What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150818-what-is-it-like-to-have-never-felt-an-emotion

by andyjohnson0 • 11 years ago

96 92 11 years ago

bbc.com

joe563323• 11 years ago

Spock ?

hliyan• 11 years ago

Apparently, the analogy is not inaccurate:

“It may be hard to believe, but it is possible for someone to be cut off completely from the emotions and imagination that are such a big part of what makes us humans,” he says. “And that a person can be cut off from emotions without being heartless, or a psychopath.”

cypher_glyph• 11 years ago

Well, it is illogical to be a psychopath, after all...

estefan• 11 years ago

Sad? Oh wait...

michaelfeathers2• 11 years ago

Isn't this textbook sociopathy?

buro92• 11 years ago

No.

sociopath: a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

Nothing in not feeling emotions means that one would lack a moral responsibility or social conscience, or is antisocial and often criminal.

PavlovsCat• 11 years ago

Well, there surely is a big difference in not having words for emotions, or being unable to feel them, and them not arising in the first place, at all.

But still: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

Individuals high on the alexithymia spectrum also report less distress at seeing others in pain and behave less altruistically toward others.

Which doesn't surprise me, really; at least for me, for how I operate, there is a clear distinction between acting to avoid punishment or to seek reward, and a conscience; the latter is always connected to emotions, for me.

Here's another admittedly random tidbit from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_%28emotion%29

As a highly social animal living in large groups that are relatively stable, we need ways to deal with conflicts and events in which we inadvertently or purposefully harm others. If someone causes harm to another, and then feels guilt and demonstrates regret and sorrow, the person harmed is likely to forgive. Thus, guilt makes it possible to forgive, and helps hold the social group together.

and

When we see another person suffering, it can also cause us pain. This constitutes our powerful system of empathy, which leads to our thinking that we should do something to relieve the suffering of others. If we cannot help another, or fail in our efforts, we experience feelings of guilt.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely agree with the impulse to reject any sort of "witch hunt" or even "just" looking down on people. It's not the fault of people who can't feel remorse that they can't feel remorse, especially since "harder variants" like NPD are very often the result of abuse and trauma (and in so far they are genetic, there's no fault either), and since all of this is on a spectrum, and most of us likely are on it, they also must not serve as scapegoats. But it's fascinating and important, and while the person this story is about is probably a decent guy, it can also be a very unsettling and sinister topic, yet still important - I'd even say we shy away from it at our own risk.

michaelfeathers2• 11 years ago

Here's a functioning sociopath with a conscience but it's not feeling based. It seems very similar:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201305/confessions-...

kirsebaer• 11 years ago

I wonder how people with alexithymia respond to MDMA (ecstasy)? I've heard people say that the first time they really experienced emotions was on MDMA.

funkdobiest• 11 years ago

I came here to say the same as it was a profound emotional experience the first time I took it.

WhitneyLand2• 11 years ago

The hypothesis makes perfect sense and is very intriguing, however it doesn't seem to pan out.

There are narcissists and sociopaths who have tried it as a therapy. Unfortunately the only result seems to be increased love for themselves, or feelings of God like superiority over others.

dsfsdfd• 11 years ago

This is how I reconnected after trauma.

ned• 11 years ago

  For instance, one day at school he was working with the student theatre.
  All week he had been struggling to produce the right sound effects, 
  but it just wasn’t coming together. Eventually, his boss lost his cool
  and started ripping into him. “My response was that something weird was
  happening with my body,” he says. “I could feel a tension, like my heart
  was racing, but my mind was distracted…

Isn't this an extreme case of repressing emotions, in the most classic sense? The disconnect between bodily reaction and lack of mindfullness seems to indicate it.

SideburnsOfDoom• 11 years ago

Maybe, since they're talking about Alexithymia, which is defined as "inability to identify and describe emotions in the self". (1)

Who actually has no emotions whatsoever and stays alive? What about primitive things like e.g. the feeling of shock and terror as you are crossing the road and turn to see a bus bearing down on you. This is a basic animal survival response. If all you can say is "my heart was racing" that's not exactly being unemotional, but uncomprehending.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

jaggederest• 11 years ago

I think it's more along the lines of an agnosia or aphasia. They receive the same somatic input, it's just not translated into affect the way most people do, in the same way that a face doesn't register 'faceness' to someone with prosopagnosia.

VLM2• 11 years ago

Maybe it was a bad example for the author to use because it sounds like whats been described to me as symptoms of a panic attack. Or it might be that pathological panic attacks are an example of the emotional problem in the story.

From talking to people who've had medical panic attack problems, it seems common for them to confuse how to name the bodily symptoms, so they show up in the ER confused why they're sweating bullets and feeling very confused and heart rate of 150 thinking they're having a heart attack or stroke instead of "just" an out of control emotional response.

Or it could be that their treatment plan for repressed emotions leading to panic attacks is a lifetime dose of a pill. Maybe that is the best treatment plan for them; none of my business, I guess, other than that specific example might have been a bad choice for the article because of confusing factors.

mercer• 11 years ago

From what i understand panic attacks are easily treated exactly because, as you say, the primary problem is that the person having the attack erroneously confuses the physical symptoms with something more serious. Through cognitive behavioral therapy they can learn to fix this, and as a result the panic attacks disappear (or at least the initial panic doesn't spiral into a full-blown attack). Similar approaches have also been successful in treating phobias and other issues.

For anyone interested in the topic (and CBT in general) I can highly recomment [What You Can Change and What You Can't - The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement](http://www.amazon.com/What-You-Change-Cant-Self-Improvement/...) by Martin Seligman.

As someone who has recently developed a bit of an obsession with mindfulness/zen/meditation, this book is a good example of the parallels between that and the field of psychology.

_nedR2• 11 years ago

I don't get it. Is the article exaggerating things? How can you function without feeling emotions? What is your motivation for getting married? Getting a job? Playing a game or watching a movie? Succeeding at any task? What is your reward mechanism?

For example "All week he had been struggling to produce the right sound effects,"

How would you even know you hit the right sound effect? What is your judgement for good or bad on something that is subjective?

dingaling• 11 years ago

I think most of those examples have a rational basis and the non-emotional person could probably make better decisions than the rest of us e.g. choosing a job offer on the basis of benefits and prospects rather than because the office looked cool.

Such a person would make an astounding diplomat.

The reward mechanism would probably be in maximizing physical comfort in return for minimal physical effort.

mikeash• 11 years ago

Without emotions, what would cause a person to prefer physical comfort over physical discomfort?

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

One can still appreciate things on an intellectual level. A lot of people with depression experience something similar during depressive episodes. It's like someone dialed down a knob on the intensity of the world. In the absolute worst case you decide life isn't worth living and follow through on that, it happens hundreds of thousands of times a year around the world. In better cases you don't give up and you do the best with the muted world you've been given to live in and you try to figure out ways to dial it back up (through CBT, exercise, drugs (legal and not), etc.)

coldtea11• 11 years ago

What is your motivation for getting married?

"Other people are getting married. I guess I should go on with the program (shrug). Hmm, this person took an interest in me (or my friends/mother/etc hooked me up with this person), I could marry them maybe.".

Getting a job?

Hmm, I feel physical hunger. Maybe I need to get a job. Hmm, here's a sign for help wanted. Maybe I can apply there.

Playing a game or watching a movie?

I'm physically tired. Maybe I'll sit in front of the TV for a little while. People do that.

How would you even know you hit the right sound effect?

- Jack, we need thunderstorm sounds and dogs barking in the distance. - OK, I know what those sound like. I'll try to replicate them. Let me find some thunderstorm recordings etc.

(No emotions needed -- at best you just need to consider them "faithful reproductions" not to feel enthusiastic or whatever about them. Good, in this case, is quantifiable -- "sounds a lot like the real thing").

ThomPete5• 11 years ago

Other people getting married is not something you would care about since you have not emotions.

With regards to the thunderstorm thats not how it works. It's not the rational request thats the problem but the intuition around when it feels right. Emotions are fundamental to making any kind of creative decisions.

rightnow3214• 11 years ago

It is really weird to be honest, I wouldn't say the other replies on this comment at the moment cover it so thought I would try and add something.

On one had you're right those are genuine issues, there's little motivation to do anything really. I guess it is a spectrum but I still feel that if someone asks me to do something that I'm being a nice person if I do it, I guess others might be devoid of that. So if invited to do something I normally go, but I only originate plans if I feel I'm doing it for others e.g. if someone is visiting I'll setup a dinner for us all. At the end of a week when I've been busy I cab be annoyed at how much of my life is spent doing things for others, but I do know that's because I don't do anything at all for myself.

I'm married and I wouldn't say I am because it's something expected of me. I think I want to be healthy mentally later in life and I know I can put the work in to give my wife a happy life, also that I didn't hide the way I am from her. If I didn't do these things it would be equivalent to just kind of giving up and I guess I haven't done that so I do these kind of things for future me who I want to be in a good place. I do love, I don't think it's quite the feeling love is to others but love/loss are recognisable.

I work to succeed and for financial security basically, I can't fathom a job I "enjoy" but in my mind besides paying bills it's like a game and I win if I'm successful. A good way to think about it is when a big project finishes it's a bit weird for me because I don't really get happiness or pleasure or a sense of achievement from it, it's kind of like a vaccum. The day a system goes live is no different from day 1 on the project. Within the vaccum I just get hyper-critical of my performance I think my brain is thinking it's important to improve for next time and just immediately focusses on what it needs to do to make that happen.

I do watch films/games, although not that much, but I like being distracted and having something to do. I watch twitch and sport where I do find it easy to support teams. I would never be upset after a result in sport or anything, I don't get nervous before or excited after a win but I like the pattern, which players are good/bad, analysing tactics, following the story etc.

Reward mechanism - I don't think there's anything in my life like that I could google it but not sure what it means. I don't do anything to reward myself at all.

skybrian• 11 years ago

Are there decisions you have trouble making?

gress• 11 years ago

Punishment and reward are very limited mechanisms for learning behavior. Mimicry is one of the others and is much more powerful.

coldtea11• 11 years ago

What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

Since for it to be something you'd have to feel an emotion regarding your condition, it's nothing (neutral).

stewbrew• 11 years ago

How should you know? Actually an interesting problem:

A1. You say you don't experience emotions.

A2. What you call emotions is what you see others do when they say they are acting emotionally. You don't think you are this way.

A3. Your doctor says you're right.

Or:

B1. You say you experience emotions.

B2. Others say you are wrong.

buro92• 11 years ago

I wondered the same thing.

How can anyone really know whether what they experience in their black box is the same as what another person experiences?

Evidence of enthusiastically communicating an experience isn't the same as being able to prove that you actually experienced it.

Likewise, not communicating an experience doesn't mean that it wasn't experienced.

drdeca• 11 years ago

This reminds me of something Wittgenstein apparently talked about. I don't have a better explanation than the comic I saw about it though : http://existentialcomics.com/comic/94

rightnow3214• 11 years ago

You're completely right at it's heart is an innate doubt over whether this is actually a problem or just a manifestation of some weird thought process.

The only way to really get outside this kind of introverted bubble is to ask people or confide in them. This leads to conversations like whether an emotion like happiness is an actual thing or not that they can identify and actually feel. In the sense that they are actually sitting there and willing to state "I feel happy", it's different from yesterday. Most people are hence why I diagnose myself in line with this article.

Or, another way is people generally have an answer to the "Tell me about a time you were very happy"... a lot of people can reel something off really easily here. Sometimes it's like a wedding and you think "you could be saying that because it's accepted as a good answer" but other people say a certain day at the beach where something really specific happens and that lends credence to the idea they feel this emotion and I don't.

xixi772• 11 years ago

I personally believe it is a problem, having (mostly) been in that state and (sometimes) out of it, it is indeed quite a difference. When it happened for the first time (at age 33), it was like "oh my, so this is what all those people were talking about all along, isn't that something".

I do wish I could change states at will, but historically it has always been a result of some sort of external influence.

SilasX2• 11 years ago

I agree, it sounds like this all just regresses to the qualia problem: "does my internal experience have the same attributes as yours?"

It reminds me of my inquiry into the mystery of why everyone "likes alcoholic drinks" but I don't. Eventually I broke it down into specific questions:

- Do you enjoy the feeling of alcoholic drinks passing through your mouth?

- Do you require the drink to be loaded down with non-alcohol flavors for it to be bearable?

- On taste alone, would you prefer a milkshake?

- Do you enjoy the feeling the drink produces on your mind? Does that matter to you more than the taste?

... and it turned out, I had the exact same answers to these questions as people who said they do like alcohol; it's just that they characterized that state as "liking alcohol", and I didn't.

If people similarly broke this issue down into specific questions on observables, I suspect a lot of the differences would vanish, and it would make more sense to characterize it as "different emotional response" rather than "no emotions" -- though a big part of the problem is the arbitrariness of the labels!

pessimizer2• 11 years ago

This is all self-reported, and people who don't have emotions don't reach out to support groups or express their feelings about not having feelings on message boards.

Also, there has never been a thing called an emotion detected in or on the body of a human. I think the leading theory is that 'emotion' is a rationalization of the current state of one's sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It's a self-application of theory theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-theory

norea-armozel• 11 years ago

And yet there's physical evidence from MRIs of people that report an absence or deadening of emotion. How do you account for the physical evidence?

pessimizer2• 11 years ago

There is evidence from fMRI for every single thing that a researcher wanted to see.

https://blogs.plos.org/neuro/2015/01/28/fmri-under-the-micro...

http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2008/06/27/must-read-pa...

wilwade• 11 years ago

Along the same lines are those who have low affect or have emotions, but they are very weak. I would classify myself in that category, so I can perhaps understand a bit of what alexithymia would be like. For example, I took a roller coster once, and it was interesting by emotionally void.

So imagine the "feeling" of just sitting in a chair in an empty room. Now imagine "feeling" that way all through a roller coaster. No excitement, fear, enjoyment, etc...

teekert• 11 years ago

"There is one, slim advantage: he finds it easier to cope with medical procedures, since he doesn’t attach the fear, sadness or anxiety to it. “I can put up with an awful lot of pain or unpleasant experiences because I know very shortly I won’t have an emotional memory associated with it,” he says. “But it means that positive memories get washed away too.”"

derrida• 11 years ago

The condition is found in around 50% of people with autism

Oh please, journalism .

Wordless about emotions? Maybe. Not knowing the words for emotions? Maybe. Emotionless? Ha. Spend time with any group of people with autistic spectrum disorders & tell me 50% are emotionless. Confusing words with the phenomena & further contributing to the barriers they have to express their inner life, not on.

To say it matter of factly like this in science journalism with no sense of the controversy to popular perception or those who have relationships with neurodiverse people, or motivating <with references> the point of view behind a scientist, but instead, reporting as fact. This view is surely contravertial in the scientific community, let alone with the public in contact with autistic people - and the worse thing is, if you tell an autistic person, they could believe it.

The only basis I have for saying "this is surely controversial in the scientific community" is 1. my faith in that community 2. my experience of the emotional lives of people on the autistic spectrum. 1 says they'd find out about 2 because it's a real thing.

They have empathy & emotions - like colonization - the one's trying to 'help' can sometimes be the cause of the most harm.

jazzyb• 11 years ago

The article doesn't characterize the disorder as being without emotions. It quotes researchers as saying that while sufferers display the physical signs of emotions, there is some sort of breakdown either in the expression (as you mentioned) or self-awareness of emotions.

greatthanks• 11 years ago

The title refers to the inability of feeling emotions - which is the same as "being without emotions".

WhitneyLand2• 11 years ago

I don't think you've discredited the 50% statement.

I spend a lot of time with people on the spectrum and my experience tends to match yours, however that's all anecdotal.

It would be interesting to know where that number came from. Have you asked the author for a citation?

marktangotango• 11 years ago

I would almost classify myself this way, because in my teenage years I developed a coping mechanism for childhood trauma that entailed detaching myself from my emotional state and becoming an observer of myself. I think it's otherwise known as building walls to protect yourself. It took me many years to realize what i had done, and try to get back in touch with my feelings.

So far as lacking emotional response to major life events; there is so much going on during a wedding, and giving birth to babies, I don't imagine it's uncommon to not really feel joy in those moments; you're just to busy. Watching babies grow and transform into toddlers and big kids in front of your eyes, now that is joy of a lifetime, imo.

davelnewton• 11 years ago

You mean... what does it feel like?

Nothing.

peterwwillis• 11 years ago

tl;dr you know you're eating 100 different flavors of ice cream but they still all taste like vanilla

hyperchase• 11 years ago

I'd imagine that never having felt an emotion is probably akin to being blind. A blind friend of mine once described it to me: "I don't 'see' blackness, like you might think. Describe to me what it's like to see something out of your elbow, it's exactly like that."

tempodox• 11 years ago

OMG, that must be pure bliss. Where can I apply?

pcunite• 11 years ago

Reading the title to this HN post made me laugh out loud. I guess I can't say I'm without emotions.

:-)

anticitizen• 11 years ago

There are many questions I would like to see asked of Caleb, the subject of much of the article.

For starters, I would like to know about his sense of humor, and about his taste in music and art, and how he would describe his preferences.

rightnow3214• 11 years ago

I'm not Caleb but I self diagnose myself as having the same condition so I can at least speak for myself.

I don't think my sense of humour is much different from anyone else's, I laugh at something I think is funny. My general mood is very flat a lot of the time but other than that I think funny is just funny. I wouldn't necessarily bother going to see a comedian I knew I would laugh at though, if that makes sense. i.e. I don't seek out situations I think will make me laugh and I wouldn't say I enjoyed a night I laughed for 2 hours more than one I watched a documentary or something. I do think I laugh at comedians a lot less than when I was younger, which is one way I think I'm becoming less rather than more emotional if that makes sense.

Music/Art again I don't think are really affected. I listen to some music and subscribe to spotify but I don't use it a huge amount. Clearly I couldn't tell you a song I found uplifting, that's two concepts that I just don't see as related. When people say that my gut reaction is that they're just saying it because they like how it makes them look, I'm not sure if I believe it's an actual feeling as such. I'm not into art but I like things that are nice to look at. I have no appreciation of abstract art at all but I don't think that's uncommon

Idontagree• 11 years ago

I really wish I could meet these people or someone who claims to be like this, none of it is easy to describe, but I think it'd be interesting to experience.

JohnBooty• 11 years ago

Surely it's "repressed emotions" in some cases, but not always. There's strong evidence to support this assertion.

One of the "this would be funny if it weren't so morbid" truths about psychology is that much of our understanding of the brain springs from cases in which normally-functioning people have parts of their brains physically destroyed in accidents.

The most famous example is Phineas Gage, who experienced some specific personality changes (go figure, right?) after a railroad spike pierced his head but left him otherwise unharmed. His mishap provided visceral proof that the brain wasn't just an undifferentiated lump; it showed us that specific areas of the brain perform specific tasks including emotional and behavioral issues.

Alexithymia can sometimes be the result of a brain injury. A person with "normal" emotional responses can, after a brain injury, find themselves with alexithymia.

I'm not sure of a definitive source to link to; apologies for the Google search results link: https://www.google.com/search?q=traumatic+brain+injury+and+a...

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

Funny. I mentally translated the headline to "What does it feel like to have never felt an emotion?" I think this means that I have no clue what it's like...

What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

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