Good Inside Me

Tonight I watched Inside Me, a Disney & Pixar masterpiece that essentially translates self psychology into cinema, giving "the people" a dose of common sense knowledge of how we actually work on the inside, neurologically and psychologically, our brain and mind 'dissociate' categories of experience that cohere around a particular affect-state, or emotion. The movie represented '5 basic emotions', of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear. The basic point was, you should look at yourself this way because this is actually how things work in reality. The brain combines 'modalities' of various types, from visual neurons, to motor neurons, to auditory neurons, to neurons involved in affective arousal, selective cognitive processes, proprioception, exteroception, and interoception. All these categories, and still others (touch, smell, taste) form 'neuronal group assemblies' that become activated in the presence of certain relational or environment cues.

In the movie, sadness and joy eventually learn the value of the other. But it's noteworthy that it is Joy, not sadness, who discovers this, as it is joy, a sort of primitive narcissism, that needs to recognize the necessity of emotions like sadness in order to empathize with others (not to mention ones own self). Similarly, but without any actual 'homunculus' living up inside my head, states that become organized in certain relational situations, cohere together and maintain a self-coherent organization, an 'environment+self' match that prepares the organism for adaptive activity.

I'm happy that ideas like this are being promulgated in such a powerful way, which Disney and Pixar do such a great job doing. Its important for our growth, and of course, the images and the story was entertaining, but it is actually the very narrative itself - the way of thinking about self that it continuously reminds us of - that forces upon the viewer a similar sense of reflection. Different people, I realize, will respond in their own way; a cynic type won't probably apply the logic of the movie to himself, and someone else may, although getting the gist of it, may treat it as nothing more than a pleasant movie that was good. The range of interpretations is coeval with the degree of intellectual development (which has much to do with emotional development). People who are educated, and who have a genuine interest in learning, being philosophically or scientifically inclined, will interpret a movie like Inside Me as an important message about ones 'self'.