Lisa Feldman Barratt has written an excellent book: “How Emotions are Made” giving new insights into the emotions that we see and hear in the voices surrounding us. She writes that we construct our emotions so that we can understand the world around us. We then place an identifying “sticker” of an emotion on the experience which we then identify as an emotional recall. The book is fascinating as it gives new research into positive as well as negative emotions as activated by the amygdala. The understanding of the map of the brain and our emotions is growing. Real situations can give us conflicting emotions, but when we’re listening to actors or singers who have their emotions close to the surface then we are able to empathize and readily “feel” their emotions.  Now we know how Dr Chekov heard and saw and was able to write those amazingly raw scenes of conflicting emotions.
How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett is published by Macmillan