Page 25 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

EDWARD C. STEWART

But what is the nature of the potentiality of nuclear emotion in the new-
born that through the course of development will construct the infant’s view
of the world? The answer is predominantly fear. Evidence collected by devel-
opmental psychologists suggests that the newborn infant responds to a loud
noise with a startle reflex, followed by fear. The sudden loud noise probably
triggers a response of pain, forming a connection between the startle reflex
and sound-pain-fear. Other sources of stimulation such as hard knocks on the
infant’s body, rashes, and gastrointestinal disturbances, for example, certainly
reinforce connections among pain-fear-anger through Pavlovian condition-
ing, and establish the primacy of the fear response. Then, when the infant
begins to move about on its own, towards the end of the first year of life, it
develops fear of strangers and, in counterpart and at the same time, has a
strong attachment to its mother or other primary caretaker (Brown 1991:
135, 179).
When fear is great and the frightened one freezes, the body closes in upon
itself. The color of the skin changes, the limbs and torso turn clammy and
cold. The body shivers. The feeling of fear is that of defeat, impelling the
individual to look outside for help, but at the same time the external world
appears to have gathered against the individual. In the experience of panic,
distortions of symbolic space may precipitate the fears of claustrophobia or the
reverse, agoraphobia. There seems to be no rational escape from the causes of
fear, real or imaginary. The powerlessness that is rendered by fear makes the
individual vulnerable to anger.
In the Western world anger is perceived as a ‘mass’, an ‘object under pressure’,
hot ‘fluid’ coursing through the body. The emotion of anger noticeably
increases body heat, blood pressure, and muscular activity, and interferes with
perception (‘I was so mad, I couldn’t see straight!’). Anger is understood to be
inside the body, which is viewed as a container (‘She was brimming with rage’
or ‘She couldn’t contain herself’), that increases physical agitation (‘She was
shaking with anger’). The angry person runs the risk that the container will
boil over or explode. Cultural control imposes a shared belief that the explosion
may be prevented by application of sufficient force and energy to contain
the energy inside, but when the anger increases beyond a certain limit, the
pressure does in fact explode and the person loses control (‘He blew his
stack!’).
When anger threatens others in Western cultures, the beasts appear:

There is a part of each person that is a wild animal. Civilized people are
supposed to keep that part of them private, that is, they are supposed to
keep the animal inside them. In the metaphor, loss of control is equiva-
lent to the animal loose. And the behavior of a person who has lost
control is various passions – desire, anger, etc. In the case of anger, the
beast presents a danger to other people.
(Lakoff 1987: 492)

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