A Psychological Perspective on Joy and Emotional Fulfillment

Chris Meadows

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135020576
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Emociones en psicología

Throughout the history of psychology, there have been full investigations of discrete emotions (particularly negative ones) and a recent wealth of books on happiness, but few exist on the emotion of joy. This book takes a unique psychological approach to understanding this powerful emotion and provides a framework within which the study of human joy and other related positive fulfillment experiences can fit in a meaningful schema.

A key feature of this book is its development of an experiential phenomenology of joy. This phenomenology is based on more than three hundred descriptions of joy experiences recounted by subjects in an empirical study executed by the author. Types of joy experiences are examined, such as excited vs. serene joy, anticipatory vs. completed joy, and affiliative vs. individuated joy. There is no comparable book or work that clarifies the relationship among major positive states with emotional components including satisfaction, happiness, and ecstasy.

1

Contemporary Theories of Joy

The Eclipse of Joy

For the last half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, up until the present, psychological science has been exploring the questions surrounding human emotion. Many theories have been developed in an attempt to understand the nature of emotions and their impact on human functioning. In more recent years studies of positive emotion have gained in prominence. In this chapter we will discuss many of those theories, and their point of view on the emotion of joy. Commentaries will evaluate these theories and their relation to my views on joy, which will be further developed in subsequent chapters.

Theories of the emotions in the last quarter of the nineteenth century viewed joy as an important and essentially, what we call today, a primary emotion. Joy as a primary emotion was given a prominent place in most of these theories of the emotions, including the analysis of joy by the philosopher-psychologist and early president of Princeton University, James McCosh (1880), and by Charles Darwin’s analysis of facial expression and the evolutionary value of these expressive features in his work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).¹ Darwin and psychologists during this period saw joy as one of the essential emotions that make us human. Later events in the history of psychology, however, have contributed heavily to the failure to conceive of joy as an independent emotion along with other emotions in the human repertoire.

James McCosh published The Emotions in 1880,² developing a motivational theory of emotions which stressed the power of the emotions to alter thinking and to cause action. At the same time it was a relatively cognitive theory, emphasizing the role of the mind in emotions. For McCosh joy and sorrow are “immediate emotions,” aroused by objects or events in the present. Joy is aroused by a desired object possessed in the moment. He distinguishes increasingly intense levels of joy, beginning with the least intense level of contentment or satisfaction, then to gladness which, when prolonged, becomes cheerfulness, and finally in the most intense form of joy, ecstasy or rapture, which touch the deepest affections of our nature. McCosh also describes the bodily gestures, physiological components, and facial expression of joy.

Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals gathered support for the continuity between animal and human species in emotional and mental functioning. Its purpose was to elaborate the origin and development of expressive gestures and signs among human beings and lower animals. Because Darwin’s theory of laughter and joy is presented in a much more thoroughgoing way in later chapters, a brief summary of his notion will be proffered here.

Darwin asserts that laughter is the expression of intense joy. He argues phylogenetically that laughter, the utterance of “loud reiterated sounds from a sense of pleasure,” is the primary response, and that the more diminutive response, the smile of joy, developed later by means of habit and association. Moreover, intense joy is expressed, along with laughter, by exuberant body movements. “Joy, when intense, leads to various purposeless movements—to dancing about, clapping the hands, stamping, etc., and to loud laughter.” Darwin describes in detail the facial expression of the smile of joy and the response of laughter.

Darwin indicates that among adults the source of laughter is significantly different than it is among children. Among adults something incongruous, as in humor, leads to laughter if it occurs suddenly or unexpectedly. It is also useful for the survival of species that the distress cry and the chortle of joy are as different as possible in order that clarity of communication is attained. Additionally, in speculating about why the corners of the mouth are retracted and the upper lip raised during laughter, he concludes that, since the lower jaw is involved in rapid vibratory movements, a fully open mouth would prevent the emission of laughter. Joy takes a dominant place in Darwin’s analysis of the emotions and their expression.

But many years since the startling discoveries on facial expression of emotions and the universality of these facial expressions, a question I raised was why had there not been more reflection and research on the specific emotion of joy? I have suggested in my introduction that one of the reasons is that some people consider joy as a transient emotion which, it is thought, fails to serve any important role in life. But, casting around for other possible reasons in the history of psychology for this eclipse in the study of joy, some interesting findings emerged.

Wilhelm Wundt and William McDougall essentially turned the tide away from seeing joy as a central and independent emotion to viewing joy and sorrow as broad affective dimensions of all emotions. Wundt (1832– 1920) first served as the laboratory assistant to the physicist and physician Hermann von Helmholtz, and then taught at the University of Leipzig for 45 years. The first half of his Principles of Physiological Psychology was published in 1873, and the expanded work went through six revisions.

At the most basic level Wundt asserts that there were two fundamental types of mental experience: sensation and feelings. Sensations are elementary forms of experience, consisting of a correlation between an excitation of the cerebral cortex and a sensory experience. Whenever a sense organ is stimulated and the resulting neural impulse reaches the brain, sensation occurs. Sensations are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or gustatory (taste).

Sensations are accompanied by feelings. Feelings that accompany sensations are subjective components of consciousness itself. Thus sensations and feelings are simultaneous aspects of immediate experience.

Wundt developed a three-factor or tri-dimensional theory of feeling or affect.³ Every feeling can be described in terms of three bipolar dimensions. A feeling can be described in terms of the degree to which it possesses these attributes: pleasantness or unpleasantness, excitement or calm, and strain or relaxation.

Wundt asserts that combinations of feelings along with ideational components produce specific emotions. At this point, he subscribes to a building block theory of emotions which sees them as built up of various elements. In Wundt’s analysis an emotion has three stages: an initial feeling, a subsequent change in the train of ideas, and a final feeling. The second of these stages is what most sharply characterizes an emotion, stressing the cognitive or ideational phase.

Wundt does not develop a theory which posits the existence of primary emotions. He denies that joy and sorrow are discrete emotions and views them as affective dimensions which characterize other emotions and affects. As he states it, “The most indefinite emotions are joy and sorrow.”⁴ He describes them as “two fundamental moods,” which are elevated or depressed, qualities that are affective tones present in various proportions in every emotion. These are diffuse affective qualities that can characterize any affective phenomenon. Therefore his theory, which became widely accepted, prevented focused study of joy as an independent and discrete emotion.

William McDougall (1871–1938) was the son of a wealthy industrialist, attending private schools. He received his medical education at Cambridge, carried out neurophysiological research under Sir Charles S. Sherrington, and studied experimental physiology with Johannes Müller in Germany.⁵

By the time he wrote his Introduction to Social Psychology in 1908, McDougall asserted that psychology could not be limited to a science of consciousness. Introspection “can never rise to the level of an explanatory science.” The foundation of psychology as a science must be grounded in physiological psychology and the objective observation of the behavior of men and animals.⁶ He believed in instincts, but held that instincts led to purposive behavior. Purposive behavior can be spontaneous and initiated by the human organism.

McDougall sets forth a list of Instincts⁷ and the emotion accompanying each instinct so that the Instinct of Escape is accompanied by the emotion of fear, Combat by anger, the Parental or Protective instinct by love and tenderness, and Laughter by amusement, carefree abandonment, and relaxation.

The emotion accompanying the instinct of Assertion, or self-assertion, is the feeling of elation, positive self-feeling, and pride, sometimes with a stronger sense of superiority and masterfulness. Curiosity is the instinct leading to the quest to know. McDougall does not relate laughter to an emotion of joy as Darwin did. In my view there is a basis for this distinction between laughter and joy in that laughter does not always result in joy, and joy occurs in the absence of laughter.

McDougall conceives of neither joy nor sorrow as primary emotions because they are not attached to one of the instincts he delineates. Joy and sorrow are conceptualized as positive and negative affective qualities that accompany different emotional states to varying degrees, but in and of themselves are not emotions. As he says, “Joy and sorrow are not emotional states that can be experienced independently of the true emotions” which arise from instincts. They are qualifications of the emotions they accompany. To be accurate, he says we should always speak of “a joyful or sorrowful emotion” such as “a joyful wonder or gratitude, a sorrowful anger or pity.”⁸ Therefore, joy is not an independent and discrete emotion but an affective quality that accompanies various emotions. Other interpreters have asserted that joy is not an emotion, either viewing it as a positive affective dimension qualifying all other emotional states or denying that joy exhibits the characteristics of an emotion. Madison Bentley took a most radical position at this point, essentially denying that any positive affects exist, and asserting that “it may be doubted whether joy is a real emotion.”⁹ Unlike Darwin, both Wundt and McDougall saw emotions in terms of dimensions of consciousness rather than as discrete emotions, in which each is understood to have a distinctive facial expression, physiological components, and a way of apprehending the world. Consequently, the analysis of joy as one of the central emotions was in eclipse from about the turn of the twentieth century until 1947 when Erich Fromm¹⁰ offered a serious study of joy and happiness, in Man For Himself to which we will turn later in the chapter.

Conflict Theories of Emotion

For decades an attempt was made to develop a theory which would be explanatory of both positive and negative emotions and would fall under the same rubric. The conflict theories of emotion have been able to explain some important aspects of negative emotions such as anger, fear, shame, and disgust, but they have been awkward and ineffectual as far as understanding the positive emotions.

In an early theory John Dewey stresses the role of conflict in arousing felt emotion. If a hunter sees a bear coming toward him, he must make a quick decision as to whether to load or fire his gun or to take flight. The arousal of fear represents a failure to take an appropriate action. Emotion arises out of a non-adaptive response. When habits operate smoothly, there is no conflict, and little emotion. When a salient issue blocks the smooth functioning of habit, emotion occurs and an adaptive response follows. Emotion is aroused when one is not able to adapt adequately to a crisis. Non-adaptive activity is emotional. Thus emotion is the result of the blocking of intended action.¹¹ In all these statements, Dewey is really referring to negative emotions.

Psychoanalysis represents another form of a conflict theory of emotion. It views affect as the result of an unconscious conflict between drive cathexes, psychic energies, or mental representations derived from instinctual origins. As a major psychoanalytic theorist, David Rapaport, says, “Psychoanalytic theory disregards ‘pleasant emotions’ and deals usually only with the unpleasant.”¹² He asserts that pleasurable affect is the discharge into consciousness of decreasing psychic tension, while unpleasurable affect is the conscious manifestation of increasing psychic tension. This is essentially a tension reduction model of positive emotion.

The theories cited below represent considerable revisions of classic psychoanalytic theories. Written in the 1970s they are attempts to construct theories of emotion that are compatible with psychoanalytic theory and yet can be involved in dialogue with other contemporary non-psychoanalytic theories of emotion.

George H. Klein modifies instinctual drive theory so that pleasure or unpleasure are not the sole consequences of increased or decreased tension. Several psychoanalytic theorists use the term unpleasure. Klein allows for tension-seeking and tension-maintaining motivation.¹³ Once an affect is experienced it acquires a meaning that moves beyond sensory pleasure or unpleasure. Affect occurs in a cognitive schema, which afterwards becomes part of the affective experience. The cognitive framework becomes an important component of motivation. Thus motivation rarely involves a simple tension-reduction interaction.

Robert R. Holt¹⁴ also maintains that the instinctual drive theory is without supporting evidence. Even though sex, aggression, and other affective states may be triggered by innate factors, the arousal of these states is quite dependent on external environmental factors, while the innate propensities can be extensively modified.

The wish is central in human motivation in Holt’s view. The wish is produced by a mismatch between centrally emitted imagery related to a desired state and the state of affairs in the environment. This mismatch can reveal an opportunity or a threat. Perceptual information from the surround is compared with the centrally emitted internal image. This comparison can be unconscious, preconscious, or conscious. Different degrees of mismatch arouse different affective states. An intense and sudden mismatch causes startle and unpleasure, while a moderate mismatch causes mild pleasure and interest.

Hartvig Dahl¹⁵ agrees with Holt regarding the inadequacy of instinctual drive theory. Rather than endorsing tension reduction and its consequent pleasure as a seminal explanation for motivation, he sets forth the basic paradigm of pleasure produced by fulfillment of a wish. This allows focus to be placed on the qualitative dimension of wish satisfaction and its relation to felt experience in contrast to the quantity of tension reduced. He also posits emotions as major motivating forces, which highlights the importance of discrete primary emotions. He maintains that a certain class of emotions is characterized by distinctive perception of the emotion-instigating situation, a specific type of wish, and a particular facial and gestural expression. Thus he erects a conceptual bridge between revised psychoanalytic theory and discrete emotions theory. Classic conflict theories of emotion have little to contribute to our understanding of positive emotions, whereas these revisionist theories particularly hold out the possibility of reinterpreting the psychoanalytic view of affects, so that positive emotions can be part of the picture.

Contemporary Theorists of Joy

Joy as Illusion

About the same time that Erich Fromm was breaking through the joy eclipse in Man for Himself, Jean-Paul Sartre was asserting that emotion is a type of consciousness. “Emotion is a certain way of apprehending the world.”¹⁶ Emotion for Sartre is not essentially a physiological response as William James considers it. James believes that an emotion is an individual’s experience of the physiological or bodily response to an emotion-arousing situation, such as elevated adrenaline and heart rate and visceral tension. It is not that we see a bear, fear it, and run. The emotion of fear is the experiencing of this physical response.¹⁷ In...