Quickly bypassing the era of Darwinism in the view of emotions, where the emotions were traced to the instinctive and apparently superfluous, dying-out, remains of our primitive ancestor's coping with the environment. These ideas of emotions were largely formulated from Darwin's views of the relationship between the living organisms and the environment. The 'mistake' was to translate these ideas of emotions within the animal world to the emotions within the human mind.
William James, an unorthodox psychologist and a philosopher, reinvigorated our understanding of the emotions in humans. Prior to William James, the dynamics of the emotional process was the following: first stage involves an outside or inner event, the reception of which prompts an emotion (ex. encounter with danger), then comes the experience of the emotion itself (feeling of fear) and then follows the corresponding bodily, organic expression (heart-beating, paleness, shivering etc - all the symptoms accompanying fear). Thus, early psychologists identified the following sequence: reception, experience (feeling), expression. Per contra, James suggested an alternative view pointing to the fact that immediately following the reception of an event, emerge reflex-based organic changes (to James, these changes occurred within the inner organs). These changes, occurring in a reflex-based way (fear or other emotions), are received by us and the reception of our own organic reactions is what comprises the essence or the core of our emotions.
There is an extensive literature on this view of emotions (James-Lange theory). However, the apparent fundamental downside of James' theory is that he ties the origin of the emotions to the most unchanging, lowest in the historical development human organs - inner organs which, according to James, are the true carriers of the emotions. Viewing emotions as an isolated, separated from the whole, from the rest of the human psychological nature - an anatomico-physiological justification and nothing more. In this regard, his theory of emotions can be viewed as a step back in our process of understanding, of having a supra-Darwinian model of emotions. His theory, just like the preceding theory, essentially precludes any formulation of the question of the emotional development and genesis.
"Emotions are reflections in our consciousness of organic changes" - W. James
Then came Walter B. Cannon who, with his experiments on cats with removed sympathetic nervous system, showed that an animal possesses an emotional state even under the absence of vegetative reactions, thereby disproving James' first thesis of mentally suppressed emotional symptoms. That is, if one suppresses or subtracts mentally, from the emotion of fear, it's symptoms such as shivering etc., then one would find, according to James, that the emotion is no longer present. Cannon's experiments showed otherwise.
James' second thesis: if one brought out outer expression, accompanying an emotion, then that emotion will follow - ends up, also, being incorrect. This was shown by conducting experiments whereby, the subjects (humans and animals) were given an injection that causes artificial organic changes analogous to those that are observed during a strong emotion. It was shown that elicitation of appropriate organic changes in animals is possible without appearance of the known, associated, emotions. The same experimental work on humans however brought a slight refinement for it was found, contrary to Cannon's belief at the time, that organic expressions of emotions are not at all irrelevant for the emotional state of a human being.
Cannon established many experiments to verify, correct and reshape his understanding of emotions. Whoever wishes may read about his experiments in more detail. Here I'm only mentioning him to give a feel for the pattern, progression of thought regarding emotions and their development. Bottom line is that Cannon and his students have shown that what 'dies' is not emotion itself (as was thought earlier) but the instinctive component of it. Another words, the role of the emotions in the human psyche is different - they become isolated from the kingdom of instincts and transpose to a totally new plane. Cannon's works shift the center of mass from the periphery (organs) as was theorized by James and moved it to the center i.e. the brain itself thus, tying the mechanism of emotions with the brain. Doing so shed some light on and connected the experimental findings of other psychologists that found a close connection and dependence between the development of emotions and development of other sides of a human psychological life (human psyche).
Freud's understanding of emotions was also incorrect but, like the people mentioned above, he brought something new to the field of study - valuable insights and a different perspective. Freud, contrary to the classical conceptions of emotions as static, showed the unusually colorful dynamics of emotional life. According to Freud, fear is explained as, in a sequence of neurological changes, a suppressed sexual desire that turns into fear. Particulars aside, his most important contribution to the study of emotions lies in the understanding that the emotions now are not the same as the emotions before. That they are not separate but can be understood in the context of the whole dynamic of the human life. Only here do the emotional processes receive their meaning and sense.
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