The Joanna Spitzner Foundation Blog

Notes taken from Dr. William H. Frey II and Muriel Langseth Crying: The Mystery of Tears (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985).

“I suggest that like the excretory processes of exhaling, urinating, perspiring, and defecating, emotional tearing may play a vital role in maintaining homeostasis by removing waste and harmful substances. All excretory functions expel omething from the body such as exhaled air, urine, perspiration, and feces. Since tears are a fluid that also comes out of the body, I maintain that lacrimation can also be considered an excretory process” (12).

 

“Intensive investigations of tears could help us learn what goes on in our bodies when we feel sad, angry, depressed, anxious, or ecstatic. Since certain illnesses appear to be associated with or at least aggravated by unhealthy stress, the knowledge of chemical changes that occur during stress should lead to better treatments for these stress-related disorders. I hope my theory of emotional tears will help launch a new era in the study of the biochemistry of emotsion and emotional stress. Beyond this specific theory, it is my contention that emotional tears hold the key to the chemistry of emotion. Besides possibly removing excess stress-related chemicals, we may learn that emotional tears serve other important functions. As we discover what substances are in our tears, new areas of research on the biochemistry of emotion will be developed” (14-15).

 

“Lorenzo! Hast thou ever weigh’d a Sigh?

Or study’d the Philosophy of Tears?

(A Science, yet unlectur’d in our Schools!)”

Edward Young 1760 (quoted on p. 15)

 

“Tears are humors from the brain” Hippocrates (quoted on p. 16)

 

“Only about 100 microliters (five drops) of tears are shed each time a person’s eyes are irritated with onion vapors. During a good, all-out emotional cry, a person may shed a full milliliter or more of tears, but even that amounts to only about .033 fluid ounces—a miniscule quantity of fluid to study” (33).

 

“We found that our methods did not significantly alter the tear composition so long as we collect at least thirty-five microliters of tears in each sample” (35).

 

“But the two movies that produced the most tears with over one-half of the subjects crying were based on true stories. Brian’s Song, a made-for-TV movie about the war relationship between Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers drew many tears, particularly from men. The friendship of the two teammates on the Chicago Bears football team ends with Piccolo’s death from cancer at the age of twenty-six. The other movie, All Mine to Give, is a true saga of a Scottish immigrant couple who die and leave their twelve-year-old son struggling to find homes for his five younger brothers and sisters. This movie eventually moved into top place as the best tearjerker” (37).

 

“In spite of the contrived conditions, most subject who cried managed to catch at least three teardrops (each teardrop is about twenty microliters) in their test tubes” (38).

 

“Dr. Robert Elde, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Minnesota, has used specific methods to determine the presence of hormones and neurotransmitters in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland” (47).

 

“While many of the tests we ran for various substances produced negative results, the lacrimal gland and tears showed strikingly positive results for three: the hormones prolactin and adreocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and the endorphine leucine-enkephalin” (48).

 

“The very name prolactin comes from the ability of this hormone to stimulate lactation and is generally thought of as the hormone that stimulates and sustains milk production in mammals. But this hormone, secreted from the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland, also serves several other functions. It stimulates the development of breast tissue and the formation of the corpus leteum (a glandular body developing in the ovary following ovulation that produces the hormones progresterone and estrogens). Prolactin is also released in response to stress” (48).

 

“This raises the exiting possibility that prolactin may in fact stimulate tear production and exretion” (49).

 

“Male and female infants and children cry about the same amount, but women usually cry more than men. Dr. Janice Hastrup, a psychology professor at the State University of New York-Buffalo, recently conducted a study of adolescent crying and moods involving 160 families, with adolescents as the subjects. According to her study, sex differences in crying frequency appear about age thirteen, with girls maintaining their frequency throughout adolescence and boys showing a sharp decline. Somewhere between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, females develop higher prolactin levels than males. Adult women have serum prolactin levels 50 to 60% higher than adult males. These higher levels may account in part for the fact that women shed tears more often and more readily then men. Perhaps the higher levels of prolactin lower the threshold for tearing. Even if men and women have similar strong emotional reactions to an event, a woman may be more apt to shed tears simply because she has a higher level of prolactin” (49-50).

“After examining the number of episodes per subject per day and the number of women crying per day in relation to the menstrual cycle, we found three consistent peaks of crying frequency. Increased crying was observed four to six days before the onset of the menstrual period, three to five days after the onset of menstratuion, and thirteen to sixteen days after the onset of menstruation (around ovulation)….We had anticipated detecting a pattern that correlated with changes in one of the sex hormones. We found none. The three peaks of crying do not correlate with levels of any single sex hormone such as progesterone or estrogen” (81).

 

“M*A*S*H” was the single show which drew the most tears” (88).

 

“One subject wrote that even though she seldom cries for personal reasons, she often sheds tears during commercials: ‘I’ve never been able to decide what I feel when I cry during commercials. I’m just touched by the purity of the moment.’ Evidently the advertising agencies know how to create moving, tender, nostalgic movements. Since other subjects also reported shedding tears during commercials. ‘Reminds me of home’ was the reason one subject gave for her ‘commercial’ tears; another was moved by ‘sweet, cute, delightful children’” (90).

 

“While laughing and crying are often considered opposites, they can be closely related and, in some cases, are difficult to distinguish from each other” (94-95).

 

“Six-foot-three Lyndon Johnson cried intensely when he stood beside Gandhi’s grave in India” (99).

 

“In a 1978 study based on telephone interviews with 680 married couples, social psychologists Catherine E. Ross and John Mirowsky reported that men who adhere to traditional masculine roles are likely to cry less than nontraditional men when they are sad. Ross and Mirowsky surmised that although men with greater socio-economic status may have less reason for sadness, they are more likely to cry when feeling sad because men with higher incomes and education levels also tend to be less traditional” (100).

 

“Sorrows which find no vent in tears may soon make other organs weep” Sir Henry Maudsley (quoted on p. 104).

 

“Science has known for years that excessive emotional stress causes the release of hormones and other substances into the blood altering our chemical balance” (106-107).

 

 

“Of particular importance is research on the human lacrimal gland and tears, looking for chemicals which regulate the production and secretion of tears. While prolactin, ACTH, acetylcholine, leucine enkephalin, substance P, and perhaps androgens may fall into this category, they certainly do not constitute the entire list” (149).

 

“Equally important will be research on the human lacrimal gland and tears, looking for chemical correlates of stress. Prolactin, ACTH, growth hormone and beta-endorphin are released from the pituitary in response to stress. Also the catecholamines such as epinephrine, norepinephrine and dopamine are important. However, it is possible if not probable, that the key biochemicals associated with emotional stress and emotion have not even been discoverd yet. What better place to look for these substances than in emotional tears, the body’s natural excretory response to emotional stress! Perhaps by studying tears we will discover not only why we cry but also what is the biochemical basis of emotion” (150).

Things I should read next:

Thomas Scheff “Catharsis in Healing, Drama, and Ritual” (University of California Press, 1979).

 

Whilliam H. Frey II et al., “Effects of Stimulus on the Chemical Composition of Human Tears,” American Journal of Ophthalmology 92 (1981: 559-67.

–“Not-So-Idle Tears, A Lab Report,” Psychology Today 13 (1980): 91-92.

–“Crying Behavior in the Human Adult,” Integrative Psychiatry 1 (September-October 1983): 94-100.

 

“Several scientists, including psychiatrist Daniel Funkenstein, have gone a step further and suggested that the particular emotion involved may determine which catecholamine is discharged into the blood” (107).

Daniel H. Funkenstein, “The Physiology of Fear and Anger,” Scientific American 192 (May 1955): 74-80.