The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

Although it is rash to engage in a campaign in which some have fled and others failed, we must nevertheless attempt to draw up a list of primitive instincts (or tendencies), since these are the sources of all pleasures, pains, emotions, and passions. I can see but one method of attaining this end—a method long employed in animal psychology: that of admitting to the list of human instincts only those which present the following characteristics:—(1) They are innate. This does not imply that they appear at the very hour of birth, but that they are anterior to experience, not acquired; that they appear ready made, as soon as the fitting conditions exist. Those which are called deferred instincts, which make their appearance late, such as the sexual instinct in man and many animals, are none the less innate. (2) They are specific. They exist in the entire race, except for some individuals, who by reason of their exemption are, on the point in question, abnormal; so various instincts are wanting in the idiot. (3) They are fixed, in a relative sense; for no one now maintains the theory of the absolute invariability of instinct; and in man its plasticity is extreme, because a superior power, that of intelligence, moulds and adapts it to its designs.

These characteristics being determined, it remains to apply them in chronological order, and, starting with the birth of the individual, to draw up the catalogue of actual, strictly innate instincts. We shall then follow the course of life, noting the appearance of every new and indecomposable instinct, and thus continue till we have exhausted the list.

I propose to divide the instincts into three groups: the earliest in date being essentially physiological in its nature, the second psycho-physiological, the third essentially psychological. We shall not need to study them all, because some are outside the domain of general psychology, and others unconnected with the psychology of the emotions. The enumeration will be made, for the moment, in a very bald form, like a table of contents.

Group I. These belong to the life which biologists call organic or vegetative, as opposed to the life of relation. All these converge towards a single end, the fundamental act of life—nutrition. To simplify the matter as much as possible, let us divide this act into three stages: reception, transformation, and restitution.

(1) The first only has any psychological interest, showing itself in consciousness by two very energetic needs—hunger and thirst. It is almost superfluous to say that these instincts pass beyond the bounds of psychology into the domain of sociology, where their function is a very important one, as is seen by the phenomena of dearth, famine, theft, crimes, cannibalism, deadly combats for the possession of a little water, etc. Their pathology is thus more instructive than one would think, because it states and resolves, as we shall see, in a simple form, the problem of whether the tendency is anterior to pleasure and pain.

(2) The stage of transformation is purely physiological. It, too, shows itself in needs, of which the most pressing is that of breathing, an indispensable condition of the combustion of matter and the consequent interstitial[interstitial] exchanges. If air had to be acquired and conquered, like food, this instinct would show itself in consciousness, as do hunger and thirst; but this rarely happens (dyspnœa, asphyxia). Its pathology is not instructive, and only comprises individual peculiarities, such as always breathing either hot or cold air, sleeping with open windows, etc.

(3) The stage of restitution outwards (secretions, excretions, etc.), though showing itself by instinctive movements, is only very indirectly connected with our subject; and though, in fact, nothing which takes place in the organism is quite unconnected with psychology, we may pass this over in silence.

Group II. These instincts belong to the so called relative life, and correspond to two stages—those of reception and restitution. The first stage is represented by all the forms of external perception, and comprises the tendencies connected with the exercise of each of our senses, the tendency of each sensory organ to fulfil its function: the eye tends to see, the hand to grasp and feel. These tendencies, if satisfied, are agreeable; if obstructed, unpleasant. Hence result pleasure and pain, but not emotions properly so called. The second stage is represented by all the forms of muscular movement, tendencies to action, to the production of noises, as in certain animals, to cries, vocalisation, gestures, and bodily attitudes. We have seen that all these things, in popular opinion, serve to express emotions, while, in our view, they are integral parts of them.

Group III. This group of tendencies no longer has for its end reception or restitution, but the conservation and development of the individual as a conscious being. They express not his physical, but his psychical constitution, his mental organisation under its different aspects; they embody his needs as a spiritual being; as breathing, hunger, thirst, etc. embody his needs as a living being. They all therefore have a psychological character, and are the source of that complexus of pleasant, painful, or mixed movements and states which we call emotions.

Let us recall the chronological order of their appearance already indicated elsewhere: (1) The instinct of conservation under its defensive form expressed by fear, with its varieties and morbid forms (phobias). (2) The instinct of conservation under its aggressive form—i.e., anger and its derivatives, and (in a morbid form) the destructive impulses. (3) The sympathetic tendencies and the tender (non-sexual) emotions. It may, however, be questioned whether sympathy can be called a tendency in the strict sense; it seems to me to be rather a general property of sentient beings, a point which will be examined later. The same thing may be said of the imitative instinct or tendency to imitation, which does not appear to be indecomposable.