JEAN-MARC FELLOUS
Department of Psychology
University of Arizona

A Mechanistic View of the Expression and Experience of Emotion in the Arts

Deeper Than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music and Art
By Jenefer Robinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 516 pp. Cloth, $68.

It is a common belief that emotions are one of the special things that make us human. Yet centuries of philosophy, art, and sciences have revealed little about the true nature of emotions. Consider the very basic question of where emotions originate. Starting with ancient Greeks, they are in the liver, the heart, or the blood (Gardiner, Metcalf, & Beebe-Center, 1970), simply because this is where they are felt. It was not until the 19th century that the brain took its rightful place, with psychoanalysis and modern psychology. This new brain-centered approach has pointed to many areas (e.g., the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, hypothalamus) that are involved in the experience and expression of emotions. Though exciting and insightful, this approach is still not sufficient: None of these areas are exclusively in charge of emotions, and emotions are not exclusively confined to these areas. In an apparent reversal of focus, researchers now turn back to the body and look for the source of emotion in the interaction between body and brain (Damasio, 1996; Damasio, 1999), and we are back to square one: Where are emotions generated?