The Heart and the Head: What Role Do Emotions Play in Intellectual Work?

I increasingly think that many struggles that people consider to be intellectual in nature are actually emotional ones. This idea is one I am continually struck with, both in developing my own work, intellectual capacities, and emotional maturity, and in observing that of others. Much good work is being done to deconstruct the ways in which Western intellectual tradition asks us to separate the mind from the body, and how it perpetuates colonialist ideals. In this vein, I think it is constructive to think about how we often separate the mind from the heart — that is, intellectual and emotional intelligence are seen as separate. However, I think they are mutually enriching, and growing your capacity in one area can often grow your capacity in another. In the course of my learning, cultivating a practice of mindfulness has really allowed me to access my intellectual capacity. I have ADHD, so my brain works a bit differently than the kind of mind that is prioritized in schools and in workplaces. Understanding my brain as required a deep practice of mindfulness and self-observation to understand what my brain does well, what it does poorly, how to work with my capacities and limitations, and how to develop my abilities. I hope that sharing some of my observations will help others with their own process of intellectual and emotional development. I am prone to navel gazing, but I try to keep it productive rather than self-indulgent. When I think about how emotional capacity can support intellectual capacity, a few examples come to mind. 

For example, I am a person who asks a lot of questions. Some people consider this to be a good thing. Some people find it exasperating, I am told. (Autocorrect just changed exasperating to exhausting - I will try not to be offended.) In many cases, I can ask clarifying questions that help get to the heart of an issue. In trying to understand this ability and leverage it, I have tried to examine it thoroughly. I think some think an ability to ask shrewd questions is an intellectual ability, and in some ways it is. However, I think it is facilitated by an emotional capacity that supports an intellectual one. I am reflective enough to realize that I need to ask questions to understand something, and experienced enough to understand that almost any statement can be interpreted in many different ways, so understanding what someone else is saying, or getting to the heart of an issue, takes some disambiguation. I also am confident enough in my ability to ask good questions that I am not too worried about asking stupid questions. Being vulnerable enough to ask stupid questions is often what gets you to the good ones, the good discussions, and the good discoveries. Then, in the end, you get the joy of discovering that your initial question wasn’t stupid at all — it was a doorway. 

This also came out when I was writing papers. While doing my MA in Art History at the University of Delaware, I would regularly have the same problem. I would be good at generating ideas, but not great at following them through in art historical methodology. This is partly because of how my brain is wired — as a person with ADHD, I have a lot of alpha waves (the ones that generate creativity) and not a lot of beta waves (ones that help with task completion and organization). I found it wild that there are separate brain waves for these functions. In this way, the things I struggle with and am good at are reflective of the physical and chemical structure of my brain. At the same time, I know I am good at creative thought, so I will often overuse that skill, almost to help myself get out of a rut. When I feel stuck, usually when I have to organize an argument in the best way possible, I get panicky about feeling stuck, and will often subconsciously start generating ideas as a way to get my brain out of a rut — kind of like revving the engine in a car that is stuck in a snow bank. However, what actually helped was not shying away from the stuck feeling, and slowing down enough to break down what I had to do. I think for me, I have an emotional sensitivity to feeling stuck, since I have felt that way so much in my life. With a brain like mine, I encounter many tasks that seem easy but are hard for me because they require a lot of executive function and don’t provide a lot of dopamine. In contrast, many things that others find hard, like coming up with ideas, asking good questions, and being analytical, usually come pretty easy to me. So, I will avoid the painful thing and try to make my way through it by leaning on my well-developed skill. This past year, I have been doing a bit of “remedial art history.” I have a fair amount of down time in my current job, and am spending my down time working on the papers I wrote in graduate school. I am giving myself the space needed to slow down and work through the organization of the paper, as opposed to rushing through and throwing a bunch of ideas at a page. I am trying to acknowledge my feelings of stuckness, panic, and boredom as they come, and trust that they are temporary and that they will not kill me. Happily, in doing the hard work of sitting somewhere uncomfortable, with a feeling or with a tangled argument in a paper that I have to straighten out, I regularly encounter new ideas, learn new skills, and find things that excite me. I can trust that my strengths will be there to support me as I work on these new skills.

I have enjoyed seeing this blend of emotional and intellectual processes in others’ work, as well. While I was in grad school, I had the chance to serve as the Graduate Assistant at Winterthur Portfolio, the leading journal of American material culture. I really enjoyed this role, as I got to read manuscripts by working scholars who were submitting their work for the chance of publishing with the journal. In many instances, these manuscripts were works in progress - works deeply in progress. They were far from perfect, even though these scholars were experts in their field. I loved reading these imperfect manuscripts, because they let me see how the scholar was thinking, and let me watch them learn. In these working documents, you could see how an argument evolved. When a certain passage didn’t gel with the rest, it was interesting to think about why — sometimes it seemed like part of a different argument altogether, maybe one that the scholar had started with, and when the paper naturally evolved through the course of their work, they couldn’t quite let it go. Seeing these struggles appear in the work of experts helped me understand the kinds of things I was struggling with but couldn’t quite see why. As many people have observed, it’s easier to give advice than to take it and often easier to edit others’ work than your own. So, getting to see how common issues — disorganization, reticence to let go, a lack of clarity with a certain idea — affected others’ work, I was then able to reflect more clearly on how those issues affected my own work.