Penfield mood organ
The Penfield mood organ is a console-mounted device that enables its user to select and instantly experience any of hundreds of pre-programmed emotional states. It is a fixture in the Deckard apartment, where both Rick and Iran rely on it to regulate their daily moods, and its presence raises the novel's central question about the nature of authentic feeling in a world where emotion can be manufactured on demand.
Operation and Daily Use
The mood organ is operated by dialing a numbered setting, each corresponding to a specific mood. Rick Deckard, upon waking, is surprised to find himself awake without prior notice because his alarm has triggered a "merry little surge of electricity" from the organ beside his bed . He routinely dials a "creative and fresh attitude toward his job" before leaving for work, a setting he hardly needs because it is his habitual approach . Iran, by contrast, has programmed a six-hour self-accusatory depression into her schedule, a setting she discovered after experimenting with the organ in response to feeling the emptiness of their half-occupied building . The device allows for fine-grained control: Rick can choose between a thalamic suppressant to abolish rage or a thalamic stimulant to become irked enough to win an argument . Iran threatens to dial the maximum setting for venom if Rick dials for greater hostility, showing that the organ is also a weapon in domestic conflict .
Emotional Regulation and Avoidance
The mood organ functions as a tool for emotional avoidance as much as for enhancement. Iran explains that she once sat in a 382 mood while hearing the emptiness of the building, and her first reaction was gratitude that she could afford a Penfield mood organ . She later read that sensing the absence of life without reacting was considered a sign of mental illness—"absence of appropriate affect"—and so she deliberately found a setting for despair, which she schedules twice a month . Rick warns her that a mood like that is self-perpetuating, but she has programmed an automatic resetting to a 481—awareness of manifold future possibilities—after three hours . The organ thus allows its users to schedule and contain even the most profound despair, turning it into a managed experience rather than an authentic crisis.
Limits and Failures
Despite its power, the mood organ cannot always overcome the inertia of genuine feeling. When Iran is too depressed to want to dial anything, Rick suggests she dial 3, which stimulates the cerebral cortex into wanting to dial, but she refuses, saying that wanting to dial is the most alien drive she can imagine . She eventually gives in and lets Rick dial 594—pleased acknowledgment of husband's superior wisdom—but later redials as soon as he leaves, sinking back into her scheduled depression . The organ's settings are also subject to manipulation: Rick uses a nondirectional Penfield wave transmitter to induce catalepsy in everyone in the vicinity of Polokov's apartment, protecting himself with a counterwave . This shows that the technology that regulates personal emotion can also be weaponized to control others.
Thematic Significance
The Penfield mood organ embodies the novel's critique of a society that has commodified and mechanized emotional life. In a world where radioactive dust has driven most species to extinction and most humans to emigrate, the organ offers a way to avoid confronting the emptiness of existence. Iran's scheduling of despair is a deliberate choice to feel something real, even if it is hopelessness, rather than the manufactured cheerfulness the organ can provide. Rick's reliance on the organ for a "creative and fresh attitude" toward his job as a bounty hunter suggests that even the work of killing androids requires emotional management. The organ's presence in the Deckard home, alongside the empathy box that offers fusion with Wilbur Mercer, creates a contrast between technologically mediated emotion and the shared, embodied experience of Mercerism. When Rick returns home after retiring six androids and finding an electric toad, Iran offers to set the mood organ to 670—"long deserved peace"—but Rick simply goes to sleep without it . The novel ends with the organ unused, suggesting that some experiences cannot be dialed up.
