Emotion

A COMPREHENSIVE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THEORIES AND THEIR MEANINGS for

Hillman, James

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136323485
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Gesundheitsversorgung

This is Volume XIV of thirty-eight in a series on the General Psychology. Originally published in 1960, this study offers A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and their Meanings for Therapy.

Part I
Introduction

'As there is no man so temperate but that he sometimes experienced the violence of Passions, and that the disorder thereof is a fate from which very few can fence themselves; so it is the Subject whereupon Philosophers have most exercised their brains, and is the part of Moral Philosophy which hath oftest been examined; But if I may speak my sense with freedom, and if I may be permitted to censure my Masters, I am of opinion, that there is no point in the whole body of Philosophy, that hath been treated of with more ostentation and less of profit. . .'—The Use of the Passions, J. F. Senault (transl. by Henry, Earl of Monmouth), London, 1649.

A. The Problem

FROM all the evidence at hand the concept of emotion has become central to the issues of our time. Wherever we turn in the various fields and sciences of contemporary life we come up against this concept which is used to refer to a crucial problem in each area.

In psychotherapy, the concept of emotion plays a significant role: the abreaction and catharsis of repressed emotions in the method of Freud, the emotionally-toned complex in Jung, the emotional basic needs in Horney, are concepts essential to the theory and practice of these therapies. Writers from all the various schools of psychotherapy make much of 'emotional insight'¹ and of the 'affective contact' ² in the transference phenomenon, etc. Case histories, technical papers and the theoretical literature all show that emotion is the centre theme of every analysis and of every transformation in every analysis.

Emotion is also the key concept in psychosomatic medicine.³ Research into the history of this field⁴ shows that emotion has long been recognized as playing the crucial role in the body-mind relation, but it is in the twentieth century that this has been particularly stressed.⁵ Psycho-surgery also turns on the concept of emotion. Allison and Allison write:

Freeman and Watts have emphasized the point that '. . . emotional tension is the prime requisite for success in Prefrontal Lobotomy'. It appears that as yet there is no psychiatric diagnosis that causes one to think immediately of psycho-surgery. Rather, there is a constellation of symptoms described by Arnot as, 'a fixed state of tortured self-concern'. Inner emotional tension is implied in this description, and Robinson states the following in this regard: 'Psycho-surgery, then, not only relieves emotional tension; it prevents the development of future tensions. . . .'⁶

In psychiatry, not only does diagnosis and classification make use of the concept of emotion and of emotional categories, but in particular the indications for the various, physically violent, methods of treatment often depend upon the generic concept of emotion or upon specific concepts of emotion such as 'excitement', 'depression', 'indifference', etc. In point here, Anton-Stephens, reporting on the use of chlorpromazine, says:

Psychic Indifference. This is perhaps the characteristic psychiatric response to chlorpromazine. Patients responding well to the drug have developed an attitude of indifference both to their surroundings and their symptoms best summarized by the current phrase 'couldn't care less'.¹

In addition to the important role the concept of emotion plays in the spurt of interest in chemical therapies of mental disorders and in the new 'wonder-drugs' now habitually employed to change emotional states, the concept of emotion stands out importantly in the regions where psychiatry and sociology meet, e.g. the world-wide burdens of alcoholism and juvenile delinquency.

If we turn to the literature of psycho-diagnostics and clinical testing (with its influential ramifications in modern society), we find again the concept of emotion is crucial. The subject tested and/or diagnosed is assessed in accordance with various concepts such as 'emotional maturity', 'emotional attachments', 'emotional instability', 'emotional insecurity', and the like. In the field of developmental psychology, research occupies itself more and more with the emotional aspects of earliest childhood and the emotions in the mother-child relationship, and seeks therein causes and cures for many later psychological disorders.

In short, one is led to conclude that much, if not all, of the judgments concerning aetiology, diagnosis, treatment and cure in these several related fields ofpsychology depend to a great extent upon the concept of emotion in the mind of the practitioner.

In a wider held, wherever we turn to examine contemporary problems we find 'emotion' playing a leading part. Sociologists make use of the concept in many areas of their work: political phenomena, propaganda and mass psychology, the sociology of the family and community, and also in their publications on the shadowy aspects of society, e.g. prostitution, sexual perversions, delinquency, etc. In economics, concepts of emotion have recently come to the fore in studies of motivational research, or the emotional aspects of purchasing. The role of the concept of emotion in ethics, in education and in aesthetics is traditional and so central to those fields that it does not need pointing out here. The concept appears in theological debate whenever 'faith' or 'belief' is discussed, and especially in regard to questions of 'enthusiasm', 'mysticism' and, of course, in the recent crusades of 'revivalism'. In semantics and modern linguistic analysis, the 'emotive' meaning of words and statements has become one of the main topics to exercise the minds of those whose writings are found in the professional journals. Parapsychology too gives importance to emotional factors.¹

In particular, there are many authors who make of the concept of emotion a basis for their respective fields of inquiry: Shand² on character; Denison³ on civilization; Collingwood⁴ on art; Grimberg⁵ on delinquency; Bleuler⁶ on psychopathology, to name but a few. We might mention, as well, the use of specific concepts of emotion such as 'dread', 'disgust', 'fear', etc., which are fundamental to existential philosophy.

Yet when we come home to systematic (academic or theoretical) psychology to inquire quite naively: 'What is emotion; how is it defined; what is its origin, nature, purpose; what are its properties and laws; everyone uses this concept "emotion"—what are we speaking about?', we find a curious and overwhelming confusion. Stout writes:

If we ask the question, What is an emotion? The first answer that occurs to common sense is a list of specific emotions—fear, anger, hope, suspense, jealousy, and the like. When we push the inquiry further, and ask what character these states have in common which leads us to apply the same name 'emotion' to all of them, we find psychologists giving various and inconsistent answers.'

In the same vein Claparède writes:

The psychology of affective processes is the most confused chapter in all psychology. Here it is that the greatest differences appear from one psychologist to another. They are in agreement neither on the facts nor on the words.⁸

The Encyclopedia Britannica (1955), states:

Our knowledge of the topic emotion is much less complete than our knowledge of the other topics in the field of psychology.

The introduction to a modem dictionary of psychology says:

In preparing our definitions we have been struck by the extreme difficulty of finding a good technical meaning for many of the terms in common psychological use. This is particularly true in the field of emotion.¹

A recent theoretical paper on emotion begins:

... no genuine order can be discerned within this field. Instead, examination of current treatments of emotion reveals a discouraging state of confusion and uncertainty. Substantial advances have been made in recent years with respect to theories of learning and motivation, but the phenomena of emotion have not, as a rule, been considered in these formulations and remain a tangle of unrelated facts.²

A review of a recent volume of some six hundred pages written by many hands and devoted entirely to the subject, 'feelings and emotions', concludes:

The total impression of the book is that we are still far from a solution;—we do not even have a consensual definition of feelings and emotions.³

The latest psychological dictionary available (1958) complains: 'Emotion is virtually impossible to define ... except in terms of conflicting theories'.⁴

To present the problem more sharply, we can find four different kinds of theories of emotion in the Encyclopedia Britannica and four principal kinds of theories in Helsen's textbook.⁵ Marston⁶ offers five, as does Grossart,⁷ and Masserman gives thirteen different conceptual connotations.⁸

Furthermore, those workers who are at grips with the phenomena of emotion take great pains to avoid conceptual or theoretical discussion, while some try to get rid of the problem altogether. Wittkower,⁹ in a masterly paper on the influence of emotion on body functions, writes: 'Thus the philosophical side of the problem—the nature of emotions, the nature of affective-somatic relations—has been purposely disregarded.' Grimberg,¹ too, 'does not intend to discuss the psychology of emotions'; while Wha...