"But I Love the Naked Monkeys..." 

Castiel’s performance as both the Champion of Heaven and the Guardian Angel of team free will are greatly affected by his emotional condition, rooted on his perception of control. When Cass experiences high control, his values are coherent and adamant, his emotions are positive, and his motivation is ablaze. However, when he perceives low control, his values are chaotic, his emotions are negative (mostly; he is an angel and does not feel emotions the way we do), and his motivation is extinguished.

When Cass was under the yoke of heaven, he was experiencing low control. He was a soldier that could not question orders; even when he found them morally objectionable. As an angel, he was taught to obey the will of the Archangels blindly. Most significantly, his value ascriptions were skewed by this obedience. We went against his better nature and valued the importance of completing his missions and undervalued his innate intuition about the importance of the lives of humans. This is beautifully shown when Uriel (Cass’s assistant) calls Dean a naked monkey and later Cass uses this insult when fighting Dean to affirm the agency of heaven. As a result of this cognitive dissonance (between his inner conscience and his actions), he experiences negative emotions. He has great anxiety; a fear and apprehension that leads to poor performance. Cass started as a renown Garrison Commander who was in charge of all guardian angels deployed on Earth.  However, as a result to the poor performance brough by his low motivation, he was demoted to being Uriel’s underling. His arousal led to poor performance because of the cognitive pain he felt every time he was forced to proceed with the Apocalypse (and consequently harm humans).

On other hand, when Castiel experienced high control over his actions, his evaluations of his mission to protect Dean were very high. His emotions were renewed like a phoenix from the ashes, and he became the Champion of Free Will instead of the blunt instrument of heaven. He experiences the most positive emotions when protecting and helping Dean in his task to stop the Apocalypse. In another beautiful scene, Cass is so aroused that he tells Dean that he will stop the Archangel Raphael. Impossible. Even though he is a sinner in the eyes of Heaven, his performance is impeccable (pun intended); he becomes a sort of Deux Ex Machina to the brothers and saves their lives multiple times. He even allows them to time travel and picks them up in other dimensions. Interestingly, this becomes a double-edged sword. When he finds himself incapable of winning the Civil War in Heaven, he becomes so aroused, anxious, and quite frankly desperate, that he decides to make a deal with the King of Hell to open the door to Purgatory so he can absorb the souls therein. There was a time when angels protected souls, but now Cass wants to use them…. Very poor performance for any angel. Even worse, he releases the Leviathan: primordial beasts that almost destroy the planet (much more thoroughly than the Apocalypse Cass was trying to stop).

Cass is the quintessential example of a locomotive powered by a sense of control. He is a paragon to Team Free Will. His character arch is one in which a detached heavenly robot becomes an emotional angel that is more human than most of us. He became a man in both his resolve and in our pain and depression.