The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

In short,—confining ourselves to the normal, and setting aside the pathological states,—the facts collected seem to me utterly inadequate for answering the question stated above.

II.

It was for this reason that I proposed to myself the task of collecting fresh documents, and of inquiring whether there are not great differences between one individual and another as regards the memory of impressions. This would explain the want of harmony among authorities on this point.

Having eliminated all vague and doubtful answers, and those which are not to the point, I have collected about sixty dossiers. Each person (all being adults, of both sexes, and various stages of culture) was directly questioned by myself, and the answers immediately noted. Besides these, I have received several long written communications, which I reckon among my best material. The nature of the questions asked will be sufficiently evident from the following summary, which contains the principal results of my inquiry. I shall confine myself to a bare statement of the facts; the interpretation will come later.

1. Images of taste and smell.—I was disposed to admit that they are not subject to any spontaneous revivability, and still less to a voluntary one, being, for my own part, quite incapable of recalling a single one, even in the faintest degree. The answers have put me completely in the wrong—the negatives being 40 per cent., the positives 60 per cent. More accurately, 40 per cent. persons revive no image, 48 per cent. revive some, 12 per cent. declare themselves capable of reviving all, or nearly all, at pleasure.

The majority of cases, therefore, allows of the spontaneous revival of some odours only. Those most frequently mentioned are pinks, musk, violets, heliotrope, carbolic acid, the smell of the country, of grass, etc. The conditions under which the image appears are various. For some persons this is unaccompanied by any visual, tactile, or other representation. With the majority, the imaginary odour ultimately excites the corresponding visual image (that of a flower, a bottle of scent, etc.). Many have first to evoke the visual image, and, in time, succeed in exciting the olfactory one. Two individuals affirm that, on reading the description of a landscape, they immediately perceive the characteristic odours. Here the sign is sufficient. One of them, a novelist, is sometimes conscious of thirst under the same conditions.

In the two following cases the “olfactory image” only exists in a single instance, and appears to be produced by the combined operation of concomitant circumstances.

Case 1. “I had been to the hospital, to see my friend B., who was suffering from a cancer in the face.... When he spoke it was necessary to come quite close in order to hear what he said, and thus, in spite of the antiseptic dressings, an acrid, fetid odour forced itself on one’s nostrils.... I was to go again to see him—I had promised to do so; but this prospect was intensely repugnant to me. While walking in a part of Paris, where neither space nor fresh air was wanting, I reproached myself silently for not having gone to see the poor patient.... At this very moment I perceived, as though I had been close to him, the same acrid odour, recognisable as that of a cancerous tumour—so suddenly that I instinctively held my sleeve to my nose in order to see whether I had not brought away the smell in my clothes. This, however, was immediately succeeded by the reflection that I had not been to the hospital for five days, and that, moreover, I was not wearing the same overcoat as on the occasion of my visit.”

Case 2. "I can only recall two odours: one inextricably connected with the memory of a sick-room—a stale smell of drugs and vitiated air, truly disagreeable when it recurs, as at the present moment....

“It has happened to me to discover a very peculiar and indefinable odour in the presence of a hypnotiser (M. R——) when he was putting me to sleep, and I had not quite reached the lethargic state. I have since noticed that very often (not always) the memory of this curious odour accompanies the recollection of the hypnotiser. This seems to me all the more convincing, because, the odour being very subtle when M. R—— is near me, the revival must be absolute to allow of the return of the sensation, in however slight a degree.”