Fable

The emotion awe is little studied, but is unique and perhaps exceptionally important because of its ability to induce accommodation - a state which creates flexibility in values and beliefs. Awe, simply put, facilitates personal change and growth. Awe also is an emotion associated with the negation of self, and the regulation of the self in the presence of negation might affect the ability to cope with and heal trauma.

In their article, The nature of awe: Elicitors, appraisals, and effects on self-concept,¹ Shiota, Keltner, Mosssman present four studies which create some context for the discussion of awe:

Findings from Study 1 suggest that awe is elicited by information rich stimuli, rather than the opportunity for material reward or social engagement. Study 3 suggested that awe-prone people are particularly comfortable with revising their mental representations of the world. Findings from Study 2 suggest that the experience of awe is associated with a sense of smallness of the self and the presence of something greater than the self, as well as some disengagement from awareness of the self. Studies 3 and 4 suggested that awe does, however, have an impact on the content of the self-concept, increasing one’s sense of the self as part of a greater whole - a self-concept that de-emphasises the individual self. [Italics mine.]

Awe is an information emotion (as are curiosity, wonder, foolish or “feeling idiotic.”) Awe has tremendous arousal, can have both positive or negative valence (terror or horror are ‘flavors’ of awe), and has negative dominance (awe is a strong ‘withdraw’ emotion).²

Keltner and Haidt define prototypical awe:³

We propose that two features form the heart of prototypical awe: vastness and accommodation. Vastness refers to anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self... Vastness is often a matter of simple physical size, but it can also involve social size such as fame, authority or prestige...

We propose that prototypical awe involves a challenge to or negation of mental structures when they fail to make sense of an experience of something vast. Such experiences can be disorienting and even frightening... since they make the self feel small, powerless and confused They also often involve feelings of enlightenment and even rebirth, when mental structures expand to accommodate truths never before known. We stress that awe involves a need for accommodation, which may or may not be satisfied. The success of one’s attempts at accommodation may partially explain why awe can be both terrifying (when one fails to understand) and enlightening (when one succeeds).

A traumatic event overwhelms the self-concept and threatens “annihilation.” It compels the ‘withdrawl’ of the self (and perhaps engenders a more clinical sense of dissociation). One way to characterize trauma is as a violation of basic assumptions, in a sense, an “information wound.” Brewin et al:⁴

Trauma generally involves a violation of basic assumptions connected with survival as a member of a social group. These include assumptions (not necessarily conscious ones) about personal invulnerability from death or disease, status in a social hierarchy, the ability to meet internal moral standards and achieve major life goals, the continued availability and reliability of attachment figures, and the existence of an orderly relation between actions and outcomes.

When events destroy these primal assumptions, do we accommodate the change? Or preserve the assumptions?

One of the traditional defenses to trauma is to preserve assumptions. This defense creates a superficial account of the event and repress its affect-laden experience which would otherwise require accommodation (for more of my own writing, see Faerie Tales and Night Mares and Splitting and Healing Emotional Distress).

This type of defense suggests the inability to regulate the sense of self in face of a self-negating experience. On the one hand, a rigid self-concept is maintained, and on the other, the terror of negation is repressed. If self-experience could be maintained in the face of the terror of negation, then the need for this split would diminish, the superficial account and the affect-laden experience would be integrated, and the trauma wound could be resolved.

Awe is at the heart of both the defense and also its resolution. If we cannot withstand the self-negation of awe, we split and defend. If we yearn to change our self-concept, awe requires accommodation and perhaps also provides “additional components of meaning.”

Keltner and Haidt:

Stimuli that are vast and that require accommodation will elicit the primordial awe response. To the extent that these new stimuli bring in additional components of meaning,.. the primordial awe experience will acquire new new flavours, and a new phenomenology. Thus supernatural ideation added to primordial awe yields the religious conversion and submission of Arjuna and St. Paul. The removal of threat and the addition of beauty yields the transcendent feelings described by naturalists [e.g. Emerson]

Central to successful resolution of trauma, then, it the capacity to maintain our self-concept as we re-live the affect-laden experience and integrate it with the basic account of the traumatic event. If this capacity did not exist before the event, then its development, the sense of post-traumatic growth (PTG), is the consequence of the struggle and suffering caused by the traumatic experience.

How do we discover, acknowledge and accommodate these qualities of PTG? Awe, of course:

Keltner and Haidt:

Given the stability of personality and values (e.g. John & Srivastava, 1999), awe-inducing events may be one of the fast and most powerful methods of personal change and growth. The potential power of awe, combined with the mystery of its mechanisms, may itself be a source of awe, giving pleasure both to those who study it and to those who cultivate it in their lives.

For more discussion on PTG, see Growth from Suffering.