How Do We Understand the Relationship between Censorship and Emotional Development?

An Exchange between Platonic Paideia and Cognitive Neuroscience

Abstract

In the present article we attempt to elucidate the conceptual relationship between censorship and emotional development. We employ a framework from emotion regulation studies in order to clarify how censorship works and to explain why it cannot affect emotional development in the same way as the remaining types of emotional regulation. Nevertheless, we argue that, by focusing on Plato’s account of censorship, and specifically of its sociocultural function, one can find that it is not a useless device for emotional development. Censorship affects relevant variables in the dynamics of contraposed emotional processes that compete for dominance.