are the shadows of feelings: The primacy of affect

Thoughts are the shadows of feelings: The primacy of affect

Iain McGilChrist argues that feelings are not a reaction to cognitions; it is the other way around: Affect comes first, thinking arrives later. When making choices we make an intuitive assessment and then later use cognition to justify these choices. This is called...