The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Encyclopedia
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a book by Charles Darwin
, published in 1872, concerning genetically determined aspects of behaviour. It was published thirteen years after On The Origin of Species and is, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin's main consideration of human origins. Most unusually, Darwin sought out the opinions of some eminent British psychiatrists in the preparation of the book and it is generally regarded as Darwin's main contribution to psychology
. The Expression of the Emotions is also - like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(1865) - an important landmark in the history of book illustration
.
In July 1838 - a few days after Queen Victoria's coronation - Charles Darwin opened his private notebook on "metaphysics" (philosophical speculation) - the M Notebook - and, over the next three months, filled it with his thoughts about the possible interaction of hereditary factors with the mental and behavioural aspects of human and animal life. The critical importance of this notebook has been customarily viewed in its relationship to Darwin's conception of natural selection
as the central mechanism of evolutionary development - which he seems to have grasped in September 1838. Another striking aspect of these notes is their tentative and fragmented quality which finds its fullest expression in Darwin's descriptions of conversation with his father (a successful doctor with a special interest in psychiatric illness) about recurring patterns of behaviour in succeeding generations of his patients' families. Darwin was anxious about the materialistic drift in his thinking - and of the disrepute which this could attract in early Victorian England - at the time, he was mentally preparing for marriage with his cousin Emma Wedgwood who was possessed of refined Christian sensibilities. On 21 September 1838, Darwin recorded a confused and disturbing dream in which he was involved in a public execution at which the corpse came to life and claimed to have faced death like a hero. The point which emerges is that Darwin arrived at some central aspects of evolutionary theory at the exact moment in which he was considering - almost obsessively - a scientific understanding of human behaviour and family life. A full discussion of the significance of Darwin's early notebooks - together with an annotated presentation of their text - can be found in Paul H. Barrett's Metaphysics, Materialism and the Evolution of Mind - Early Writings of Charles Darwin (1980).
Little of this was to surface in On The Origin of Species in 1859, although Chapter 7 contains a mildly expressed argument concerning the nature of instinctive behaviour. In the public management of his evolutionary theory, Darwin understood that its relevance to human emotional life could carry explosively negative consequences. Nevertheless, while preparing the text of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
in 1866, Darwin took the decision to focus his public statement of evolutionary biology with a book on human ancestry, sexual selection and secondary sexual characteristics including emotional expression. After his initial correspondence with the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne
Darwin set aside his material concerning emotional expression in order to complete The Descent of Man which covered human ancestry and sexual selection. Darwin concluded work on The Descent of Man on 15th January 1871. On 17th January 1871, he started work on his newly independent book The Expression of the Emotions, employing the unused material on emotional expression; and, on 22nd August 1872, he finished work on the proofs. In this way, Darwin brought his evolutionary theory into close approximation with behavioural science, although many Darwin scholars have remarked on a kind of spectral Lamarckism
haunting the text of the Emotions.
Darwin notes the universal nature of expressions
in the book: "...the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements". This connection of mental states to the neurological organization of movement
(as the word emotion suggests) was central to Darwin's understanding of emotion. Darwin himself displayed many biographical links between his psychological life and locomotion
, taking long, solitary walks around Shrewsbury after his mother's death in 1817, in his seashore rambles near Edinburgh with the Lamarckian evolutionist Robert Edmond Grant
in 1826/1827, rather reckless riding expeditions in Argentina
in 1832-35 and in the laying out of the sandwalk - his "thinking path" - at Down House
in Kent in 1846. These aspects of Darwin's personal development are discussed in John Bowlby
's (1990) psychoanalytic biography of Darwin.
Darwin points to a shared human and animal ancestry in sharp contrast to the arguments deployed in Charles Bell
's Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression (1824) which claimed that there were divinely created human muscles to express uniquely human feelings
. Bell's famous aphorism on the subject was: "expression is to the passions as language
is to thought". In the Expression, Darwin reformulates the issues at play: "The force of language is much aided by the expressive movements of the face and body" - hinting at a neurological intimacy of language with psychomotor function (body language
). However, Darwin agreed with Bell's emphasis on the expressive functions of the muscles of respiration
. (This is an interesting opinion in view of Bowlby
's diagnostic conjecture that most of the symptoms of Darwin's long term illness arose from an anxiety-related hyperventilation syndrome
). Darwin had listened to a remarkable attack on Bell's opinions delivered by the phrenologist William A.F. Browne - an assistant to George Combe - at the Plinian Society
in December 1826 when he was a medical student at Edinburgh University. (In 1828, George Combe
- in his bestselling The Constitution of Man
- wrote: "Mental qualities are determined by the size, form and constitution of the brain; and these are transmitted by hereditary descent"). However, Darwin later explained that he had been alerted to Bell's theory of expression in 1840, when he chanced on the first edition of Bell's book during a visit to his wife's family in Staffordshire
. An important discussion of Darwin's response to Bell's neurological theories is provided by Lucy Hartley in her Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth Century Culture (2001).
In the composition of the book, Darwin drew on world-wide responses to his questionnaire
(circulated in the early months of 1867) concerning emotional expression in different ethnic groups, on hundreds of photographs of actors, babies and children, and on descriptions of psychiatric patients in the West Riding Lunatic Asylum at Wakefield
in West Yorkshire. Darwin carried out an unusually extensive and remarkable correspondence with James Crichton-Browne
, the superintendent of the Wakefield asylum. At the time, Crichton-Browne was preparing his enormously influential West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Crichton-Browne was the son of the phrenologist William A.F. Browne and Darwin remarked to him that the book "should be called by Darwin and Browne". Darwin also drew on his personal experience of the symptoms of bereavement, highlighting an autobiographical aspect to the book. Darwin considered other approaches to the study of emotions, including their depiction in the arts - discussed by the anatomist Robert Knox
in his Manual of Artistic Anatomy (1852) and by the actor Henry Siddons
in his Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action (1807) - but abandoned them as unreliable sources of information. (In 1833, Siddons' sister, Cecilia Siddons, married the phrenologist George Combe
).
, grief
, dejection and despair; and the contrasting Chapter 8 "high spirits" with joy, love, tender feelings and devotion. Subsequent chapters include considerations of "reflection and meditation" (associated with "ill-temper", sulkiness and determination), Chapter 10 on hatred and anger
, Chapter 11 on "disdain, contempt, disgust
, guilt
, pride
, helplessness, patience
and affirmation" and Chapter 12 on "surprise
, astonishment, fear
and horror". In Chapter 13, Darwin discussses complex emotional states including self-attention, shame
, shyness
, modesty
and blushing
. Throughout these chapters, Darwin's concern was to show how human expressions link human movements with emotional states, and are genetically determined and derive from purposeful animal actions. Darwin received dozens of photographs of psychiatric patients from Crichton-Browne, but included in the book only one engraving based on these illustrations - sent on 6th June 1870 (along with Darwin's copy of Duchenne) (Darwin Correspondence: Letter 7220) - and this - Figure 19 - was of a patient (with erection of her hair like wire) under the care of Dr James Gilchrist at the Southern Counties Asylum (Crichton Royal) in Dumfries.
Darwin concluded work on the book with a sense of relief
. The attacks on his work by the Roman Catholic biologist St George Mivart in 1871/1872 had coincided with a severe aggravation of Darwin's illness, with mysterious symptoms (including vomiting
, sweat
ing, sigh
ing and weeping); but the intervention of Thomas Henry Huxley with a savage review of Mivart's Genesis of Species (1871) and Darwin's continuing correspondence with James Crichton-Browne
(amounting to more than forty letters with many enclosures) seemed to encourage a resolution of his symptoms as he brought his work on emotional expression
to a conclusion. In the last decade of his life (1873–1882), Darwin's health was generally much improved. The complex interaction of Darwin's symptoms with his scientific theories and with his personal and family bereavements and relationships remains a considerable puzzle.
("Ettie") and son Leo
, required a major revision which made Darwin "sick
of the subject and myself, and the world". It was to be one of the first books with photographs, with seven heliotype plates, and the publisher John Murray
warned that this "would poke a terrible hole in the profits". In the event, the published book displayed an extraordinary assembly of illustrations - almost in the manner of a Victorian family album - with engravings of the Darwin family's domestic pets, portraits by the faintly disreputable Swedish photographer Oscar Rejlander (1813–1875) ("of Victoria Street, London"), anatomical diagrams by Sir Charles Bell
(1774–1842) and Friedrich Henle (1809–1885) and illustrational quotations from the Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine - Analyse Electro-Physiologique de L'Expression des Passions (1862) by the eminent French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne (1806–1875). Darwin was careful to ensure Duchenne's agreement to his association with the project and the two men corresponded briefly. Duchenne's involvement brought a dramatic and psychological dimension to Darwin's book - he had been a powerful influence on Jean-Martin Charcot
(1825 - 1893) - Charcot often referred to Duchenne as "mon maitre" ("my teacher") and sat with Duchenne on his deathbed. Duchenne's complicated classic introduced a number of novel themes, including clinical photography as well as his technique of the electrical stimulation of the facial muscles supplied by the seventh cranial (facial) nerve. On 8th June 1869, Darwin sent his copy of Duchenne's book to Crichton-Browne, seeking his opinion. Crichton-Browne seems to have mislaid the book in his asylum for almost a year, causing Darwin some anxiety; but, on 6th June 1870, the book was returned, along with a photograph of a patient with her hair erect "like wire" (Darwin Correspondence: Letter 7220), which Darwin incorporated into the text - Figure 19 - of the Expression of the Emotions . Two years later, Crichton-Browne invited David Ferrier
to Wakefield to conduct experiments on the electrical stimulation of the motor centres in the brain.
The lavish style of scientific illustration was followed in work on animal locomotion
(co-ordinated movement) by Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) and James Bell Pettigrew
(1832–1908); and, also, in D'Arcy Thompson's masterpiece of mathematical biology On Growth and Form (1917). Darwin himself, inveterately original, moved from animal locomotion - and emotional life - to the puzzles of insectivorous plants and The Power of Movement in Plants
in his book of that title in 1880. Much of the theme of mental evolution - the biological acquisition of mental powers - was taken up by George Romanes
(1848–1894). As the torch of anti-Darwinism passed from the theologians to the social scientists, Darwin's biological interpretation of the emotions was to prove something of a dead-end for a century or so. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead
emphasised the cultural determinants of emotional expression, arguing that expression varies fundamentally from one culture to another. However, empirical research by Paul Ekman
and others has shown this view to be misconceived. Since around 1970, in an atmosphere newly receptive to the biological approaches to human behaviour, it has become clear that there were distinguished scientific contributions which followed up Darwin's ideas. These include William James
' What Is An Emotion ? (1884), Walter Cannon's Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage (1915) - in which Cannon coined the famous phrase fight or flight response - and Schachter and Singer's (1962) studies on the interaction of social, psychological and physical factors in the generation of emotional states. On 24th January 1895, Crichton-Browne delivered a notable lecture (in Dumfries, Scotland) On Emotional Expression, discussing some reservations concerning Darwin's formulations, emphasising the role of the hands in emotional expression, and touching on the issues of expressive asymmetry and on the relationship of physical expression to language. Thorstein Veblen
's sociological classic The Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899) assumed an evolutionary perspective and advanced a persuasive narrative concerning the elaboration of gesture and posture into a culturally encoded system of decorum and good manners. In 2003, the New York Academy of Sciences published Emotions Inside Out: 130 Years after Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, a Compendium of 37 papers with current research on the subject.
It is noteworthy that Freud's early publications on the symptoms of hysteria
- with their influential concept of emotional conflict
- acknowledged debts to Darwin's work on emotional expression, that Freud's later Interpretation of Dreams
(1900) - a work which lingered on the immediate presentation of mental processes - contained no illustrations, and that Darwin published nothing on dreams as a mode of emotional expression. Indeed, Darwin's approach in The Expression has been criticised for neglecting the communicative aspects of expression. Freud's ideas concerning the psychological aspects of the human body were developed further - including the concept of body image
- by the neuropsychiatrist Paul Schilder - and an exhaustive discussion of Darwin's impact on psychoanalysis was provided by Lucille Ritvo. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals proved to be very popular, perhaps surprisingly, with a Victorian readership more accustomed to hearing about the virtues of self-control (inhibition) rather than the value of self-expression. On 1 November 1872, Darwin sent a copy of the book to Sarah Haliburton (Owen), sister of Fanny Owen, his girlfriend when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. In December 1872, Darwin corresponded briefly with the mathematician and photographer Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–1898), author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(1865) - illustrated by Sir John Tenniel (1820–1914) - and Dodgson sent Darwin a photograph
of "an emotional expression" (portrait of Flora Rankin). Today, Darwin's book can be viewed as a pioneering work in the burgeoning field of behavioural genetics
. Some critics have regarded Darwin's sketches of animal behaviour as anthropomorphic, and the whole book as curiously Lamarckian in character. It quickly sold around 7000 copies and was widely praised as a charming and accessible introduction to Darwin's evolutionary theories.
A second edition was published by Darwin's son around 1889. It did not contain several revisions wanted by Darwin, which were not published until the third edition of 1999 (edited by Paul Ekman
).
Free e-book versions available on the internet:
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, published in 1872, concerning genetically determined aspects of behaviour. It was published thirteen years after On The Origin of Species and is, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin's main consideration of human origins. Most unusually, Darwin sought out the opinions of some eminent British psychiatrists in the preparation of the book and it is generally regarded as Darwin's main contribution to psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
. The Expression of the Emotions is also - like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
(1865) - an important landmark in the history of book illustration
Book illustration
The book illustration is specific type of illustration, which appears in books. Some of modern illustrations are performed by American Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators....
.
History of the Book
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
as the central mechanism of evolutionary development - which he seems to have grasped in September 1838. Another striking aspect of these notes is their tentative and fragmented quality which finds its fullest expression in Darwin's descriptions of conversation with his father (a successful doctor with a special interest in psychiatric illness) about recurring patterns of behaviour in succeeding generations of his patients' families. Darwin was anxious about the materialistic drift in his thinking - and of the disrepute which this could attract in early Victorian England - at the time, he was mentally preparing for marriage with his cousin Emma Wedgwood who was possessed of refined Christian sensibilities. On 21 September 1838, Darwin recorded a confused and disturbing dream in which he was involved in a public execution at which the corpse came to life and claimed to have faced death like a hero. The point which emerges is that Darwin arrived at some central aspects of evolutionary theory at the exact moment in which he was considering - almost obsessively - a scientific understanding of human behaviour and family life. A full discussion of the significance of Darwin's early notebooks - together with an annotated presentation of their text - can be found in Paul H. Barrett's Metaphysics, Materialism and the Evolution of Mind - Early Writings of Charles Darwin (1980).
Little of this was to surface in On The Origin of Species in 1859, although Chapter 7 contains a mildly expressed argument concerning the nature of instinctive behaviour. In the public management of his evolutionary theory, Darwin understood that its relevance to human emotional life could carry explosively negative consequences. Nevertheless, while preparing the text of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is a book written by Charles Darwin that was first published in January 1868.A large proportion of the book contains detailed information on the domestication of animals and plants but it also contains in Chapter XXVII a description of...
in 1866, Darwin took the decision to focus his public statement of evolutionary biology with a book on human ancestry, sexual selection and secondary sexual characteristics including emotional expression. After his initial correspondence with the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne
James Crichton-Browne
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS was a leading British psychiatrist famous for studies on the relationship of mental illness to neurological damage and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health...
Darwin set aside his material concerning emotional expression in order to complete The Descent of Man which covered human ancestry and sexual selection. Darwin concluded work on The Descent of Man on 15th January 1871. On 17th January 1871, he started work on his newly independent book The Expression of the Emotions, employing the unused material on emotional expression; and, on 22nd August 1872, he finished work on the proofs. In this way, Darwin brought his evolutionary theory into close approximation with behavioural science, although many Darwin scholars have remarked on a kind of spectral Lamarckism
Lamarckism
Lamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
haunting the text of the Emotions.
Darwin notes the universal nature of expressions
Emotional expression
In psychology, emotional expression is observable verbal and nonverbal behaviour that communicates emotion. Emotional expression can occur with or without self-awareness...
in the book: "...the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements". This connection of mental states to the neurological organization of movement
Motor system
The motor system is the part of the central nervous system that is involved with movement. It consists of the pyramidal and extrapyramidal system....
(as the word emotion suggests) was central to Darwin's understanding of emotion. Darwin himself displayed many biographical links between his psychological life and locomotion
Locomotion
The term locomotion means movement or travel. It may refer to:* Motion * Animal locomotion** Terrestrial locomotion* TravelLocomotion may refer to specific types of motion:* Gait analysis* walking* running, including trotting...
, taking long, solitary walks around Shrewsbury after his mother's death in 1817, in his seashore rambles near Edinburgh with the Lamarckian evolutionist Robert Edmond Grant
Robert Edmond Grant
Robert Edmond Grant MD FRCPEd FRS was born in Edinburgh and educated at Edinburgh University as a physician. He became one of the foremost biologists of the early 19th century at Edinburgh and subsequently the first Professor of Comparative Anatomy at University College London...
in 1826/1827, rather reckless riding expeditions in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
in 1832-35 and in the laying out of the sandwalk - his "thinking path" - at Down House
Down House
Down House is the former home of the English naturalist Charles Darwin and his family. It was in this house and garden that Darwin worked on his theories of evolution by natural selection which he had conceived in London before moving to Downe....
in Kent in 1846. These aspects of Darwin's personal development are discussed in John Bowlby
John Bowlby
Edward John Mostyn "John" Bowlby was a British psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory.- Family background :...
's (1990) psychoanalytic biography of Darwin.
Darwin points to a shared human and animal ancestry in sharp contrast to the arguments deployed in Charles Bell
Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, neurologist and philosophical theologian.His three older brothers included John Bell , also a noted surgeon and writer; and the advocate George Joseph Bell .-Life:...
's Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression (1824) which claimed that there were divinely created human muscles to express uniquely human feelings
Feelings
Feelings is an album by David Byrne, released on June 17, 1997.Cover art by Stefan Sagmeister.-Track listing:All tracks written by David Byrne; additional writers in parenthesis.#"Fuzzy Freaky" – 4:59...
. Bell's famous aphorism on the subject was: "expression is to the passions as language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
is to thought". In the Expression, Darwin reformulates the issues at play: "The force of language is much aided by the expressive movements of the face and body" - hinting at a neurological intimacy of language with psychomotor function (body language
Body language
Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously....
). However, Darwin agreed with Bell's emphasis on the expressive functions of the muscles of respiration
Respiration (physiology)
'In physiology, respiration is defined as the transport of oxygen from the outside air to the cells within tissues, and the transport of carbon dioxide in the opposite direction...
. (This is an interesting opinion in view of Bowlby
Bowlby
Bowlby is a surname, and may refer to:*April Bowlby , American actor*Thomas William Bowlby , correspondent to The Times.*Sir Anthony Bowlby, 1st Baronet , British surgeon and pathologist, son of the above....
's diagnostic conjecture that most of the symptoms of Darwin's long term illness arose from an anxiety-related hyperventilation syndrome
Hyperventilation syndrome
Hyperventilation syndrome is a respiratory disorder, psychologically or physiologically based, involving breathing too deeply or too rapidly...
). Darwin had listened to a remarkable attack on Bell's opinions delivered by the phrenologist William A.F. Browne - an assistant to George Combe - at the Plinian Society
Plinian Society
The Plinian Society was a club at the University of Edinburgh for students interested in natural history. It was founded in 1823. Several of its members went on to have prominent careers, most notably Charles Darwin who announced his first scientific discoveries at the society.-Foundation,...
in December 1826 when he was a medical student at Edinburgh University. (In 1828, George Combe
George Combe
George Combe , was a Scottish lawyer and writer on phrenology and education. In later years, he devoted himself to the promotion of phrenology. His major work was The Constitution of Man .-Early life:...
- in his bestselling The Constitution of Man
The Constitution of Man
The Constitution of Man is the classical exposition of phrenology, written by George Combe and published in 1828. It furthered the popularity of phrenology by finding a pathway to a personal philosophy which was in tune with the scientific understanding of the time. The Constitution bridged the...
- wrote: "Mental qualities are determined by the size, form and constitution of the brain; and these are transmitted by hereditary descent"). However, Darwin later explained that he had been alerted to Bell's theory of expression in 1840, when he chanced on the first edition of Bell's book during a visit to his wife's family in Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
. An important discussion of Darwin's response to Bell's neurological theories is provided by Lucy Hartley in her Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth Century Culture (2001).
In the composition of the book, Darwin drew on world-wide responses to his questionnaire
Questionnaire
A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case...
(circulated in the early months of 1867) concerning emotional expression in different ethnic groups, on hundreds of photographs of actors, babies and children, and on descriptions of psychiatric patients in the West Riding Lunatic Asylum at Wakefield
Wakefield
Wakefield is the main settlement and administrative centre of the City of Wakefield, a metropolitan district of West Yorkshire, England. Located by the River Calder on the eastern edge of the Pennines, the urban area is and had a population of 76,886 in 2001....
in West Yorkshire. Darwin carried out an unusually extensive and remarkable correspondence with James Crichton-Browne
James Crichton-Browne
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS was a leading British psychiatrist famous for studies on the relationship of mental illness to neurological damage and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health...
, the superintendent of the Wakefield asylum. At the time, Crichton-Browne was preparing his enormously influential West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Crichton-Browne was the son of the phrenologist William A.F. Browne and Darwin remarked to him that the book "should be called by Darwin and Browne". Darwin also drew on his personal experience of the symptoms of bereavement, highlighting an autobiographical aspect to the book. Darwin considered other approaches to the study of emotions, including their depiction in the arts - discussed by the anatomist Robert Knox
Robert Knox
Robert Knox was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist and zoologist. He was the most popular lecturer in anatomy in Edinburgh before his involvement in the Burke and Hare body-snatching case. This ruined his career, and a later move to London did not improve matters...
in his Manual of Artistic Anatomy (1852) and by the actor Henry Siddons
Henry Siddons
Henry Siddons was an English actor and theatrical manager, now remembered as a writer on gesture.-Life:Born on 4 October 1774, he was the eldest child of Sarah Siddons, and was educated at Charterhouse School, being intended by his mother for the church...
in his Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action (1807) - but abandoned them as unreliable sources of information. (In 1833, Siddons' sister, Cecilia Siddons, married the phrenologist George Combe
George Combe
George Combe , was a Scottish lawyer and writer on phrenology and education. In later years, he devoted himself to the promotion of phrenology. His major work was The Constitution of Man .-Early life:...
).
Structure of the Book
Darwin opens the book with three chapters on "the general principles of expression", followed by a section (three more chapters) on modes of emotional expression peculiar to particular species, including man. Then, he moves on to the main argument with his characteristic approach of astonishingly widespread and detailed observations. Chapter 7 discusses "low spirits", including anxietyAnxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
, grief
Grief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
, dejection and despair; and the contrasting Chapter 8 "high spirits" with joy, love, tender feelings and devotion. Subsequent chapters include considerations of "reflection and meditation" (associated with "ill-temper", sulkiness and determination), Chapter 10 on hatred and anger
Anger
Anger is an automatic response to ill treatment. It is the way a person indicates he or she will not tolerate certain types of behaviour. It is a feedback mechanism in which an unpleasant stimulus is met with an unpleasant response....
, Chapter 11 on "disdain, contempt, disgust
Disgust
Disgust is a type of aversion that involves withdrawing from a person or object with strong expressions of revulsion whether real or pretended. It is one of the basic emotions and is typically associated with things that are regarded as unclean, inedible, infectious, gory or otherwise offensive...
, guilt
Guilt
Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that...
, pride
Pride
Pride is an inwardly directed emotion that carries two common meanings. With a negative connotation, pride refers to an inflated sense of one's personal status or accomplishments, often used synonymously with hubris...
, helplessness, patience
Patience
Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. Patience is the...
and affirmation" and Chapter 12 on "surprise
Surprise (emotion)
Surprise is a brief emotional state experienced as the result of an unexpected event. Surprise can have any valence; that is, it can be neutral/moderate, pleasant, or unpleasant. If a person experiences a very powerful or long lasting surprise, it may be considered shock.-Reality...
, astonishment, fear
Fear
Fear is a distressing negative sensation induced by a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger...
and horror". In Chapter 13, Darwin discussses complex emotional states including self-attention, shame
Shame
Shame is, variously, an affect, emotion, cognition, state, or condition. The roots of the word shame are thought to derive from an older word meaning to cover; as such, covering oneself, literally or figuratively, is a natural expression of shame....
, shyness
Shyness
In humans, shyness is a social psychology term used to describe the feeling of apprehension, lack of comfort, or awkwardness experienced when a person is in proximity to, approaching, or being approached by other people, especially in new situations or with unfamiliar people...
, modesty
Modesty
Standards of modesty are aspects of the culture of a country or people, at a given point in time, and is a measure against which an individual in society may be judged....
and blushing
Blushing
Blushing refers to the involuntary reddening of a person's face due to embarrassment or emotional stress, though it has been known to come from being lovestruck, or from some kind of romantic stimulation. It is thought that blushing is the result of an overactive sympathetic nervous system...
. Throughout these chapters, Darwin's concern was to show how human expressions link human movements with emotional states, and are genetically determined and derive from purposeful animal actions. Darwin received dozens of photographs of psychiatric patients from Crichton-Browne, but included in the book only one engraving based on these illustrations - sent on 6th June 1870 (along with Darwin's copy of Duchenne) (Darwin Correspondence: Letter 7220) - and this - Figure 19 - was of a patient (with erection of her hair like wire) under the care of Dr James Gilchrist at the Southern Counties Asylum (Crichton Royal) in Dumfries.
Darwin concluded work on the book with a sense of relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
. The attacks on his work by the Roman Catholic biologist St George Mivart in 1871/1872 had coincided with a severe aggravation of Darwin's illness, with mysterious symptoms (including vomiting
Vomiting
Vomiting is the forceful expulsion of the contents of one's stomach through the mouth and sometimes the nose...
, sweat
SWEAT
SWEAT is an OLN/TSN show hosted by Julie Zwillich that aired in 2003-2004.Each of the 13 half-hour episodes of SWEAT features a different outdoor sport: kayaking, mountain biking, ice hockey, beach volleyball, soccer, windsurfing, rowing, Ultimate, triathlon, wakeboarding, snowboarding, telemark...
ing, sigh
Sigh
A sigh is a deep and especially audible, single exhalation of air out of the mouth or nose, that humans use to communicate emotion. It is voiced pharyngeal fricative, sometimes associated with a guttural glottal breath exuded in a low tone. It often arises from a negative emotion, such as dismay,...
ing and weeping); but the intervention of Thomas Henry Huxley with a savage review of Mivart's Genesis of Species (1871) and Darwin's continuing correspondence with James Crichton-Browne
James Crichton-Browne
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS was a leading British psychiatrist famous for studies on the relationship of mental illness to neurological damage and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health...
(amounting to more than forty letters with many enclosures) seemed to encourage a resolution of his symptoms as he brought his work on emotional expression
Emotional expression
In psychology, emotional expression is observable verbal and nonverbal behaviour that communicates emotion. Emotional expression can occur with or without self-awareness...
to a conclusion. In the last decade of his life (1873–1882), Darwin's health was generally much improved. The complex interaction of Darwin's symptoms with his scientific theories and with his personal and family bereavements and relationships remains a considerable puzzle.
Cultural Relations of the Book
The proofs, tackled by his daughter HenriettaDarwin — Wedgwood family
The Darwin–Wedgwood family is actually two interrelated English families, descended from the prominent 18th century doctor, Erasmus Darwin, and Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the pottery firm, Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, the most notable member of which was Charles Darwin...
("Ettie") and son Leo
Leonard Darwin
Major Leonard Darwin , a son of the English naturalist Charles Darwin, was variously a soldier, politician, economist, eugenicist and mentor of the statistician and evolutionary biologist Ronald Fisher.- Biography :...
, required a major revision which made Darwin "sick
Sick
Sick may refer to:* Having a disease* Experiencing illness* Vomit- Music :* Sick * Sick * Sick * Sicks , an album by Barnes & Barnes...
of the subject and myself, and the world". It was to be one of the first books with photographs, with seven heliotype plates, and the publisher John Murray
John Murray (publisher)
John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...
warned that this "would poke a terrible hole in the profits". In the event, the published book displayed an extraordinary assembly of illustrations - almost in the manner of a Victorian family album - with engravings of the Darwin family's domestic pets, portraits by the faintly disreputable Swedish photographer Oscar Rejlander (1813–1875) ("of Victoria Street, London"), anatomical diagrams by Sir Charles Bell
Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, neurologist and philosophical theologian.His three older brothers included John Bell , also a noted surgeon and writer; and the advocate George Joseph Bell .-Life:...
(1774–1842) and Friedrich Henle (1809–1885) and illustrational quotations from the Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine - Analyse Electro-Physiologique de L'Expression des Passions (1862) by the eminent French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne (1806–1875). Darwin was careful to ensure Duchenne's agreement to his association with the project and the two men corresponded briefly. Duchenne's involvement brought a dramatic and psychological dimension to Darwin's book - he had been a powerful influence on Jean-Martin Charcot
Jean-Martin Charcot
Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is known as "the founder of modern neurology" and is "associated with at least 15 medical eponyms", including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...
(1825 - 1893) - Charcot often referred to Duchenne as "mon maitre" ("my teacher") and sat with Duchenne on his deathbed. Duchenne's complicated classic introduced a number of novel themes, including clinical photography as well as his technique of the electrical stimulation of the facial muscles supplied by the seventh cranial (facial) nerve. On 8th June 1869, Darwin sent his copy of Duchenne's book to Crichton-Browne, seeking his opinion. Crichton-Browne seems to have mislaid the book in his asylum for almost a year, causing Darwin some anxiety; but, on 6th June 1870, the book was returned, along with a photograph of a patient with her hair erect "like wire" (Darwin Correspondence: Letter 7220), which Darwin incorporated into the text - Figure 19 - of the Expression of the Emotions . Two years later, Crichton-Browne invited David Ferrier
David Ferrier
Sir David Ferrier, FRS was a pioneering Scottish neurologist and psychologist.-Life:Ferrier was born in Woodside, Aberdeen and educated at Aberdeen Grammar School before studying for an MA at Aberdeen University...
to Wakefield to conduct experiments on the electrical stimulation of the motor centres in the brain.
The lavish style of scientific illustration was followed in work on animal locomotion
Animal locomotion
Animal locomotion, which is the act of self-propulsion by an animal, has many manifestations, including running, swimming, jumping and flying. Animals move for a variety of reasons, such as to find food, a mate, or a suitable microhabitat, and to escape predators...
(co-ordinated movement) by Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) and James Bell Pettigrew
James Bell Pettigrew
James Bell Pettigrew, FRS FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish naturalist and museum curator. He was a distinguished naturalist in Edinburgh and London, and at St Andrews University from 1875 until his death...
(1832–1908); and, also, in D'Arcy Thompson's masterpiece of mathematical biology On Growth and Form (1917). Darwin himself, inveterately original, moved from animal locomotion - and emotional life - to the puzzles of insectivorous plants and The Power of Movement in Plants
The Power of Movement in Plants
The Power of Movement in Plants is a book by Charles Darwin on phototropism and other types of movement in plants. This book continues his work in producing evidence for his theory of natural selection...
in his book of that title in 1880. Much of the theme of mental evolution - the biological acquisition of mental powers - was taken up by George Romanes
George Romanes
George John Romanes FRS was a Canadian-born English evolutionary biologist and physiologist who laid the foundation of what he called comparative psychology, postulating a similarity of cognitive processes and mechanisms between humans and other animals.He was the youngest of Charles Darwin's...
(1848–1894). As the torch of anti-Darwinism passed from the theologians to the social scientists, Darwin's biological interpretation of the emotions was to prove something of a dead-end for a century or so. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....
emphasised the cultural determinants of emotional expression, arguing that expression varies fundamentally from one culture to another. However, empirical research by Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman is a psychologist who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He has been considered one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century...
and others has shown this view to be misconceived. Since around 1970, in an atmosphere newly receptive to the biological approaches to human behaviour, it has become clear that there were distinguished scientific contributions which followed up Darwin's ideas. These include William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
' What Is An Emotion ? (1884), Walter Cannon's Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage (1915) - in which Cannon coined the famous phrase fight or flight response - and Schachter and Singer's (1962) studies on the interaction of social, psychological and physical factors in the generation of emotional states. On 24th January 1895, Crichton-Browne delivered a notable lecture (in Dumfries, Scotland) On Emotional Expression, discussing some reservations concerning Darwin's formulations, emphasising the role of the hands in emotional expression, and touching on the issues of expressive asymmetry and on the relationship of physical expression to language. Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...
's sociological classic The Theory of the Leisure Class
The Theory of the Leisure Class
The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions is a book, first published in 1899, by the Norwegian-American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen while he was a professor at the University of Chicago....
(1899) assumed an evolutionary perspective and advanced a persuasive narrative concerning the elaboration of gesture and posture into a culturally encoded system of decorum and good manners. In 2003, the New York Academy of Sciences published Emotions Inside Out: 130 Years after Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, a Compendium of 37 papers with current research on the subject.
It is noteworthy that Freud's early publications on the symptoms of hysteria
Hysteria
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
- with their influential concept of emotional conflict
Emotional conflict
"Emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious are the classical features of...medical psychology" for C. G. Jung. Equally, 'Freud's concept of emotional conflict as amplified by Anna Freud...Erikson and others is central in contemporary theories of mental disorder in children,...
- acknowledged debts to Darwin's work on emotional expression, that Freud's later Interpretation of Dreams
Interpretation of dreams
Interpretation of dreams may refer to:* Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams* Oneiromancy, a form of divination based upon dreams* The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud's 1899 book about psychoanalysis and dreams...
(1900) - a work which lingered on the immediate presentation of mental processes - contained no illustrations, and that Darwin published nothing on dreams as a mode of emotional expression. Indeed, Darwin's approach in The Expression has been criticised for neglecting the communicative aspects of expression. Freud's ideas concerning the psychological aspects of the human body were developed further - including the concept of body image
Body image
Body image refers to a person's perception of the aesthetics and sexual attractiveness of their own body. The phrase body image was first coined by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder in his masterpiece The Image and Appearance of the Human Body...
- by the neuropsychiatrist Paul Schilder - and an exhaustive discussion of Darwin's impact on psychoanalysis was provided by Lucille Ritvo. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals proved to be very popular, perhaps surprisingly, with a Victorian readership more accustomed to hearing about the virtues of self-control (inhibition) rather than the value of self-expression. On 1 November 1872, Darwin sent a copy of the book to Sarah Haliburton (Owen), sister of Fanny Owen, his girlfriend when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. In December 1872, Darwin corresponded briefly with the mathematician and photographer Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–1898), author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
(1865) - illustrated by Sir John Tenniel (1820–1914) - and Dodgson sent Darwin a photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
of "an emotional expression" (portrait of Flora Rankin). Today, Darwin's book can be viewed as a pioneering work in the burgeoning field of behavioural genetics
Behavioural genetics
Quantitative human behavioural genetics is a specialisation in the biological field of behaviour genetics that studies the role of genetics in human behaviour employing quantitative-genetic methods. The field is an overlap of quantitative genetics and psychology...
. Some critics have regarded Darwin's sketches of animal behaviour as anthropomorphic, and the whole book as curiously Lamarckian in character. It quickly sold around 7000 copies and was widely praised as a charming and accessible introduction to Darwin's evolutionary theories.
Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman is a psychologist who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He has been considered one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century...
).
See Also
- attachmentAttachmentAttachment may refer to:Attachment- An emotional connection. Attachment involves being dependent on someone for something: emotional, mental or physical....
- autobiographyAutobiographyAn autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
- body languageBody languageBody language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously....
- emotional conflictEmotional conflict"Emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious are the classical features of...medical psychology" for C. G. Jung. Equally, 'Freud's concept of emotional conflict as amplified by Anna Freud...Erikson and others is central in contemporary theories of mental disorder in children,...
- muscle memoryMuscle memoryMuscle memory has been used synonymously with motor learning, which is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to...
- neural networksNeural NetworksNeural Networks is the official journal of the three oldest societies dedicated to research in neural networks: International Neural Network Society, European Neural Network Society and Japanese Neural Network Society, published by Elsevier...
- picture bookPicture bookA picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor and pencil.Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now...
External links
...Free e-book versions available on the internet: