The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

We know that the various emotions (fear, anger, love, contempt, etc.) show themselves in certain spontaneous movements and attitudes of the body, which constitute their natural expression. Emotion is the cause; the movements are the effect. It is less generally known that movements and attitudes of the body, artificially produced, are capable (in some cases, and to a slighter degree) of exciting the corresponding emotions. Remain for some time in an attitude of sadness, and you will feel sad. By mingling in cheerful society and regulating your outward behaviour in accordance with it, you may awaken in yourself a transient gaiety. If the arm of a hypnotised subject is placed, with clenched fist, in a threatening attitude, the corresponding impression spontaneously appears in the face and in the rest of the body; the same holds good for the expressions of love, prayer, contempt, etc. Here the movement is the cause and the emotion the effect. The two cases are reducible to a single formula. There is an indissoluble association between a given movement and a given feeling. Emotion excites movements, movements excite emotion; but with this very important difference: that movements are not always capable of exciting emotion, and when they do succeed, the states they bring about are neither intense nor permanent. In a word, the action from without inwards is always inferior to the action from within outwards.

It is exactly the same psychological law which governs the relations between the affective and the intellectual dispositions in the manifestations of the character.

Let us (merely in a metaphorical way, and for the sake of making the matter clear) call the action of the feelings on the ideas, action from below upwards, and that of the ideas on the feelings, action from above downwards.

The action from below upwards is solid, tenacious, energetic, efficacious; it has its strength within itself, drawing it from the region of the unconscious—i.e., from the organisation. When it reaches the consciousness, it merely becomes sensible. Thus what is at first a vague sense of discomfort, asserts itself in the consciousness as hunger, and may lead to theft, murder, and all sorts of excesses. Another state of the organism shows itself in floating, indeterminate desires, then asserts itself as love for some particular being, and may in the end break out like a thunderstorm. It would be superfluous to review in like manner the whole of the passions, making the same comments. Whether simple or complex, their evolution is the same. The moral, religious, or æsthetic vocations have their periods of incubation, of revelation, and of action. The saying of Correggio, on looking at the painting of a master, whether true or false historically, is psychologically true.

On the other hand, the action from above downwards is unstable, vacillating, variable, weak, and of doubtful efficacy. It has only a borrowed, extrinsic force. The psychological (and often pedagogic) problem stated is the following: How to bring about intellectual states, ideal images, so that they may, if they can, provoke, by way of reaction, the corresponding feelings. The action is mediate, indirect, and usually fails or shows very poor results. The sensibility produced is entirely intellectual; and who does not know that intellectual passions are mere phantoms, which a real passion sweeps away like a gust of wind?

In conclusion, the action of the emotions on the movements resembles that of the feelings on the ideas; the action of the movements on the emotions is like that of the ideas on the feelings.

Having thus briefly established the secondary and superficial part played by the intellect in the formation of character, let us return to our classification. We are now face to face with real individuals, unequally endowed with energy, sensibility, and intelligence. Let us now take our three great skeleton divisions, and fill them up, one by one.

I. The Sensitive.—In this genus I distinguish three principal species, which I am about to describe, taking the simplest first, and consequently departing more and more from the pure type as we approach the mixed characters.

1. The first species cannot be designated by any proper name; it is that of the humble. Excessive sensibility, limited or moderate intelligence, no energy—such are their constituent elements. Every one knows such persons, for they are frequently met with. Their dominant note is timidity, fear, and all paralysing modes of feeling. Like La Fontaine’s hare, they live in perpetual uneasiness. They are afraid for themselves, for their families, for their small position or business, for the present, for the future. They worry themselves about everybody’s opinion, even that of unknown passers-by. They tremble for their salvation in the other life, and in this they feel their own nothingness, and the weight of the social organism pressing upon them, which, in most cases, they cannot understand. The smallest misadventure gives them a severe shock, because they are conscious of being weak, and without springs of action or the spirit of initiative.

There is no one who cannot affix one or more names to this portrait; but I need mention none in particular, just because they are humble. I have eliminated all pathological cases from this study; but I may point out, by way of illustration, that many hypochondriacs belong to this type, and show it in an exaggerated form.