Affects, Curiosity, and Corporal Punishment with Paul Holinger, MD, MPH (Chicago)

Jun 15, 2025

Paul Holinger, a seasoned psychiatrist and former Dean at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, shares valuable insights into emotional development and the power of curiosity in children. He recounts a touching story of a mother who transforms her child's milk spill into a learning moment. Holinger critiques the harmful effects of corporal punishment and advocates for nurturing environments that foster emotional awareness. He emphasizes the importance of understanding affects in therapy and how supportive interactions can shape a child's identity and empathy.

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ANECDOTE

Milk Spill That Sparked Curiosity

A mother turned a spilled milk mess into a science moment for her toddler by showing how the towel absorbed milk.
Paul Holinger credits that nurturing of curiosity with helping the child become a world-class scientist.

INSIGHT

Innate Feelings Shape Development

Sylvan Tomkins identified a small set of innate feelings visible in infants that shape later emotion.
Holinger stresses interest and enjoyment as the core positive affects that regulate negative feelings.

ADVICE

Name Feelings To Enable Change

Focus therapy on naming the patient's present feelings instead of only exploring ideas or past relations.
Use words for affects to make emotions come alive and enable mourning and change.

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“Now's the time to tell that wonderful story of the little boy. He was about two or three years old, and he went in the icebox to get some milk, and he managed to get this big carton and spill it all over the floor. Now, needless to say, there'd be a lot of parents that would react very negatively and frustrated - this mother happened to be a scientist. So she came in, she saw the bottle of milk, and what had happened. She went and got some paper towels, put them on the milk, and said, ‘Look at this. Look how the milk starts creeping up these fibers of the towel. Isn't that cool?’ And then she said, ‘Look, if you have something heavy you need to get out of the refrigerator, feel free to call me. But how neat is this that the milk is being absorbed by the towel?’ Well, she was a scientist, and he became a world-class scientist. She understood his interest and she didn’t bring a fear and shame-inducing reaction, and all the negative effects that could have resulted if she had handled it differently. Instead, she put a sense of joy and interest in being intrigued with his interests, and turned the whole thing around.”

Episode Description: Paul starts our conversation about affects by referencing Tomkins’ work, which identified 6 negative and 2 positive affects/feeling states, all of which are represented by different facial expressions in infancy. He reports on clinical work that is enhanced by locating the patient's affective surface, which enables meaningful contact within the dyad. We focus on the affect of interest and how essential it is in establishing a sense of self in the world. He also shares the many ways that this interest can be undermined by the child's environment. He describes research on the capacities of 18-month-olds and how they differ from 14-month-olds regarding the awareness of self and other. Paul also emphasizes how destructive corporal punishment is in the lives of children and in society at large. We end with the final sentence from his book, a quote from Abraham Lincoln, "We can succeed only by concert. It is not 'Can any of us imagine better?' but 'Can we all do better?' Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs, 'Can we do better?'

Our Guest: Paul Holinger, MD, MPH, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Faculty and Former Dean at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, Training/Supervising and Child/Adolescent Supervising Analyst. He is Professor of Psychiatry (Retired) at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. His most recent books include Affects, Cognition, and Language as Foundations of Human Development and What Babies Say Before They Can Talk: The Nine Signals Infants Use to Express Their Feelings.