Suspecting that we might better understand ourselves by understanding animals, pioneering Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung once spoke with a zoo keeper about how humans relate to different animal species.  The zoo keeper said that with experience it’s possible to anticipate the behavior of mammals but not reptiles.  No matter how much time you spend with a snake, the zoo keeper said, you still can’t read its emotions and thus can’t ever be sure how it will behave next.  Jung attributed this to the structural differences between the mammalian and reptilian brains – they are just too different for the two species to understand one another.

But not so humans and other mammals.  The May edition of Discover magazine contains a fascinating interview with animal researcher Jaak Panksepp.  Panksepp has spent decades trying to determine which areas of animals’ brains control specific behaviors.  This has been done through various means, including implanting electrodes in the brains of cats and rats.  Other techniques have involved the use of drugs as well as literally tickling rats.  Panksepp’s research indicates that mammals are much more similar emotionally than commonly believed.

Panksepp has identified seven emotional networks that are fundamental to all mammalian brains: Seeking, Rage, Fear, Lust, Care, Panic/Grief and Play.  These are the instinctual emotions of all mammals, including humans.  Humans, however, possess higher brain functions that enable us to control these emotions to at least some extent while animals just “go with” what they’re feeling.

Seeking, which most people wouldn’t consider a fundamental emotion, is listed first because Panksepp believes it is fundamental to how we interact with the world.  Mammals actually experience pleasure from actively exploring the world around them.  We humans are very active explorers when young, but don’t always carry that behavior into adulthood.  Panksepp’s research indicates we might feel better if we did.

Panksepp is also very interested in mammalian play – another basic childhood behavior.  Play, according to Panksepp, is essential in developing social skills.  Play allows us to interact in positive ways while at the same time teaching us boundaries.  We learn from experience that pushing others too far will cross the boundary between play and more negative emotions.  The more a mammal is deprived of play, the more it fights with others.

Panksepp has discovered that rats at play appear to laugh at a frequency far above the range of human hearing.  By using equipment that can detect these ultrasonic frequencies, Panksepp has found that by tickling rats he can induce laughter similar to when humans are tickled.

Panksepp believes his findings have application in human life.  He says we should look more at addressing the primitive portions of our brains when dealing with problems like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, which he believes is the result of a very fundamental “hunger” for play, and also depression.  Panksepp believes that depression – which often “disconnects” the sufferer from life — is “an underactive seeking urge that has been made underactive by too much psychological pain.”  He says the best way to treat depression is to ‘go to that deep place in our brain’ and “amplify our eagerness to live.”  One hopes, though, that this can be done without the need to insert electrodes in depressed people’s brains…

Panksepp’s ideas have met with a lot of rejection – mainstream science has not been eager to accept that humans are so emotionally similar to animals.  But with decades of research to support his assertions, Panksepp is beginning to be taken seriously.  Just as Jung suspected, by studying other mammals we are coming to a better understanding of ourselves.

Every year the Albion Area Arts Council awards a Fine Arts scholarship to a graduating senior from one of the communities we serve.  Though Lori and I don’t choose the winner – a special scholarship committee does that – we really enjoy reading the applications, especially the students’ answers to why the arts are important in their lives.

The students applying for this scholarship have all been involved with the arts in school, and many have been involved at the community level as well.  The arts are not just something they do for one class period a day – their answers reveal that the arts are an important part of their overall lives.  One student pointed out that the arts are a big part of everyone’s life, saying that the arts are “everywhere around us” — so much so that we often “don’t even notice.”

He’s right – the arts are part and parcel to life.  The arts, after all, convey our feelings and thus have some place in every life.

That the arts are intimately tied to our emotions was made clear by several applicants.  One wrote that the arts “are a good outlet for people to express themselves” and help a person ‘open up and be themselves in the world.’  Another student remarked that art has allowed her to ‘escape the struggles in her life’ and helped her ‘figure out who she is and who she wants to be.’  Another student said that for him art “serves as a kind of therapy,” allowing him to express his emotions.  Yet another said that “when I am on stage performing, I feel as if I’m…invincible.”

A number of students discussed the “skills and life lessons” they’ve learned from participating in the arts.  One mentioned how speech has given her the confidence to speak in front of people and that music has taught her much about leadership and working together as a team.  Another girl noted that while she has “never been the star athlete,” the arts have given her other activities to excel in and helped her to “become well rounded” in her character.

A student from St. Edward summed up the importance of the arts by writing, “To be successful in today’s world, it is vitally important to possess the ability to think, possess people skills, solve problems, demonstrate creativity and work as a member of a team.”  She went on to say that the arts have helped her in all these areas and that the skills she’s gained from participating in the arts “will be the ones that will help guide me throughout the rest of my life.”

The arts are, as the student I mentioned above understands, so interwoven in our lives that it’s easy not to notice them.  But as these applications make clear, the arts are an important part of many young people’s lives.  The arts help them express their feelings, learn more about themselves, and provide them with valuable life skills.  Being able to award one of these young people a scholarship in the arts is a wonderful privilege, but at the same time it’s a shame they can’t all win.  Art is important to every one of them, and they all deserve to be supported and encouraged as they continue to learn and grow.