Isre 2000

The term "Ur-emotion" is proposed as a name for abstract structures, essences, or underlying structures of emotion that can be perceived across cultures and species. The “Ur-“ prefix is borrowed from the German on analogy to similar borrowings in textual criticism and musicology. Unlike the term “basic emotion,” the proposed term “Ur-emotion” does not suggest an actual occurring emotional state but rather an abstraction, an underlying structure that emphasizes the differences as well as the similarities between two actual emotions that share the same Uremotion. Introduction The premise of this symposium is that neither of the extremes of universalism or relativism can possibly be correct with respect to the emotions, so we need to develop ways of capturing the valid intuitions of both extremes within a consistent framework. Towards this end I would like to propose a new term, “Ur-emotion.” Most of us have sympathies with both universalism and relativism. As an example, the Japanese emotion of amae has no good lexical equivalent in my own language of English (it is often translated, reasonably but rather unhelpfully, as “sweet dependence”). In Japanese culture it is associated with beliefs, customs, and rituals that are quite alien to those of my own culture in the United States (Morsback & Tyler, 1986). Yet, it is possible for a non-Japanese to empathize with Japanese descriptions of amae, especially if some information about Japanese culture is supplied. It is even possible that some emotion very similar to amae is experienced by Americans, although it is not named and institutionalized in my country as it is in Japan (Kato, 1998). To take a more extreme example, people can empathize with the emotions displayed by other mammalian species. We recognize a commonality between the dog’s submission display and our shame, or between the chimpanzee’s hugs and kisses and our affection. Yet, we can simultaneously appreciate the gulf that separates the human emotions from the mammalian. ISRE 2000 \ Symposia 135 To reconcile these universalist and relativist intuitions I think it is necessary to conceive of the similarities we perceive across cultures and species in a way that does not trivialize the differences that also exist. For some reason, the concept of “basic emotions” that has become common in psychology does not accomplish this feat. I have begun to look to other disciplines for models of a more suitable conceptualization, and in this paper I would like to describe two, both of which, it happens, employ the German prefix “Ur-“. The Ur-Text in Textural Criticism One suggestive analogy might be made to the practice in textural criticism of tracing multiple versions or variations of a story back to an original source, known as the Ur-text (Wellek & Warren, 1977). An example would be Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which we know from three different written versions, the first and second Quartos of 1603 and 1604, and the First Folio of 1623. These written versions are our only record of the performances Shakespeare directed around 1600, but the Hamlet written by Shakespeare is believed to be preceded by a variety of plays with similar plots. The oldest of these is Amleth, written by Saxo the Grammarian around 1190. Saxo’s Amleth had murder, marriage of the widow to the victim’s brother, as well as revenge. A much later Amleth, written by Belleforest in 1570, added chivalry, adultery, and a young woman devoted to Amleth. There is evidence of a play called Hamlet produced after Belleforest’s Amleth but prior to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, probably around 1588. No written text has ever been found, and the author is unknown (but is suspected to be Thomas Kyd). This play is known to textural critics as the Ur-Hamlet, and is believed to have added a ghost who chants “Revenge!”, the play-within-a-play test of guilt, Ophelia’s madness, and the slaughter of the final act. So the Ur-Hamlet shared a great deal with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and scholars can recognize these commonalities when viewing the Shakespearean version. Yet, despite these similarities, no scholar has ever maintained that the qualities unique to the Shakespearean play are a superficial elaboration on what is essentially the same Basic Play of Hamlet; no critic has ever dismissed the uniqueness of Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the grounds that it was merely a blend of Ur-Hamlet and Ur-Macbeth. Rather, the innovations of Shakespeare’s version—the subjectivity, the sense of being inside the character’s psyche, the moral complexity, the psychological subtlety, the poetic power—are absolutely celebrated. So here we have one model of Ur-emotions. Ur-texts are thought to be a basic or primitive version of a subsequent text that they precede historically. We might apply this model to Ur-emotions when thinking of the similarity between human and other mammalian emotions. Just as we can recognize the Ur-Hamlet within Shakespeare’s Hamlet, so too might we recognize, say, a mammalian submission display within human shame or embarrassment. In neither case would we equate the two, or trivialize their differences. The Ursatz in Schenkerian Music Analysis A second model might be found in a form of music analysis developed in the 20 century by Heinrich Schenker (Blasius, 1996). According to Schenker, the complexity of a symphonic theme or movement can be reduced to a simple underlying structure, called the Ursatz, that captures the basic framework of the melody and the accompanying harmony. This reduction is accomplished by simplifying the foreground music (the Vordergrund) to one or more middle grounds (Mittelgrunden) until the underlying Ursatz is reached. A long melody such as the “Ode to Joy” 136 ISRE 2000 \ Symposia theme from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is shown to have an Ursatz consisting of only five notes. The term Ursatz is translated as “primordial structure” or “fundamental structure.” Importantly, for music scholars the purpose of Schenkerian analysis is not to show that only a few basic structures underlie most Western musical compositions (although this is true). Rather, the emphasis goes the other direction: That from a few basic patterns unfold the wonderful variety of Western music. The main focus is not on the Ursatz but rather on how the Ursatz is connected to the foreground via the middle ground. For example, the same Ursatz that underlies the “Ode to Joy” also underlies the second song from Schumann’s “Dichterliebe”, and no one would claim those two works are essentially the same. The Ursatz is the underlying structure of music and the source of musical variety. It is transformed by elaboration and the conventions of musical style to yield actual musical compositions. By analogy to Ursatz, Ur-emotions can be thought of as the underlying components or structure of actual emotions. They are the source of variety in different cultural contexts, transformed by such means as culture-specific meanings, valuation, function, emotion scripts (as Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera and colleagues describe in this symposium), selfways (as Batja Mesquita describes), common emotion sequences, and all the other ways that found by research on culture and emotion. Implications These analogies suggests ways of conceptualizing emotions in ways that make the universal aspects more compatible with the relativistic. The concept of Ur-emotions has a number of interesting implications. The first concerns the ontological status of Ur-emotions. Like the Ursatz in music, and like the Ur-text that is perceived in a subsequent text, Ur-emotions do not exist in freestanding form. Rather, Ur-emotions are recognized as an underlying structure or as a component of an actual emotion. We perceive them in similar but non-identical emotions in different cultures or species. They are an aspect of a real emotion; they are not usually encountered alone. A second implication of this concept is that it permits us to recognize the commonality of similar emotions without trivializing the differences. A third implication has to do with the way in which emotions are compared. Just as Hamlet and Ur-Hamlet are compared by their components (plot elements, poetic devices, and so on), so too are similar emotions in two cultures compared by their components (appraisal, valuation, expression, and so on). There need be no unitary essence of Ur-shame or Ur-anger that similar emotions necessarily possess. It is my hope that these analogies point a way to bridging the gap between universalism and relativism. They demonstrate a way of thinking in which my emotions can be similar yet not identical to your emotions, and neither my emotions nor your emotions are Ur-emotions. References Blasius, L. D. (1996). Schenker’s argument and the claims of music theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISRE 2000 \ Symposia 137 Kato, K. (1998, May). An attempt to test cross-cultural generality of amae (Japanese interdependent) behaviors. Poster session presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, Washington, DC. Morsbach, H., & Tyler, W. J. (1986). A Japanese emotion: Amae. In R. Harré (Ed.), The social construction of emotions (pp. 289-307). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wellek, R., & Warren, A. (1977). Theory of literature (3 ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 138 ISRE 2000 \ Symposia