The motor development of baby is heavily influenced both by lack of sufficient neural equipment and by ever-changing dimensions and proportions of body. While all other animal cubs are fully motoric in their first few weeks of life – human baby is woefully slow and hesitant. The motor development is proximodistal. The baby moves in ever widening concentric circles from itself to outside world. First whole arm, grasping, then useful fingers (especially thumb and forefinger combination), first batting at random, then reaching accurately. The inflation of its body must give baby impression that he is in process of devouring world. Right up to his second year baby tries to assimilate world through his mouth (which is prima causa of his own growth). He divides world into "suckable" and "insuckable" (as well as to "stimuli-generating" and "not generating stimuli"). His mind expands even faster than his body. He must feel that he is all-encompassing, all-inclusive, all-engulfing, all-pervasive. This is why a baby has no object permanence. In other words, a baby finds it hard to believe existence of other objects if he does not see them (=if they are not IN his eyes). They all exist in his outlandishly exploding mind and only there. The universe cannot accommodate a creature, which doubles itself physically every 4 months as well as objects outside perimeter of such an inflationary being, baby "believes". The inflation of body has a correlate in inflation of consciousness. These two processes overwhelm baby into a passive absorption and inclusion mode.

To assume that child is born a "tabula rasa" is superstition. Cerebral processes and responses have been observed in utero. Sounds condition EEG of fetuses. They startle at loud, sudden noises. This means that they can hear and interpret what they hear. Fetuses even remember stories read to them while in womb. They prefer these stories to others after they are born. This means that they can tell auditory patterns and parameters apart. They tilt their head at direction sounds are coming from. They do so even in absence of visual cues (e.g., in a dark room). They can tell mother's voice apart (perhaps because it is high pitched and thus recalled by them). In general, babies are tuned to human speech and can distinguish sounds better than adults do. Chinese and Japanese babies react differently to "pa" and to "ba", to "ra" and to "la". Adults do not – which is source of numerous jokes.

The equipment of newborn is not limited to auditory. He has clear smell and taste preferences (he likes sweet things a lot). He sees world in three dimensions with a perspective (a skill which he could not have acquired in dark womb). Depth perception is well developed by sixth month of life.

(continued)

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

Several psychologists have shown that feelings precede cognition in infants. Animals also probably react before thinking. Does this mean that affective system reacts instantaneously, without any of appraisal and survey processes that were postulated? If this were case, then we merely play with words: we invent explanations to label our feelings AFTER we fully experience them. Emotions, therefore, can be had without any cognitive intervention. They provoke unlearned bodily patterns, such as aforementioned facial expressions and body language. This vocabulary of expressions and postures is not even conscious. When information about these reactions reaches brain, it assigns to them appropriate emotion. Thus, affect creates emotion and not vice versa.

Sometimes, we hide our emotions in order to preserve our self-image or not to incur society's wrath. Sometimes, we are not aware of our emotions and, as a result, deny or diminish them.

C. An Integrative Platform – A Proposal

(The terminology used in this chapter is explored in previous ones.)

The use of one word to denote a whole process was source of misunderstandings and futile disputations. Emotions (feelings) are processes, not events, or objects. Throughout this chapter, I will, therefore, use term "Emotive Cycle".

The genesis of Emotive Cycle lies in acquisition of Emotional Data. In most cases, these are made up of Sense Data mixed with data related to spontaneous internal events. Even when no access to sensa is available, stream of internally generated data is never interrupted. This is easily demonstrated in experiments involving sensory deprivation or with people who are naturally sensorily deprived (blind, deaf and dumb, for instance). The spontaneous generation of internal data and emotional reactions to them are always there even in these extreme conditions. It is true that, even under severe sensory deprivation, emoting person reconstructs or evokes past sensory data. A case of pure, total, and permanent sensory deprivation is nigh impossible. But there are important philosophical and psychological differences between real life sense data and their representations in mind. Only in grave pathologies is this distinction blurred: in psychotic states, when experiencing phantom pains following amputation of a limb or in case of drug induced images and after images. Auditory, visual, olfactory and other hallucinations are breakdowns of normal functioning. Normally, people are well aware of and strongly maintain difference between objective, external, sense data and internally generated representations of past sense data.

The Emotional Data are perceived by emoter as stimuli. The external, objective component has to be compared to internally maintained databases of previous such stimuli. The internally generated, spontaneous or associative data, have to be reflected upon. Both needs lead to introspective (inwardly directed) activity. The product of introspection is formation of qualia. This whole process is unconscious or subconscious.

If person is subject to functioning psychological defense mechanisms (e.g., repression, suppression, denial, projection, projective identification) – qualia formation will be followed by immediate action. The subject – not having had any conscious experience – will not be aware of any connection between his actions and preceding events (sense data, internal data and introspective phase). He will be at a loss to explain his behaviour, because whole process did not go through his consciousness. To further strengthen this argument, we may recall that hypnotized and anaesthetized subjects are not likely to act at all even in presence of external, objective, sensa. Hypnotized people are likely to react to sensa introduced to their consciousness by hypnotist and which had no existence, whether internal or external, prior to hypnotist's suggestion. It seems that feeling, sensation and emoting exist only if they pass through consciousness. This is true even where no data of any kind are available (such as in case of phantom pains in long amputated limbs). But such bypasses of consciousness are less common cases.

More commonly, qualia formation will be followed by Feeling and Sensation. These will be fully conscious. They will lead to triple processes of surveying, appraisal/evaluation and judgment formation. When repeated often enough judgments of similar data coalesce to form attitudes and opinions. The patterns of interactions of opinions and attitudes with our thoughts (cognition) and knowledge, within our conscious and unconscious strata, give rise to what we call our personality. These patterns are relatively rigid and are rarely influenced by outside world. When maladaptive and dysfunctional, we talk about personality disorders.

Judgements contain, therefore strong emotional, cognitive and attitudinal elements which team up to create motivation. The latter leads to action, which both completes one emotional cycle and starts another. Actions are sense data and motivations are internal data, which together form a new chunk of emotional data.

Emotional cycles can be divided to Phrastic nuclei and Neustic clouds (to borrow a metaphor from physics). The Phrastic Nucleus is content of emotion, its subject matter. It incorporates phases of introspection, feeling/sensation, and judgment formation. The Neustic cloud involves ends of cycle, which interface with world: emotional data, on one hand and resulting action on other.

We started by saying that Emotional Cycle is set in motion by Emotional Data, which, in turn, are comprised of sense data and internally generated data. But composition of Emotional Data is of prime importance in determining nature of resulting emotion and of following action. If more sense data (than internal data) are involved and component of internal data is weak in comparison (it is never absent) – we are likely to experience Transitive Emotions. The latter are emotions, which involve observation and revolve around objects. In short: these are "out-going" emotions, that motivate us to act to change our environment.

Yet, if emotional cycle is set in motion by Emotional Data, which are composed mainly of internal, spontaneously generated data – we will end up with Reflexive Emotions. These are emotions that involve reflection and revolve around self (for instance, autoerotic emotions). It is here that source of psychopathologies should be sought: in this imbalance between external, objective, sense data and echoes of our mind.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com