The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

II.

Since, for the moment, we are eliminating movements in order to confine our attention to the internal conditions of emotion, it is easy to see that these conditions reduce themselves to that which we designate by the name of internal, organic, vital sensations. This is not the place to enumerate the modifications of each in the case of each special emotion (for which the reader is referred to Part II.); the question, taken for the present in its generality, is put thus: Are the internal sensations reducible to a single and fundamental process? If the answer is in the affirmative, the internal conditions of emotion would find themselves simultaneously determined under their most general form. We can, at any rate, try.

The first difficulty consists in our not having a complete enumeration, on which all authors are agreed, of the internal sensations, as we have in the case of the special sensations. Beaunis gives a very detailed classification in eight groups; Kröner adopts a somewhat different one; both include pleasure, pain, and the emotions. Let us eliminate this last group (the affective manifestations) and confine ourselves to the vital sensations properly so called, connected with purely physiological needs, with the organs and functions indispensable to life: the different sensations of the alimentary canal (hunger, thirst, malaise, nausea, etc.); those of the respiratory apparatus (the need of fresh air, dyspnœa, asphyxia), of the circulatory apparatus, of the excretions and secretions; of the sexual organs in the normal state or in transitory phases (puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause); the need of muscular movement, of rest, of sleep; the sensation of fatigue;—we have nearly all, if not all, the elements of cœnæsthesia, i.e., the consciousness of the body as living and acting.

Have these multiplied sensations a common cause? Are they different modes of one and the same process? Do they imply, at their origin, the same stimulus, the same kind of excitement, as all the varieties of visual sensations suppose luminous vibrations, and the varieties of auditive sensations, sonorous vibrations? Kröner maintains that, for all internal sensations, the initial excitation is of a chemical nature. “Every organic sensation is based on a chemical process, and arises according to the laws of diffusion and osmosis.”[^[83]] The author justifies his assertion by the enumeration of a large number of facts, for which I refer the reader to his book. Chemical action, according to him, either takes place under the gaseous form (a person passes from the open air into a room full of deleterious miasma) or under the liquid (alcohol, toxic substances in solution in the fluids of the organism and introduced into the circulatory current).

It is not very certain, pace Kröner, that all internal sensations are caused by chemical action, under one or other of the forms we have mentioned, and that their vague localisation is due to this cause alone, and not, as generally admitted, by their arising in organs incapable of movement. Thus tickling, giddiness, the muscular sensations (which Kröner and Beaunis include in this group) appear to depend on mechanical excitations rather than on chemical causes. At any rate, one cannot deny that the internal fundamental sensations—connected with nutrition and its immediate conditions, with fatigue and sleep, both of which result from a poisoning of the muscles and the nervous centres, with sexual life—are due to chemically caused excitations. This granted, we may go one step further in the track of James and Lange, and say that the emotions depend not only on physiological conditions, but still more intimately on the chemical action going on in the tissues and fluids of the organism.

In support of this extreme condition of the genesis of the emotions, we can only offer some fragmentary remarks, which, however, show how closely they depend on the variations of the intra-organic environment.

1. We have, in the first place, the group of exciting, tonic, depressing, toxic substances: wine and the various alcoholic beverages, haschisch, opium, coca, the aphrodisiacs, etc. Although they are artificial products, introduced from without, not engendered in and by the organism, we know how far they modify the interior environment, and consequently the temper, character, intensity, and direction of the passions.

2. But there are also the substances which the living body compounds or modifies for itself. It has been said that the organism is the receptacle and laboratory of poisons; in the state of emotion, the only one with which we are concerned at present, the function of this chemical process is manifested at every instant. We are always speaking of the weakening or the increase of the circulation of the blood; yet the emotional dispositions or modifications are connected, not only with variations of quantity, but also with those of quality in the blood (anæmia, aglobulia, malarial poisoning, etc.). The popular expression regarding the emotions which “curdle the blood” is not so ridiculous as it might seem. Anger, fear, fatigue are often accompanied by changes in the intimate constitution of the sanguinary fluid. We may incidentally note the ascertained relations between certain cardiac affections and affective dispositions: in aortic affections, anæmia, excitement, irritability; in cases of mitral insufficiency, congestion, and a taciturn and melancholy humour. We shall elsewhere have occasion to enumerate the facts which show the correlation of certain emotions with toxic changes in the saliva and the lacteal secretion. Perspiration may, in certain affective states, be coloured red, yellow, green, or blue, not to mention the varieties of odour, which are assuredly of chemical origin. Even apart from mental disease, the urinary secretion could furnish a long list of chemical changes (azoturia, oxaluria, phosphaturia) coinciding with variations of the affective order, such as apprehension, melancholy, irritability. In gouty and rheumatic patients, the modifications of temper, depending much more on general nutrition than on active suffering, have often been pointed out. We know the relations between the secretion of the gastric juice and pleasurable or painful states; dyspeptics have a well-established reputation for being neither cheerful nor comfortable to live with. Beaumont ascertained, in the case of his famous Canadian, that under the influence of anger or other very strong emotions, the lining of the stomach was irritated, became red, dry, and very sensitive, and an attack of indigestion was the result. The rutting time (that of sexual excitement) is, in many animals, accompanied by deep-seated chemical changes, showing themselves externally by modifications of colour and odour, and, internally, not limited to the sexual organs, but extending to the whole of the body. It is known that the flesh of game is uneatable during this period, and that many fish, at spawning-time, become poisonous. It should not be forgotten that, during the same period, the animal becomes vicious, violent, aggressive, and dangerous. It would be easy to develop this point further, even as regards man (puberty, gestation, lactation, menstruation).

3. It has long been observed that, in the great majority of cases, mental disease begins by affective disturbances and that the intellectual aberrations only make their appearance later. Much more recently, a doctrine has been propounded which tends to seek the primary cause of these affective disturbances in a self-intoxication—i.e., in “the disorders produced in the interior of the organism by the excessive formation or the morbid retention of normal poisons; in particular, by those originating in the digestive canal and the urine.” Nutritive troubles through acceleration, retardation, or perversion, are assigned as the most general cause. In support of this, we are referred to the relations between melancholia, hypochondria, a pessimistic disposition, with hyperchlorhydria of the stomach, and the good results of purgative medicines; the numerous mental modifications coinciding with organic chemical modifications—e.g., certain attacks of mania in arthritic subjects. “One characteristic of the mental state of diabetic patients is the way in which the fluctuations of the mental state correspond with those of the sugar, and the barometric (if one may so call it) influence of the composition of the urine on the moral disposition.” This liquid, in mania, loses, to a great extent, its toxic character, in consequence of the morbid retention of normal poisons which are no longer eliminated.[^[84]]

A long enumeration of facts bearing on this as yet insufficiently studied question would be here out of place. Besides, it could only be of real value if systematic—i.e., if under the heading of each emotion were grouped the physiological facts invariably accompanying it, and all the chemical modifications exclusively peculiar to it. We have only included the chemical conditions in our study, in order to penetrate as far as possible into the most general conditions of affective life, and show once more why it betrays the inmost constitution of the individual.

When treating of pleasure and pain, we remarked that they were too exclusively attributed to intensity of excitation (excessive, it was said, for pain; moderate, for pleasure), and that its quality was forgotten. Since we have to do with hypotheses as to the part played by chemical conditions in affective life, since they are the most general, and since pleasure and pain also have this character of generality, it may be permitted to hazard a conjecture. This would consist in admitting that pleasure arises either when excitement increases chemical activity in the organism, without producing toxines, or when this augmentation of activity brings about the disintegration of the normal poisons; and that pain arises either when excitement creates an environment appropriate to the formation of toxines, or when, directly and at once, it promotes their formation, either generally or locally. But I would not insist on a simple obiter dictum, for which I can offer no proof, thrown out merely as a suggestion with regard to a question not as yet fully examined.

We have spoken throughout of the chemical modifications as coinciding with emotional changes. Are they effects or causes, or both, according to circumstances? It is clear that this question is not new to us. It is the antithesis between the psychological and physiological theories of emotion, presenting itself under another aspect; there is no occasion for discussing it a second time.

CHAPTER IX.
THE EXTERNAL CONDITIONS OF EMOTION

Empiric period—Pre-Darwinian period of scientific research—Examination of Darwin’s three principles—Wundt and his explanatory formulas: Innervation directly modified, Association of analogous sensations, Relations of motion with sensory representations.

The movements of the eyes, mouth, face, the upper and lower limbs and trunk, and the modifications of the voice constitute the external expression of emotion which is principally reducible to muscular action. For the last half-century this subject has been studied in works so well known that it behoves us to be very brief. I shall confine myself to indicating the actual state of the question.

For some thousands of years this question remained in the stage of pure empiricism, or of so-called scientific speculations which had scarcely a better reputation than alchemy, astrology, or chiromancy. J. Müller, in the name of physiology, declared the expression of the emotions completely inexplicable. However, the researches were already beginning which were to prove him mistaken—those of Lavater with his rare talent of personal observation, and those of Charles Bell by a more objective method. After this, Duchenne, of Boulogne, went still further, substituting experiment for mere observation. It is well known that, in the case of an old man suffering from facial anæsthesia, he caused the contraction of an isolated muscle, by the aid of electricity, and thus produced certain modes of expression in the countenance. He concluded from this that the contraction of a single muscle often suffices to express a passion; and that every emotion has, so to speak, its accurate, precise, and unique note, produced by a unique local modification. Thus, the frontal is for him the muscle of attention, the upper orbicular of the lips the muscle of reflection, the pyramidal (inter-superciliary) expresses threats; the great zygomatic, laughter; the lesser zygomatic, weeping; the triangular muscle of the lips, disdain, etc. In spite of the somewhat artificial nature of the experiments, and the too sweeping character of the conclusions, this was a great step in advance.[^[85]]

At last appeared Darwin’s epoch-making work. Supported by the results of a long series of experiments on adults, children, lunatics, animals, members of the different human races, Darwin was the first to put, and to attempt to answer, the fundamental and only question—Why and how is such and such an emotion connected with such and such a movement and not with another? He stated the problem under its scientific form.[^[86]]

In Darwin’s works we find two elements: a detailed and complete description of each individual emotion or affective state—by which we shall profit later on—and the exposition of the general laws of expression, as reduced to three well-known principles. What remains of these three principles after the criticism to which they have been subjected? This is the only point we have, for the moment, to examine.

1. The principle of the association of serviceable habits remains the most firmly established. It consists in admitting that movements which are of service in satisfying a desire, or getting rid of a disagreeable sensation, become habitual, and continue to take place, even when their utility becomes nil, or at any rate doubtful. In other words, there are attitudes, gestures, movements, which can be directly explained, because they are nothing but emotions actualised, objectivised, or embodied, such as the movements of contact in tenderness, of aggression in anger, of erection and swelling in pride. But there are others, of which the explanation is less direct and obvious. How are the contraction of the eyebrows in perplexity, tears in sorrow, the showing of the teeth in anger, to be explained as serviceable to us? According to Darwin, these acts, formerly serviceable, have continued to exist as survivals. Here Darwin’s successors have rightly reproached him with not being enough of a psychologist, and have found a better explanation: the important fact is not the survival of serviceable movements, but the transference of a primitive mode of expression to an analogous emotion.

2. The principle of antithesis has been definitively abandoned; it is purely hypothetical, and explains nothing. According to Darwin, there is a primitive and general tendency to associate with feelings the contrary gestures to those expressing the opposite feeling. Léon Dumont has subjected this assertion to a very close and cogent criticism. Taking, one by one, the facts quoted by Darwin, which, besides, are not very numerous, he has shown that they may be quite otherwise explained.[^[87]]

3. The principle of the direct action of the nervous system cannot be placed in line with the other two, because it far surpasses them in generality, and, in relation to it, they are subordinate and not co-ordinate. Before Darwin, Spencer (Principles of Psychology, ii. §§ 495, 502) had stated an analogous principle, to which he reduced the expression of the emotions. He calls it the Law of Nervous Discharge. It may show itself in two forms—the diffused and the restricted. The former depends on the quantity or intensity of the emotion, and serves as its measure. It follows, in its propagation, an invariable course: it affects the muscles in an inverse ratio to their mass and to the weight of the parts they have to move. In man, it acts first on the delicate muscles of the voice and the small facial muscles; then it invades, in succession, the arms, the legs, the trunk. The movements of the tail in dogs and cats, of the ear in horses, and many analogous ones in other animals, are illustrations of this law. The restricted discharge depends on the quality or the nature of the emotion; it is due “to the relations established in the course of evolution between particular feelings and particular sets of muscles habitually brought into play for the satisfaction of them.”[^[88]] This scarcely seems to me to differ from Darwin’s principle of “useful habits.”

The Expression of the Emotions gave rise to other publications of the same kind, those of Piderit, Mantegazza, and Warner, who, in his Physical Expression (1885), has attempted a purely objective, and consequently extra-psychological study of the subject. But among all the attempts to trace back expression to its fundamental principles, and find a substitute for Darwin’s (already greatly shaken) theory, that of Wundt seems to me the best.[^[89]] Like his predecessor, he admits three principles (though different from Darwin’s) which can act simultaneously and concur in the production of an isolated movement.

1. The principle of direct modification of innervation—that is to say, that the intensity of the muscular and vasomotor movements depends on the intensity of the emotions; the movements which most escape the control of the will more especially depend on this principle. This is the equivalent to Darwin’s third principle, placed first, which is, in fact, its right position.

2. The principle of the association of analogous sensations consists in those dispositions of the mind which are analogous to certain sensory impressions, manifesting themselves in the same manner. At the outset, we have only pleasures, pains, and needs of the physical order, whose mode of expression is innate, and, so to speak, anatomical. Later on come the pleasures, pains, and desires of the moral order, which make use of the pre-existent modes of expression in order to show themselves outwardly. It is a language turned aside from its primary signification, which in the order of gestures is the equivalent of a metaphor. This principle explains much more easily than Darwin’s a number of apparently very perplexing modes of expression. If a man, when puzzled, scratches his head, coughs, rubs his eyes, it is because a slight malaise of physical origin and a slight embarrassment of psychical origin have a deep-seated analogy, betraying themselves by the same expressive movements. Wundt has well described the mimicry of the mouth in the tasting of sweet, acid, or bitter substances; as soon as an emotion arises which has some affinity with these gustatory sensations (sweet joy, bitter grief, sharp reproaches), the expression of the mouth, the nose, the face reappears. This is because, in both cases, the state of the feelings, the emotional tone are the same, the expressive movements identical. As Mantegazza has rightly said, there are such things as mimic synonyms.

3. The principle of the relation between movements and sensory representations lies in the fact that the muscular movements of expression relate to imaginary objects. Wundt considers as chiefly amenable to this principle the mimicry of the eyes, the arms, and the hands. We represent something large by raising the hand, a small object by lowering it; the future by a forward movement, the past by a backward one. It might be objected that these gestures indicate intellectual rather than affective states; but it is certain that many emotions have a mimicry addressed to absent objects. Gratiolet (1857) collected a tolerably large number. The indignant man, even if alone, clenches his fist against an absent adversary. We shut our eyes, or turn aside our face, to escape the sight of a disagreeable object; we do the same when disapproving of an opinion. When we approve, we incline the head forward, as if in contemplation. In negation, we turn the head to right and left, exactly as is done by children and animals, when an unattractive object is placed in front of the mouth. The expression of disdain, contempt, disgust, reproduces the physiognomy of a man rejecting nauseating food.

I am not quite sure that Wundt’s third principle is of the same importance as the other two, or that it cannot be reduced to a still simpler form. But the theory I have just summarised, with a few examples borrowed elsewhere, presents itself as the one most calculated to bring out the importance of the physiological factors, unduly neglected by the pioneers of the science.

All the work relating to this question, whatever may be its lacunæ at present, has demonstrated that the expression of the emotions is not an adventitious, purely external, extra-physiological fact, whose study is only incumbent, as science, on the physiologist, and, as art, on the physiognomist, but emotion itself objectivised, its inseparable embodiment. In my opinion, we have to distinguish two strata in the very numerous modes of muscular movement which express the emotions. One is primary, depending on the anatomical and physiological constitution; the other, secondary, depending on the psychological constitution. The relation between them is that which in every developed language exists between the primary and the derived sense of words. Analogy is the great artisan of intellectual language; its action is more restricted as regards emotional language. But when, to the emotion of the first hour, having already its fixed mode of expression, there succeeds a new emotion, which the consciousness, rightly or wrongly, has felt as analogous, the pre-established expressive mechanism has served a new purpose, like an old word whose meaning is extended and modified. In both cases the mind proceeds in the same way, obeying the guidance of one and the same unconscious law.

CHAPTER X.
CLASSIFICATIONS.

Their discrepancies—Reduced to three types: (1) Classification of pleasures and pains—(2) Classification of emotions: two forms, empiric and analytico-comparative—(3) Classification of representations, intellectualist form—Critical remarks—Impossibility of any classification.

The confusion of that department of psychology which deals with the feelings and the vagueness of its terminology appear in all their fulness with the problem of classification. Although, for reasons which will be given at the end of the chapter, a complete and satisfactory classification seems to me impossible, there has been no lack of attempts, and it must be admitted that they are not illegitimate, at any rate as approximative efforts towards a provisional order.

Within the last fifty years, in spite of the very moderate amount of zeal with which psychologists have studied the feelings, we find about twenty treatises signed by well-known names, not to mention minor variants.[^[90]] They are far from being in agreement, except on some few points, and when they are compared, in order, if possible, to reconcile them, the first impression is one of inextricable confusion and hopeless divergence. If we examine them a little more carefully, we begin to see light. We see that the differences are only in the objects classed and the methods followed; in one word, it is possible to attempt a classification of these classifications; and when this is done, we find, if I am not mistaken, that they can all be reduced to three types. (1) Some writers, virtually, classify only pleasures and pains, tracing back the whole of affective life to their modalities. (2) Others classify the emotions properly so called; and here we must distinguish two groups, according as the method employed is purely empiric, and founded on current observation, or has recourse to analysis and genetic research, after the manner of the so-called natural classifications. (3) Lastly, others classify intellectual states pure and simple, and, conversely, the affective states which accompany them: this is the intellectualist method.

In order to justify our distinction, we shall successively examine these three types. This excursion on an ungrateful soil will not be altogether without, at least, a negative utility.