Michael Lewis Adult Consciousness Summary

Emotional Development: Adult Functionality

The Rise of Consciousness and the Development of Emotional Life, by Michael Lewis provides an extensive collection of theory and research of emotional development, identifying classic theories in conjunction neuroscience and the research of developmental psychology (Graf, 2015).

Lewis examines the wide body of research that has been dedicated to the theories that stress the importance of one’s ability to verbalize our emotional state of mind (Graf, 2015). Forthwith, this limited cynosure vantage point, compelled Lewis to examine human development from a perspective. Lewis offers the following definition of emotions: “Emotions are thoughts about our evolutionarily derived action patterns that occur within and are molded by our social niche”

(Lewis, 2014). Lewis acknowledges the vital role that maternal relationships have on emotional development, as well as the theories that were identified by the likes of Bowlby, Klein, Winnicott and Freud (Graf, 2015). Lewis theorizes that actions equate into emotions, concluding in an emotional experience, resulting in numerous social situations, inherent into individual culture and cognitive development (Graf, 2015). Providing in depth neuroscientific based data in conjunctions with congruent experimental data, proving that consciousness is not evident until after the age of twenty-four months (Graf, 2015).

Internal dialogue, social structures and cultural contexts are integral in emotional development (Graf, 2015). Additionally, Lewis provides empirical evidence supporting, mixed feelings are the result of multiple emotions triggered by the same event (Graf, 2015). Lewis credits experience for the resulting emotions

Emotional