The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

I.

In entering on the subject indicated by the title of this chapter, we pass from the general manifestations of feeling (pleasures and pains) to its special manifestations; we descend from the surface to the deeper strata, in order to arrive at the fundamental and irreducible fact at the root of all emotion: attraction or repulsion, desire or aversion, in short, motion, or arrest of motion.

Already, in the Introduction, we have marked the place of emotion in the development of the life of the feelings, and, later on, in the second part of this book, we shall examine separately each of the primitive emotions, with its special determining characters. For the moment, we have only to do with the general characters common to all emotions.

This term, in the language of contemporary psychology, has replaced the words “passions,” “affections of the soul” (passiones, affectus animi), in use during the seventeenth century. Besides being consecrated by use, it has the advantage of emphasising the motor element included in every emotion (motus, Gemütsbewegung). Maudsley says that this word is an induction, summing up the experience of the human race, and the term “commotion,” formerly used to designate the same phenomena, expresses the fact still more clearly.

At first sight, and without entering into any analysis, every emotion, even of slight intensity, appears to us as affecting the entire individual, and expressing, in its complete form, what Bain has called the law of diffusion. Its external symptoms are movements of the face, the trunk, and the limbs; its internal, numerous organic modifications caused and dominated by the circulation—the organic function par excellence. The experiments of Lombard, Broca, Bert, Gley, Mosso, Tanzi, etc., have shown that any and every form of mental activity is connected with an increase in the circulation; but the latter is always above the average when an emotion is manifested. Emotional activity of a given kind, says Lombard, produces an increase of temperature in all parts of the body; it is, in general, more rapid and stronger than that which comes from intellectual activity. Mosso, who, by some well-known experiments, has been enabled to study even the slightest modifications of the circulation, concludes that “the action of the emotions on the cerebral circulation is much more evident than that of intellectual work, whatever its energy.” Emotion not only presents these vague and different characteristics, but every separate emotion is a complexus. Let us take the simplest and commonest—fear, anger, tenderness, sexual love; each one of them is a complete state in itself, a psycho-physiological fascicule constituted by a grouping of simple elements, differing with each emotion, but always comprising a particular state of consciousness, particular modifications of the functions of organic life, movements or tendencies to movement, arrest or tendencies to the arrest of particular movements. Every primary emotion is an innate complexus expressing directly the constitution of the individual; the emotions are organised manifestations of the life of the feelings; they are the reactions of the individual on everything which touches the course of his life, or his amelioration, his being, or his better being. In a certain manner, the primary emotions are analogous to the perceptions, which require a psycho-physiological organism adapted to a special function in relation to the external world; with this difference, that sight, hearing, smell, etc., have their own special and inalienable organs, while fear, anger, etc., have a diffused organism, the elements of which, combined in another manner, become the organism of another emotion.

It follows that the study of the emotions, from the point of view of pure psychology, can come to no definite conclusion. Internal observation, however subtle, can only describe the internal fact and note its gradations; regarding the conditions and the genesis of emotion, it can give no answer; it can only seize a bodiless emotion, an abstraction. There is no manifestation of psychic life, not excepting the perceptions, which depends more immediately on biological conditions. The great merit of James and Lange is that both of them, simultaneously and independently, have demonstrated the capital importance of physiological factors in emotion.

It is not my intention to explain at length the thesis of these two authors, though it is the most important contribution made to the psychology of the emotions for some time. It is becoming very well known, and, in any case, is easily accessible.[^[68]] Reduced to its essence, it may be summed up in two principal propositions:—

1. Emotion is only the consciousness of all the organic phenomena (external and internal) which accompany it, and are usually considered as its effects; in other words, that which common sense treats as the effect of emotion is its cause.

2. One emotion differs from another according to the quantity and quality of these organic states and their various combinations, being only the subjective expression of these different modes of grouping.

In order to treat a subject scientifically, says Lange, we must fix our attention on objective marks; the study of colours only became scientific on the day when Newton discovered an objective character—the difference of refrangibility in coloured rays. Let us do the same with the emotions, for we shall find it possible. Each one of them shows itself by gestures, attitudes, organic phenomena, which are often, though very erroneously, considered secondary, accessory, consecutive. Let us study them, and so substitute for introspection an objective process of research. As it is best to begin with simple things, the author has confined himself “to some of the most definite and best characterised emotions: joy, fear, sorrow, anger, timidity, expectation,” and abstained from considering “those in which the physical facts were not very marked, and not easily accessible.”