Why the Heart?

[jentx]

Why do people refer to the heart as a central place for emotions of love? Who coined the heart as the center of emotional love? Follow your heart not your head, I love you with all my Heart, etc. Why not the lungs or brain?

[Dogface]

This goes back very far, so far that there is no documentable reason. However, speculation is that it’s because the heartbeat is so very easily and noticeably affected by emotional state.

[Finagle]

In addition to Dogface’s hypothesis, stress and strong emotion can cause heartburn. (Something about the way the nerve plexus is wired makes it hard to distinguish the source of the pain.) So combine rapid heartbeat under strong emotions and pain from the heart area due to stress (such as a unrequited love) and it’s a reasonable conclusion.

[Zenster]

From:

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind[ul]Author: Julian Jaynes
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
[sup]©[/sup]1976[/ul]

Pages: 69 - 70

“There is in general no [human] consciousness [referred to] in the [Homeric] Iliad. I am saying ‘in general’ because I shall mention some exceptions later. And in general, therefore, no words for consciousness or mental acts. The words in the Iliad that in a later age come to mean mental things have different meanings, all of them more concrete. The word psyche, which later means soul or conscious mind, is in most instances life-substances, such as blood or breath; a dying warrior bleeds out his psyche onto the ground or breathes it out in his last gasp. The thumos, which later comes to mean something like emotional soul, is simply motion or agitation. When a man stops moving, the thumos leaves his limbs. But it is also somehow like an organ itself, for when Glaucus prays to Apollo to alleviate his pain and to give him strength to help his friend Sarpedon, Apollo hears his prayer and “casts strength in his thumos” (Iliad, 16:529). The thumos can tell a man to eat drink or fight. Diomedes says in one place that Achilles will fight “when the thumos in his chest tells him to and a god rouses him” (9:702f). But it is not really an organ and not always localized; a raging ocean has thumos. A word of somewhat similar use is phren, which is always localized anatomically as the midriff, or sensations in the midriff, and is usually used in the plural. It is the phrenes of Hector that recognize that his brother is not near him.(22:296); this means what we mean by “catching one’s breath in surprise”. It is only centuries later that it comes to mean mind or ‘heart’ in its figurative sense.”

[sup]BOLDING ADDED[/sup]
Page: 258

"It is quite likely, then, that as the bicameral organization of the mind began to diminish, the decision-stress in novel situations would be much greater than previously, and both the degree and duration of that stress would have become progressively more intense before the hallucination of a god would occur. And such increased stress would be accompanied by a variety of physiological concomitants, vascular changes resulting in burning sensations, abrupt changes in breathing, a pounding or fluttering heart, ect., responses which in the Iliad are called, thumos, phrenes, and kradie respectively.’

[sup]BOLDING ADDED[/sup]
As you can see there is a strong historic tradition (with proto-conscious humans) to associate the beating of the heart with strong emotions. This comes as no big surprise to us who are well aware of adrenaline and its physiological effects upon the vascular system specifically and body in general. Yet it is precisely these ancient anatomical refrents that have filtered down to us today, along with all their ‘heartfelt’ meaning.

[Ice_Wolf]

Cecil’s article:
Why is the heart considered the center of love and affection?

[green_bladder]

Because ‘my bladder longs for you’ doesn’t really have that charm

[Triskadecamus]

I love you with all my liver?

Naah.

Tris

[Dreaming_of_Maria_Callas]

*Originally posted by Zenster *
As you can see there is a strong historic tradition (with proto-conscious humans) to associate the beating of the heart with strong emotions.

I’m very disappointed in you, Zenster. You should have noted that Jaynes’ book is not accepted by the vast majority of the psychological community. It’s also dismissed as crackpottery among archaeologists and classicists, since Jaynes did not work in those fields yet dared to think himself qualified to speak about early literature.

The idea of “proto-conscious humans” was highly disputed 30 years ago and now is left to cranks. It’s dishonest to post it here in GQ as truth. Start a GD thread if you want.

UnuMondo

[Johanna]

In fact, the liver was also considered the seat of certain emotions by people in classical times. In China, the liver is the home of anger.

The song “Close to the Edge” by Yes opens with these lines:
A seasoned witch can call you from the depths of your disgrace
And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace

[slipster]

Jaynes’ theory about the origin of consciousness is not widely accepted, but the historical and other factual data on which he based it are well documented. The soundness of his ultimate conclusions bears no reflections on the passages cited, or their relevence to the current discussion.

As Jaynes states elsewhere in his book, people in Western culture generally have the sensation that their thoughts occur in their heads and that their identity resides there. He writes that many people picture their “inner self” as being in a little room in their forehead; personally, I picture it more as lying behind the eyes.

This sensation is apparently learned behavior. Jaynes notes that schizophrenics sometimes have the sensation that their consciousness is outside of their bodies. As Jaynes also notes, anthropologists have long noted that peoples of other cultures often “see” their consciousness as lying in their chests instead. The ancient Greeks saw the mind as residing in the heart; Aristotle thought that the primary purpose of the brain was to regulate body temperature. (One loses a tremendous amount of body heat through the skull; hence the advisability of wearing a hat or a head scarf in cold weather.)

The ancient Egyptians were aware that an injury to the right side of the brain could impair functions on the left side of the body and vice-versa. Despite this, they believed that thought and emotion arose from the heart, and apparently saw the brain as a kind of “relay station” for signals from the mind.

In a similar vein, in Thomas Berger’s novel Little Big Man, and in the film with Dustin Hoffman, when the old chief who is a “grandfather” to Jack Crabb goes blind, he observes that his eyes are still sound, but something is blocking sending his vision down to his heart.

[Muad_Dib]

*Originally posted by Triskadecamus *
**I love you with all my liver?

Naah.

Tris **

Actually, the Romans did believe that the liver was were the soul resided.

[Dreaming_of_Maria_Callas]

*Originally posted by slipster *
Jaynes’ theory about the origin of consciousness is not widely accepted, but the historical and other factual data on which he based it are well documented. The soundness of his ultimate conclusions bears no reflections on the passages cited, or their relevence to the current discussion.

My problem wasn’t with discussion of what the Greeks believed, but rather with Zenster’s talking authoritively about “proto-conscious” humans. The scientific community does not accept that idea, so it was wrong for him to mention it in General Questions.

UnuMondo