Introduction
This article gives a brief introduction to the notion of the modes of emotion. It may be presented a little abstractly for some readers, but the purpose here is not to fully explain these notions but mainly to name and introduce them. Later articles will flesh out the practical implications and give examples, thereby more fully explaining what is only outlined here.
The term mode could be used to refer to various aspects of emotionality, but here it is used specifically to refer to the way emotion takes on a characteristic ‘colouration’, and how it ‘works’ as an emotional way of being.
In the first article in this series these modes were referred to as:
The natural mode, being more characteristic of men.
The personal mode, being more characteristic of women.
I would like to develop this a bit further by trying to give a better sense of the texture of each mode, for want of a better word. In order to do this I want to propose a number of pairs of terms that refer to the kinds of differences that characterise the natural and personal modes. In the following list the first in each pair is an aspect of the personal and the second of the natural.
PERSONAL / NATURAL
Explicit / Implicit
Interpersonal / Transpersonal
Immediate / Mediated
Comparative / Comprehensive
Verbal / Visual
Narrative-Storylike / Ritual-Gamelike
Affective / Aesthetic
I will now explain fairly briefly what I mean by these.
1. Explicit-Implicit
This is perhaps the simplest aspect, dealing as it does with appearances.
Women tend to be more openly expressive of emotion than men so their emotionality could be called characteristically ‘explicit’. But contrast, men’s emotional life tends to be more ‘implicit’. Men give the impression that, even though they might be feeling something, they don’t really want to put that on display. Women generally don’t have that same attitude.
2. Interpersonal-Transpersonal
The expressions of women’s emotionality tends to be more visible because it is more commonly dealing with interpersonal relations.
It is expressed in face to face relations and concerned with trying to communicate emotion, to enjoy its expression and so as to establish equilibrium in a social setting. So it makes sense to identify this kind of emotionality as explicit. However, the expression of emotion is only part of the story. Emotion also takes on this character internally, so even when alone women have this relational style of feeling as their normal way of feeling like emotional beings.
Men’s emotionality is linked more generally with the non-human world and with the human world of ideas and socially mediated meaning.
To put it simply, men typically develop strong emotional connections to things, activities and ideas. This is not such a common way of speaking about emotion, which is why it seems fair enough to speak of men’s emotionality as implicit. Here ‘implicit’ does not mean ‘undeveloped’ but ‘less obvious’. But it is easy to identify examples of how men become quite devoted to cars, horses, games, ideologies, and so on.
This is genuinely emotional. In fact it is often quite visible in expressions of excitement, humour, camaraderie. In such cases the term ‘implicit’ is less apt, but in general men’s sustained emotional connection with things and ideas is less visible. But it is quite real. If it was not, they would not persist in these interests. Feeling is the palpable aspect of the motive force that sustains interest and commitment.
Value and Meaning
Yet there is a more interior reason for why this kind of emotion is less visible. Strong outer emotion is evoked more by value than by meaning in general. That is, when we feel that something is good or bad we tend to express this more overtly. But the non-human world is ‘neutral’ in the relevant sense. It does not in itself excite the type of feeling relevant to values.
A man might be fascinated with rocks, and absolutely loves fossicking, finding rare rocks, enjoying their texture and appearance. But rocks are merely objects. They are not good or bad. Engagement with the world of ideas is also often fairly ‘neutral’, especially as regards technical and scientific matters.
By contrast, interpersonal engagement is always with other persons, who are intrinsically of value in their own right. So constant engagement with other persons is likely to be more prominently about questions of value, not merely of ‘interest’. So broadly speaking we could characterise men’s emotional life as weighted more towards the ‘transpersonal’.
*Note that I am using the term ‘transpersonal’ rather than ‘impersonal’ because the latter term is often used with connotations of something that should be personal but where the personal element is ignored or unduly downplayed. ‘Transpersonal’ is intended here as a neutral term that better captures the essential form of men’s predominant emotional mode.
3. Immediate-Mediated
For the same sorts of reasons women’s emotionality tends to have more immediacy.
There is a more direct link between ‘stimulus’ and response. The ‘distance between meaning and value’ is less because people are always worthy of care and respect because of their innate value. Women’s interpersonal relations are mediated more directly by language that connects and shares meaning. In a manner of speaking you could say that women’s emotional natures are closer to the surface, not in the sense of being superficial, but in the sense of being more readily accessible and capable of being communicated.
By contrast the ‘distance between meaning and value’ is greater for men, because they are more directly immersed in the meaningful patterns that connect them to transpersonal realities.
So they are more likely to speak immediately out of the thinking that is needed to convey the meaningfulness of their feelings. This is commonly misinterpreted as if they are ‘in their heads’, not connecting with emotion. But that is misleading. It is that their inner experience of the emotion is not so readily clarified in verbal terms. This is part of why I also refer to men’s emotionality as ‘aesthetic’. It is a more diffuse, implicit interior experience.
For example, if women are talking about other people they know, the content of the discussion is ‘focused by the subject matter’. That is, the fact that their field of discourse is about persons is a strong conceptually integrating factor. So it is not such a long step to go from thinking and talking about other people to clarifying one’s feelings and expressing them. This is not invariably the case of course, and women often talk about the complexities of relationships, and this takes a longer time, but the kind of conversation is more concretely focused emotionally because it is about persons.
By contrast, how do you talk about the feeling of the enjoyment of rocks? Or cars, or horses, or the beauty of a mathematical proof? It is not surprising then that men’s essentially emotional conversations are expressed in terms that do not sound to women like emotion. They sound like talk about ideas, or events, or somewhat superficial humour.
However, the form of words men use to express their feelings about these things have to be about the meaning of the objects, actions, ideas that attract and hold their attention. This is because the function of such conversations is not really about the contents of these ideas. It is about the way their feelings have been stirred up in relation to them, and how to clarify, simplify and affirm the value of these experiences.
So men’s emotionality is more mediated by meaningful constructs of various kinds.
For example, a game is a meaningful construct. It is a set of meanings that gives form to a particular set of physical-mental activities and by making them simplified and consistent enables feelings to be clarified with respect to them. So men in conversations of the emotional type seek common experiences which provide them with an already established and shared meaning-feeling connection. So they can easily engage in conversation on the basis of such established conventions.
4. Comparative-Comprehensive
When we try to clarify things intellectually we make distinctions. Then we compare and contrast. The search for meaning is the search to identify the most fruitful distinctions and relations.
When it comes to the clarification of emotional meaning we similarly need to identify what the ‘somethings’ are that we are going to compare and contrast.
For example, how does a woman decide what dress to buy? Most likely she tries on a range of different ones, forming a judgement on each and trying to home in on what feels like it ‘works’ best for her. This is an obvious example of a comparative process. When we consider women’s emotionality more broadly, if it is predominantly interpersonal, the ‘somethings’ to be compared are people. Or more precisely, the person provides the measuring stick and then you consider the relevant variables measured against that.
For example, say two women are discussing another friend. It will be about some particular matter, say, how she is getting on with her daughter. There will be some catalyst, such as the daughter having got into some trouble. Then they might go through how she is dealing with the situation. Then they will compare how they would deal with the situation, how other people they know have dealt with it, and so on. When it comes to the emotional dimension of sharing it is fairly readily mobilised in such a context. There is a back and forth process that gradually clarifies their views and their feelings. This process is facilitated by being able to do direct comparisons of people and actions.
The process by which men clarify their emotions is typically different. For a start they are less likely to think that the objective is to tell anyone else what answer they came to, that is, as regards the subjective sense of the feeling. (I am not speaking here of opinions about the subject matter of the discussion, on which men are usually quite happy to express their opinions!)
For a man this process is usually entirely interior, and it comes to an end when he feels he has attained equilibrium in his own sense of things. That in itself is the goal. This also means that the resolution does not even have to be expressible in words.
Not only that, the back and forth process of clarification is more likely to be between elements in a meaningful context rather than between people. It can often be difficult to even identify clearly what the meaningful elements are. Clarification often depends on an intellectual clarification, to be able to interpret experience in a helpful way.
At other times the elements that have got out of balance and need to be brought into equilibrium are physical tensions. So the resolution might be to engage in vigorous exercise. Or the imbalance might be quite vague, and what he needs is to share with other men in an activity that has its own balance. So men can often find emotional equilibrium through playing a game.
All this means that the process often does not feel comparative, because there is less clarity about what the elements are that have got out of balance. It feels more like a comprehensive process, where everything has to be solved simultaneously. This is a slower process.
It could be illustrated with a metaphor. The felt problem might be like some impurity permeating everything, like water made murky by all sorts of dirt and organic matter. The process of clarification then needs a filtration of the whole.
There are no clear elements that can be identified and isolated so as to serve as a back and forth, comparative mode. But ‘filtration’ of emotion is a slower process needing as it does to sift through everything simultaneously, as it were.
5. Verbal-Visual
It is a common enough observation that women tend to be more verbal and men more visual. But now that we have identified the three dynamics above it becomes easier to see why this characterises how men and women deal differently with emotion.
Emotion developed through direct interpersonal relating more immediately needs discussion because it is about communicating inner personal realities. These are invisible and need to be mediated through understanding. The subtleties involved require the development of language. So it is more obvious and natural to use language in sharing about interpersonal matters.
By contrast, the transpersonal realities that are the subject of men’s emotional connection are outside the person. This is obviously the case with the material world. Not only that, the relation with objects is one-sided. It is not a ‘dialogue’, let alone a relationship. So most of what men take in and seek to transform through their emotional connection is ‘at a distance’; it is ‘outside’ themselves.
The visual is more prominent, since it is the sense that can give us the biggest horizon. Touch is important too, since, having seen, one then wants to ‘interact’ with the object. Even in the world of ideas, the more complex they are the more one needs to depend on the visual, through writing and diagramming.
6. Narrative/Storylike-Ritual/Gamelike
Similarly, bearing in mind the above dynamics we can see how the characteristic ways in which men and women ‘process’ emotion develops into classic forms.
For women, narrative is more central since it provides a distillation and simplification of how people inter-relate. The ‘something’ that is going on in the lives of people can be expressed in a story of how their lives are unfolding.
It is a pattern that helps to make sense of the complexities of relationships. You can compare and contrast now with the hoped-for or feared future. This sets up the larger contrast. Of course men love stories as well, but they tend to be a different kind of stories. Here I am just focusing on how apt narrative is for making sense of the overall progress of women’s emotional lives.
For men, the more mediated, comprehensive and visual tendencies mean that ritual is more central.
Ritual is the repetition of the same thing. It provides a fixed reference point in relation to which the different experiences over time can be integrated emotionally. Such repetition and fixity of reference is more necessary for men because of the intangibility of much of their interior emotional connections. If the right rituals are discovered or devised then they become an integrating, simplifying reference point.
One of the most common rituals for men in our society is games. A game always has the same form, but how it plays out is different. It is a cyclic rather than narrative type of integration. It provides a fixed marker around which can develop traditions, which are distillations and accumulations of men’s emotional ‘markers’.
7. Affective-Aesthetic
As a way of summing up these contrasts between men’s and women’s primary emotionality we could use the term affective for women and aesthetic for men.
In the intellectual world the word affectivity is used to refer to the emotional life generally, of men and women. So emotions are thought of as ‘affections’ in the general sense, although in everyday speech we use affection to mean a positive feeling towards someone or something.
Here I want to use the word affective to refer to women’s primary mode of emotionality, simply because these days when people speak of ‘emotion’ they usually have in mind women’s primary form of emotion, which has been discussed here as a blend of explicit, interpersonal, immediate, comparative, verbal, and story-like.
This has led to men’s kind of emotion being less visible, and when men’s emotional lives are discussed it is more likely to be about men’s secondary mode of emotionality - the affective.
So the usual contrast is made between women’s primary mode, which is understandably more developed, and men’s secondary mode, which as you would expect, would be less developed simply because it is secondary.
The Aesthetic Form of Emotionality
We can go through the characteristics of emotion discussed above to clarify why the term ‘aesthetic’ is an apt characterisation of men’s primary emotionality.
Firstly, giving one’s primary focus to material realities, things, activities - and by extension the ideas about them - means that one’s emotional life will tend to be more about the ‘textures’ of things and experiences, being impressionistic, structural, dealing with wholes-and-parts rather than with a comparison of wholes. One’s focus tends to be ‘within’ rather than ‘between’. Or between parts rather than between wholes.
Secondly, since making sense of life means finding meaning in it, the process of finding meaning in one’s feelings about things, ideas, etc. in itself involves ‘stepping back’ interiorly to try and encompass within one’s ‘emotional mind’s eye’, as it were, the whole thing you are trying to make sense of. This means that the process is predominantly mediated rather than immediate. You can only get an effective ‘hold’ on your feelings by getting some distance from them, to situate them meaningfully. Given the intangibility of much of this it needs to be done interiorly, since until you have identified what the ‘somethings’ are you cannot assign words to them so as to be able to have a conversation about them.
Thirdly, this is why men’s way of dealing with emotion is mainly comprehensive rather than comparative. In order to compare things you have to be able to identify them in some meaningful way. Until then you are filtering intangible, unnamed, interior aesthetically perceived feelings so as to remove the unintellible elements to reveal those aspects that make sense. This doesn’t mean that men are bogged down all the time in such laborious processes. As they go along they develop simplified interpretive schemes that cover a lot of the basics. They are helped in this if there are stable social and cultural arrangements, rituals that celebrate these and enable them to express their feelings about the meanings embedded in them; and games that enable emotional engagement in the competitive ethos entailed in living in what is in many ways an intransigent material world.
Fourthly, one of the most important things in a man’s emotional life is the place of women. One of a man’s most ardently desired goals is to find a beautiful woman who loves and understands him. Since men’s sexual drive is quite strong and close to the surface, one of a man’s main emotional tasks is to work out how to feel about his place in the world with respect to women. So far I have been speaking of men’s emotional lives as being mainly about things, activities and ideas. However, there is one big, big exception - women. Men’s strong visual orientation is highly developed as regards women, their beauty and their sexual attractiveness. Men typically find it quite difficult to integrate these feelings into their lives. They are highly attuned to the visual cues, and their associated meaningfulness, and seek to find meaning in them. But women tend to be puzzling to men, not least because they have quite a different kind of emotional life. A great deal more could be said about this, but for the moment I just want to note that this is one of the main emotional dynamics that reveals men’s primary form of emotionality as aesthetic.
Fifthly, we have already touched on the emotional importance of rituals and games for men when looking at the way men’s emotionality has a comprehensive character where adequate differentiation of elements is an issue. Rituals and games help to link the inner structure of the meaningfulness of men’s emotional life to outer, visible, participative structures that mirror this meaningfulness. This correspondence between inner and outer helps men to clarify, amplify and sustain emotional connection. It is very important for men to have these outer ‘mirrors’ of emotion help them to amplify the subtle interior kind of emotion they experience into something stronger and more tangible. On their own men can struggle to cultivate the degree of interior emotionally-linked-meaningfulness they need to gain clarity in the important things of life.
A Great Deal More
It should be clear from the above that a great deal more needs to be said to fully explain what has only been briefly introduced here.
Over time I aim to flesh these matters out in detail, with lots of examples. But I hope it has already begun to become apparent how there is a qualitatively different mode of emotionality for men and women, and how deeply rooted this is in consciousness itself, as well as in social life.
Identifying these two sets of emotional preferences gives us an easy and somewhat ‘neutral’ way of speaking about these things. There was a period a while back when you might hear people say things like, “He needs to develop his feminine side more”. The realities being referred to here as individual-natural and relational-personal were referred to simply as ‘masculine’ and feminine’. Although it was clear enough in a very general way what people were getting at using that terminology, it was too limited and clumsy to offer much room for development.
In order to develop a more sophisticated way of addressing these realities we need a more general and flexible framework. This is what I have begun here.
More to come!