The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

II.

Though love, even in its average manifestations, is inseparable from obsession and impulsion, I see in these two characteristics no legitimate reason for placing it unrestrictedly—as some writers have been pleased to do—in the category of pathology.[^[161]] It has its natural end, and tends to fulfil it by appropriate means. Every one knows that it sometimes reaches the confines of madness; but in this it does not differ from the majority of the emotions. There are the impulsive and irresistible forms of love (erotomania), but they remain within natural limits; the true pathology of love is elsewhere—outside nature.

On the deviations and interversions of the sexual instinct so many observations have been published,—especially in our own day,—so many books written, so many medico-legal theses discussed, that we might think the psychology of the subject had thereby been cleared up. Nothing of the sort; and it is this alone which interests us.

Reduced to its simplest expression, the psychological problem is this: The sex-instinct having a clearly-defined and easily-verifiable end, how can it deviate therefrom? Other instincts—that of conservation under its offensive and defensive forms, that of self-feeling—have no mechanism exclusively appropriated to them, and are susceptible of various and multiple adaptations. This, on the contrary, is confined by nature within strict limits. No doubt every instinct has its oscillations; but it is only the means which vary, the end remains the same. The ant, the bee, the beaver, the spider, modify their manner of acting in accordance with their environment, because they are confronted with the dilemma that they must either adapt themselves or perish; but they always arrive at the same end. The nutritive instinct in man utilises animals and vegetables—the raw caterpillars of the savage or the scientific cookery of the civilised man—but the same end is always aimed at and attained. With the deviations—at least the extreme ones—of the sex-instinct it is otherwise: everything changes, means and end alike. The normal end, generation and the perpetuity of the species, is ignored or annihilated. This aspect of the question does not appear to me to have been sufficiently noticed. How can an instinct so solidly based, and having its own special mechanism, go astray?

This subject deserves a purely psychological monograph, a very difficult piece of work for which this is not the proper place. I would only seek to inquire into the principal causes of the alteration of this instinct. I shall cite no facts—they are sufficiently well known, or will suggest themselves; besides, the choice lies between excessive abundance and nothing. I pass over the extreme cases, those of necrophily, or of sexual erethism accompanied by a craving for violence, destruction, or blood. These are the equivalent of the animal manifestations already mentioned, in which the state of general excitement, so far from producing tenderness, awakens by preference the aggressive tendencies. These are merely insane impulses. I am limiting myself to deviations and interversions—i.e., to cases where the natural mechanism of instinct is falsified (excitations caused by impressions having nothing to do with sexuality, attraction towards the same sex, etc.).

We may pass over in silence the general causes, which are not particularly instructive: degeneracy, brought in, as usual, to serve as an explanation, and heredity, which is no explanation at all, being merely a repetition, and brings us back to the primary case, which states the question afresh. The inquiry can only be profitable when directed to particular causes.

1. One principal anatomical and physiological cause is found in the conformation of the genital organs: arrest of development, incomplete sexuality, hermaphrodism, malformations, etc. This is the simplest and most easily verifiable cause, and is found to be sufficient in some cases. The action, from below upwards, of the organ and its lower centre on the brain, is no longer normal; the conditions of existence of the instinct are absent or altered.

2. Other causes are not so easily assignable. One of a sociological order may be indicated: it is known what takes place when a number of individuals of the same sex are shut up together, as in boarding-schools, convents, prisons, barracks, ships on long voyages. But the most numerous causes are of psychological origin, and we may divide them into unconscious and conscious.

3. The existence of the unconscious, and therefore involuntary, causes is rather suspected than proved. They consist in strange associations of ideas formed at the period of puberty, whose ultimate reason eludes observation; they might be compared to certain cases of audition colorée, when a connection is formed between a sound and a colour, apparently fortuitous, but in reality resting on a common emotional basis. More than this, observation seems to show that, at a much earlier age, in the fifth or sixth year, there are apt to occur “unconscious genital impulses provoking associations of ideas which frequently serve, in later years, as a substratum to our sentiments and volitions. Most of these associations are unstable, and remain outside the consciousness. In the degenerate they take on the impulsive and overpowering character which distinguishes their psychology; their intensity expresses the degree of consciousness which accompanies them, the recollection which is still connected with them, even the importance they assume in later existence. The existence of an unconscious sub-personality directing the conscious one manifests itself here rather than elsewhere with undeniable clearness.”[^[162]]

4. There remain the conscious voluntary causes which are the converse of the physical causes, representing an action from above downwards of the superior centres on the inferior centre and the organs. It is here that instinct finds itself in conflict with its most redoubtable enemy, the intense and persistent image. In predisposed subjects the creative power of the imagination works at some construction on an erotic theme, as in others it produces a mechanical invention, a work of art, a scientific discovery. Every vivid image tends to realise itself; in the present case it has the power to divert instinct from its natural channel if its motor power is stronger, and the sexual instinct has not in all men an equal stability.

I do not think, however, that these causes are sufficient to explain everything, even if we take account of imitation which fixes itself in custom, and of the contagion of example. If the facts were taken in detail, omitting nothing, we should meet with more than one embarrassing complication. Thus, sexual aberrations are found in animals, though of but moderate intelligence and living quite free from constraint. Can we, considering this, throw all the blame on imagination? They are also found among primitive races: the Huns, say ancient historians, had made of unnatural love a regular institution; can we blame civilisation? Many other difficulties of this kind might be raised; but I may remind the reader that pathology is only introduced into this work by way of elucidation, and it seems to me that, in the present subject, it receives from normal psychology more light than it throws on it.

CHAPTER VII.
TRANSITION FROM THE SIMPLE TO THE COMPLEX
EMOTIONS.

The complex emotions are derived from the simple (1) by way of complete evolution; in a homogeneous form: Examples—In a heterogeneous form: Examples—(2) by arrest of development—(3) by composition; two forms—Composition by mixture; with convergent elements; with divergent elements—Composition by combination (sublimity, humour)—Modesty—Is it an instinct?—Hypotheses as to its origin.

Having studied in succession each of the tendencies which we look upon as incapable of further analysis, together with the simple emotion which expresses each, we now pass to the composite emotions. There is no need to point out that a simple emotion (fear, anger, etc.) is, in itself, a very complex phenomenon, and that “simple” means irreducible by analysis to any other emotion. All those which do not present this characteristic are complex. The problem to be stated, then, is this: How have the secondary and derivative emotions arisen from the primary or principal ones? Since it is admitted that these are typical emotions, and, on the other hand, the observation of human life shows us numerous emotional states, with their individual varieties and gradations, their transformations in the course of ages, how has this multiplicity been produced?

It is under this form that the masters of the seventeenth century had stated the question, and I take it up again, because this method seems to me far superior to that of classifications, which has since become prevalent. We know that Descartes admitted only six primary passions: admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness. “All the others,” he says, “are composed of some out of these six, or else they are different species of the same, and derived from them;”[^[163]] and he goes on to describe about forty. Spinoza admits only three principal: desire, joy, and sadness, whence he deduces the others, which, after eliminating some repetitions, amount to forty-six. However, it is not very clearly shown by what method these philosophers determine their primary passions; it seems as though the criterion were their extremely general character, except in the case of admiration. As for the other passions, they are deduced, and in order to show this clearly, Spinoza always takes care in his definitions to connect the primary with the derived passion. Thus: “Fear is an ill-assured sadness, arising from the idea of some past or future thing of which we are in some doubt as to the result.” In short, their method is geometrical and deductive, especially in the Ethics; but we can, with slight modifications, adapt it to the exigencies of experimental psychology. Thus we have determined the primary emotions by derivation, from the chronological order of their appearance, not by their extremely general character. As for the derivative emotions, we are about to seek to determine the very various conditions of their genesis, not by way of deduction, but by that of analysis or synthesis based on observation, i.e., as far as possible by a genetic method. We have elsewhere spoken of classification and the insurmountable difficulties inherent in it; accordingly, the aim which we propose to ourselves is not, given a composite emotion, to determine its genus and species, but to know from what primary emotion, and in what manner, it is derived.

These natural methods of transition from the simple to the complex seems to me capable of being ranged under three heads: (1) evolution, (2) arrest of development, (3) composition (mixture and combination). These three methods may act separately or conjointly; the more complex emotions are usually the result of their co-operation. We shall examine them in succession.