Inside Out 2: A Sequel that Makes Developmental Sense

 Inside Out 2, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Emotions, Character, Inner World, Art and Science

Inside out was a surprisingly psychologically sophisticated film.  I saw it with the younger Reluctant Daughter - we both loved it - and I loved having an evening with her.  She is now grown and on her own, living far away, and, after asking permission from her, I decided to go to the theater with the Reluctant Wife and our older Reluctant daughter to see Inside Out 2.  After watching it, I commented to the Reluctant Wife and Daughter that Inside Out 2 was a disruptive film.  Both of them had enjoyed it, as did I, but unlike our last venture to the theater together (we went to see Appropriate on stage in New York which generated intrafamilial controversy), this seemed to be just a lighthearted excursion into the world of adolescence.  What could be disruptive?  I responded that I was disappointed that Pixar seems to be more on top of some aspects of development than I am, and this is concerning to me.

I will forego framing the plot of Inside Out 2, though I anticipate that my descriptions of the psychology of the film will necessarily contain spoilers.  Briefly, the film articulates the experiences of a week in the life of Riley, the preteen in Inside Out, as she navigates a week in her life between eighth grade and high school, culminating in a weekend at hockey camp where she is attempting to make the high school team as a freshman.  I am not intending this post for people who are thinking about going to the film, but, as is often the case, for people who have seen it. 

I must admit that seeing the film in the theater was not pleasant.  After sitting through a half hour onslaught of commercials for Disney Parks and films, seeing the Disney castle appear to announce the beginning of this film released both relief and a wish to defile the Castle in some permanent way – to clarify that it is not, in fact, a place of conviviality and connection, but a series of isolated towers that seem designed to imprison rather than free those who have been captivated by it…

Which is an interesting introduction to the film.  This is a coming of age film – or, more focally, a surviving early adolescence film.  But the twist is that the emancipation that this film envisions is not from an external oppressor (Disney, in this case, or perhaps her parents locking Riley in an isolated tower), but rather she is being freed from the clutches of being controlled by her own emotions.  I may be a slow learner, but I did not achieve what is portrayed in this film until long after adolescence (OK, truth be told, I am still trying to negotiate the transition being portrayed, and maybe that has something to do with my not being up to the same developmental speed as Pixar).

The genius of the Inside Out (now apparent) franchise is that inner world is run by basic emotions that compete for access to the control system.  In the original film, five emotions are in competition: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear.  Emotions are depicted as being in competition for access to the consciousness not just of Riley, but of all of the other characters in the movie.  In other words, this is the basic state of being human.  This mechanistic depiction of human functioning is actually quite consistent with current psychoneuroanalytic concepts of the functioning of the mind.  In this second film, the original five emotions have been joined by Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui.

Having new emotions appear – especially with the onset of puberty – is brilliant.  It is not just that the world feels MORE intrusive, abrasive and difficult to manage – it is not just a matter of degree – the world has a different quality.  It feels different.  We are attuned to aspects of the world that didn’t matter much before because we have new antennae – new feelers that are capable of picking up new vibrations in the world.

Of course, within the Inside Out world it would have been nice to have been aware of these additional feelings that come on board later, as the parents and other adults could have been equipped with them in the first movie as they are in this current edition, but we will give some artistic license to realize that it is not just Riley that is developing, but the Pixar people.

That said, it makes sense to compare the Pixar feeling states with the feeling networks that are the current scientifically accepted core neurological states.  Jaak Panksepp’s research has led us to think of seven feeling states:

1.          Fear.  This feeling does not come into play when we feel safe.  When it gets activated, we freeze or flee from an external threat.

2.          Rage.  Frustration occurs when things get in the way of accomplishing a goal.  If the person who is getting the way of accomplishing a goal is someone that we love, things get complicated (see panic below).

3.          Lust.  Freud thought that all pleasure was sexual.  We have learned that there are many pleasures and we can think of this as an acquisitive drive.  I want x.

4.          Seeking. We might think of this as curiosity.  I am longing to come in contact with what is unknown to me.

5.          Panic/Grief.  This emotional state is based on our need to cared for.  When we are in danger of losing loved ones, we freak out.

6.          Care/Concern.  Not only do we need to be cared for, we need to care for others.  Our hearts ache when those we care for are in danger. 

7.          Playfulness.  This emotion is an important part of our being pack animals and learning how to interact with other members of the pack.

8.          Disgust.  (I said there would be seven, but disgust is sometimes included as an eighth – and since Pixar has this as a character, let’s just add it in).

The Pixar feeling state that is most glaringly missing from this group is Joy.  Playfulness, in my mind, may be the closest feeling state to the character Joy in the Inside Out movies.  But in the model of the mind that Mark Solms proposes – one that is based both in current neuropsychological thinking and in Freudian theory – joy is, weirdly, the absence of feeling.  A state we could call the nirvana state, when all systems are go and there is no feeling that is tugging at conscious saying, “you need to take care of this!”

The interesting thing about both the Pixar list and the Panksepp/Solms list is that they are both woefully incomplete.  One of the fun internet games is, “What additional emotion would you have included that Pixar did not in Inside Out 2?”  After we watched the movie, the Reluctant Daughter posed this to us – I answered guilt and The Reluctant Wife answered shame.  Thinking about it now, I am surprised that Pixar didn’t include love.  Where would Disney, or any other studio, be without love?  Isn’t love what makes the world go round?

Panksepp and Solms propose that the manifold feeling states that we experience are essentially complex combinations of the basic emotions.  Sternberg’s triangular theory of love is an example of this kind of thinking.  Sternberg proposes that we can describe different kinds of love (erotic love, parental love, companionate love) based on the relative strengths of three components – two of them emotional and one cognitive.  He suggests that the levels of passionate attraction (lust), levels of  intimacy (Panic/Grief and/or Care/Concern) and levels of commitment (the cognitive component) can distinguish between different types of what we call love.

Solms also suggests that some emotional states are the result not of concordant but of conflicting feelings.  So guilt is the result of a conflict between rage and attachment. 

Because the emotions in the Pixar world are not pure, but characters being voiced by complex people, we see the feeling states develop across the course of the movie.  Joy moves in the first movie to acknowledge the need for sadness, and in the second movie to acknowledge the importance of anxiety.  But it is not just joy that develops, anger also does, becoming more thoughtful – more strategic.  All of this is occurring in the context of the development of Riley’s character.

The central plot in the internal world of Inside Out 2 revolves around the development of the character structure.  The original emotions have helped Riley develop a seemingly solid, desirable character in her childhood – the sense that she is a good person.  This has helped her in the outside world.  Anxiety demonstrates that this is too brittle a character to carry her through adolescence – where relationships demand much more cunning and ennui.  The original emotions are banished from the control room and set off on a quest to recover the “good girl” character and are in a race to return that character to the determining position in the control room before the new, complex character that is constructed of various “not so good” strands becomes solidified.

Ultimately, the solution to traversing the vast distances in Riley’s mind in the short time afforded to the banished feeling states necessitates their unleashing the suppressed memories that they have so carefully hidden from Riley’s consciousness.  This tidal wave of undesirable memories and experiences floods the area that connects to the character structure and the replacement of the twisted character with the original pristine character fails and a new hybrid character structure, one that is kaleidoscopic rather than static, emerges. 

This highpoint in the movie made me wonder how many of the writers are engaged in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy.  This therapy is based on an assumption that the mind is not unitary, but made up of dissociated elements – the treatment has appropriated the language of Multiple Personality Disorder (now call Dissociative Identity Disorder in an effort to hide it from the public) to refer to aspects of the self as “alters” – short for alternative personalities. 

And don’t we all have alters?  Aren’t we a different person when we talk on the phone with our Dad than when we talk with our Mom?  Or our children? Or our sibling? Or our boss?  And yet, aren't we the same person from one day to the next?  Isn’t it sort of a miracle that we have relatively constant sense of ourselves at all?

Inside Out 2 nicely takes this potentially disorienting and shattering characterization of our character as kaleidoscopic and turns it into a lovely visual representation of a talisman of ourselves that can shine different colors and forms depending on the needs of a given situation.  At a sleepover, we can be less mature, while with cunning friends we can feign indifference to material that we care deeply about, all in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the whole self.

Perhaps the central miracle illustrated in this film, then, is the relationship between Riley and her emotions.  In a weird moment, Joy is called back to the control panel.  If I overlay Solms' concept of Joy as the absence of feeling - or perhaps the drive of the core self to achieve a state of homeostasis where we are using our self to maximum capacity - Riley bypasses the wily anxiety and turns to Joy as the character who should be in control of her actions.  Isn't this something that we all aspire to?  Isn't this something like the depiction of a peak experience - of self actualization?  I both enjoyed and was just a little bit envious of Riley's ability to call forth Joy.  Oh, that I may be able to do that more often in my own life!

To return to the brilliance of this work, the development of a complex self involves not just the integration of various memories into a complex whole, but the development of new means of sensing the world and reacting to it.  The research of Panksepp – and Solms – has largely focused on the adult emotional system and, at least as I have studied it, I have not been asking the question of how does this system developed.  Inside Out 2 nicely corrects that oversight.

A complete theory of mind, as Freud pointed out 100 years ago, requires an understanding of how that mind develops.  What are the critical elements of that development?  How does it come online?  And so, when we focus on various components of that mind – cognition, emotion, character structure – how do those components develop both as individual components, and in relationship with each other.

I am not ready quite yet to cite Peter Docter and the rest of the Pixar team as my go to neurological consultants, but I appreciate their guidance as I work to create a working model of the minds that I work with both in the abstract and in the concrete world of the consulting room and engaging in the relationships with others that, in their best moments, bring me joy and allow me to connect the appropriate color of my character with the color that they are able to radiate at that particular moment.  I am also appreciative of the development of my children that allows me to enjoy favorite and share favorite experiences and current versions of those experiences with each of them.

 

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