Essay II: Sentiment (from Holmes)
“Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side.” (Arthur Conan Doyle: A Scandal in Belgravia)
At its core, the statement asserts three things:
- An interpretational structure framed in terms of winning and losing
- The classification of sentiment as a defect
- Rationalization of the statement using biochemistry
Winning and Losing
Holmes’s phrasing, winning and losing, is not coincidental. Before this remark, he had suffered two major injuries to his psyche: a heartbreak involving Irene Adler and a catastrophic failure that spiraled into a terrorist event. Both experiences shared a common thread of sentiment clouding his judgment. Yet the framing of his statement in competitive rather than emotional language reveals something deeper.
Irene, through her actions, had shown him that what truly mattered to her was not affection but triumph, the satisfaction of winning over him. Love, for her, was therefore a theater of strategy. Holmes, sentimentally wounded, mirrored her logic in his own language. By couching his insight in terms of victory and defeat, he was, at some level, speaking her language to wound her in return. He refused to frame it as a matter of love because he knew that would hold no power over her. Thus, his statement is not merely an observation but a subconscious act of retaliation. He constructs a philosophical framework that, on the surface, appears detached and grounded in biochemistry, yet is emotionally calibrated to inflict pain.
The answer lies in a triad of self-awareness, grandiosity, and the biology of the brain.
As Russell pointed out, “Know thyself” carries its own consequences. Once we begin to know ourselves, we also begin to know what triggers us, what defines us, and what we most need to protect. For certain individuals, those who prize intelligence above all else, the brain subconsciously builds its hierarchy of values around that ideal. Intelligence becomes identity, ultimately becoming the metric through which the self maintains coherence.
The mind, then, develops a bias: it will choose any defense mechanism that preserves this image of intellectual superiority. In Sherlock’s case, his subconscious understood this about itself. His sense of worth was not tied to love, but to the idea of being intelligent, the belief that he could always outthink the world.
Additionally, its a common observation that the thrill of the chase is in the unknown. The human brain runs simulations, mental rehearsals of uncharted pursuits, and estimates the possible reward. But this estimation is filtered through self-perception. The more grandiose the self-assessment, the bigger the euphoria, and hence the anticipated mental treat. So, when that pursuit fails, the punishment is not just emotional; it forces change in the interpretational structure of the brain. The brain must recalibrate its map of grandiosity and self-worth, and for someone whose identity depends entirely on intelligence, this recalibration is intolerable. To admit error would mean to demolish the very scaffolding on which the self is built. Hence the brain resists. It constructs counter-narratives, rationalizations, and interpretations to preserve continuity. In Sherlock’s case, declaring that he “won” on the scale of intelligence, or framing sentiment as a “defect” is not arrogance, it is neurobiological self-preservation.
To his subconscious brain, losing the game is equivalent to losing the self. Winning keeps the internal architecture of his mind intact; it allows his simulations to keep running. If that framework collapses, the brain faces a biochemical free fall: dopamine withdrawal, cortisol surge, and a profound destabilization of the interpretational structure. To prevent that, the mind does what minds do best: it interprets the surroundings in a way that protects this foundation of self-grandiosity.
The Defect
When Holmes calls sentiment a “chemical defect,” he is recalling a projection he had formulated long before the event. He had hypothesized, coldly and cerebrally, that love was a tactical liability in a world of high-stakes deduction. That projection, however, existed only as an abstract model, untested and emotionally weightless. When he finally experienced heartbreak, the surge of the biochemical state of punishment, including adrenaline, cortisol, and lowered serotonin, flooded his system, retroactively validating his earlier projection. The cerebral hypothesis therefore suddenly acquired biological confirmation.
This is the mechanism of ‘reinforcement’. Under acute emotional stress, the brain reactivates dormant networks, memories, predictions, or philosophical constructs, and so the moment Holmes was stunned, his cortex retrieved that projection, now reframed with immense emotional charge. Thus, the degree of his assertion of “defect” is not necessarily purely scientific in nature, it’s also derived heavily from his emotional experience, and hence likely confounded.
The Biochemistry
As long as something remains a mystery, there is a degree of excitement associated to it and the moment we solve ourselves or tell our brain that we exactly delineated the pattern defining our actions, a considerable chunk of curiosity is lost and hence broadly speaking, it can blunt to a degree, any emotional pursuit. This can be the subconscious drive behind the maladaptive process of ‘rationalization’, a common defense mechanism. Making anything scientific and logically coherent has a side effect of this inherent loss of curiosity, which may subconsciously be used by the brain itself to lose curiosity where its otherwise difficult to come over it. The character may have been doing exactly the same, as we can see Sherlock visibly trying to attribute the sentimental actions to biology.
