Reading the letter in his bunk in the prisoner of war camp Reg imagined poor Marjory trapped beneath the rubble and was reminded of the fear of his own experience of being buried alive only months before. He had been in a group digging an escape tunnel when the officer in front of him accidentally hit a live cable. The roof of the tunnel collapsed on top of them, leaving him lying face down, trapped in the earth, stones and dust that had showered on top of them. He was terrified and called out to the man in front. Then he heard voices behind him. His friends were crawling in through the debris to rescue them. He felt them grab his ankles and then the pain as they dragged him out backwards, the skin ripping off the front of his shins and knees. When he eventually reached daylight he realised that apart from his grazed legs he was uninjured, but when they hauled his friend out next, his body was limp; he had been electrocuted.
Putting the frightening memories out of his mind, Reg concentrated on what had happened to Marjory. Anger replaced his fear. The Germans could do whatever they wanted to him, but how could they drop bombs on a lovely girl like Marjory? How could they do this – leaving her paralysed when she’d done nothing wrong? He left his bunk, rushed out of the room to find some German guards and then spewed abuse at them. As a result he found himself locked in an underground cell in solitary confinement. Usually this punishment didn’t bother him. In a crowded camp with 600 officers time to himself was rare and so a spell in the underground cell held a certain peace not available elsewhere in the camp, but this time he spent the lonely hours alternating between fury with the Germans and sadness that he couldn’t even comfort poor Marjory. There was a third emotion too and that was hope. He wished more than he had ever wished for anything that she might get better.
While Marjory was in hospital, equally hopeful and determined that she would learn to walk again, Reg remained in Oflag VI. B, waiting for the war to end. During the day the other ranks left their camps to go out to work on local farms, but the Geneva Convention forbade Reg and the rest of the officers from working, with the exception of ‘voluntary work’ – collecting fir cones to put on the fire. The remainder of the time their main distraction came from planning the next escape attempt. After years of malnutrition Reg knew it wouldn’t be him escaping; you needed to be strong to stand a chance, but even helping others to escape gave him hope. Despite the years of boredom and deprivation, he and his fellow POWs even experienced moments of joy. ‘What kept us going was seeing the funny side of things. Such little things really. If a German’s hat blew off on the parade ground, we all clapped and laughed.’ They particularly looked forward to the ‘special items’ which were smuggled into the camp. Among these were fountain pens and shaving brushes, or at least that’s what they appeared to be. In fact they contained a chemical with an indelible, noxious smell. The POWs would blunder into passing German guards, press the pen against them and activate the plunger, thus saturating their uniforms with the stinking chemical. With only one uniform apiece and no way of removing the chemical, the guards were forced to go about their duties smelling foul – a blow for German pride and a boost for British morale.
Emotions such as joy and sadness would come and go, but for Reg two others – anger and hope – remained constant. Anger, at the German military for what they had done to Marjory and for their treatment of his fellow POWs; hope – unshakeable and steadfast – that the Allies would win the war and that he would soon be home. Indeed, amongst the British POWs hope was virtually compulsory. If anyone did show signs of despair the other prisoners would soon cheer them up. ‘Chin up’ was the rule. Winning the war was surely just a matter of time. And there were reasons to be cheerful. One day soon, he knew that he and Marjory – the beautiful dancer he had loved for years but had never properly met – would have that first date.
The tale of Reg and Marjory is a love story, but it’s also a tale of anger, disgust, joy, fear, sadness and hope. Emotions are central to their story. They made the experience what it was.
During much of the twentieth century, while other areas of psychology expanded, the emotions were not considered important topics for psychological research. They tended to be thought of as rather undefined concepts that had a deleterious influence on our behaviour by disrupting rational thinking. Emotions lacked appeal as a subject for study because they were considered difficult to measure and quantify; instead time was spent studying more rigorously-defined topics like memory, perception and learning. An explosion in research on emotions in the last ten years has brought a dramatic change to the field.
However, the idea still persists that life would be better, if only we weren’t at the mercy of our feelings, that they are ready to emerge at any moment, forcing us to say things we don’t mean and to desire things we would be better off without. Once emotions are examined more closely, with the aid of research from neuroscientific, psychological and biological perspectives, it becomes clear that each emotion is both wiser and more useful than we might expect.
In this book I’ve chosen nine emotions to explore in detail. There is disagreement amongst emotions researchers as to which feelings can be classified as true emotions. This selection covers the nine emotions which I believe are key – the emotions which have the most to tell us both about the way we deal with the world and how our brains interact with the rest of our bodies. At first sight it appears that more of these emotions are negative than positive, but on this journey through the emotions it soon becomes clear that feelings cannot be categorised as simply good or bad.
For the most part I am concentrating on the everyday experience of emotions, rather than the extremes. It’s clear that research has plenty to teach us about our own feelings. Just as the body responds to strong emotion with a racing heart or butterflies in the stomach, so our physiology also feeds into our emotions. For example, laboratory experiments have demonstrated that forming your facial muscles into a smile can make you feel happier, even if you’re unaware that you are smiling. With advances in brain scanning, and crucially for researchers, the reduced costs of using scanners, it is now possible to observe the way the brain responds when a particular emotion is experienced. It is not the case that one part of the brain lights up for fear and another for anger, but each emotion employs different combinations of brain systems. Such investigations are beginning to shed light on the purpose of each emotion, but this progress in the understanding of the relationship between the brain’s chemicals and the way we feel does not mean that we are doomed to be ruled by our emotional brains, programmed with immutable responses to every situation. Events in the outside world and even the way we choose to think about those events can still influence those chemical responses. Only by considering emotions at all these levels can we begin to see the whole picture.
One extraordinary aspect of emotions is that, despite massively differing circumstances, the way an emotion feels remains constant across the lifespan. While an older man’s joyful moment incorporates a lifetime of complex memories and thoughts, the feeling is the same for a delighted toddler – and both the toddler and the old man share the facial expression which communicates that joy.
Not all emotions are detectable nor probably even present from birth. Just as a baby develops in other areas of life, so their emotional understanding changes as they grow. I’ve traced the emotions from basic emotions such as joy and disgust to those we develop as we grow older, such as guilt, and finally an emotion I believe to be an essential part of life – hope. On the way I’ll examine such varied topics as the purpose of tears, why the length of your earlobes might be related to jealousy, why people are loath to drink water containing their own spit and whether hope can make you live longer.