Discussion: The physical basis of emotion.

Abstract

In the year 1884 Prof. Lange of Copenhagen and the present writer published, independently of each other, the same theory of emotional consciousness.They affirmed it to be the effect of the organic changes, muscular and visceral, of which the so-called 'expression' of the emotion consists.It is thus not a primary feeling, directly aroused by the exciting object or thought, but a secondary feeling indirectly aroused; the primary effect being the organic changes in question, which are immediate reflexes following upon the presence of the object.This idea has a paradoxical sound when first apprehended, and it has not awakened on the whole the confidence of psychologists.It may interest some readers if I give a sketch of a few of the more recent comments on it.Professor Wundt's criticism may be mentioned first* He unqualifiedly condemns it, addressing himself exclusively to Lange's version.He accuses the latter of being one of those psychologischen Scfuimrkldrungen which assume that science is satisfied when a psychic fact is once for all referred to a physiological ground.His own account of the matter is that the immediate and primary result of ' the reaction of Apperception f on any conscious-content' or object is a Geftihl (364).Gefiikl is an unanalyzable and simple process corresponding in the sphere of Gemiith to sensation in the • Philosophiscbe Studien, vi.349, (1801).f la this article, as in the 4th edition of his Psychology, Wundt vaguely completes his volte-face concerning ' Apperception ' and dimly describes the latter in assoctationist terms." Apperception is nothing really separable from the effects which it produces in the content of representation.In fact it consists of nothing but these concomitants and effects.[A thing that 'consists' of its concomitants !] . . .In each single apperceptive act the entire previous content of the conscious life operates as a sort of integral total force " (364, 365), etc.The whole account seems indistinguishable from pure Herbartism, in which Apperception is only a name for the interaction of the old and the new in consciousness, of which interaction feeling may be one result.516

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