Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
But when the psychologist speaks of _the feelings_, he usually means
the _elementary_ feelings. An emotion is far from elementary. If you
accept the James-Lange theory, you think of an emotion as a blend of
organic sensations; and if you reject that theory, you would still
probably agree that such an emotion as anger or fear seems a big,
complex state of feeling. It seems more complex than such a sensation
as red, warm, or bitter, which are called elementary sensations
because no one has ever succeeded in decomposing them into simpler
sensations. Now, the question is whether any feelings can be indicated
that are as elementary as these simple sensations.
Pleasantness and Unpleasantness Are Simple Feelings
No one has ever been able to break up the feelings of pleasantness and
unpleasantness into anything simpler. "Pleasure" and "displeasure" are
not always so simple; they are names for whole states of mind which
may be very complex, including sensations and thoughts in addition to
the feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness. "Pain" does not make
a satisfactory substitute for the long word "unpleasantness", because
"pain", as we shall see in the next chapter, is properly the name of a
certain sensation, and feelings are to be distinguished from
sensations. Red, warm and bitter, along with many others, are
sensations, but pleasantness and unpleasantness are not sensations.
How, then, do the elementary feelings differ from sensations? In the
first place, sensations submit readily to being picked out and
observed, and in fact become more vivid when they are brought into the
"foreground", while feelings grow vague and lose their character when
thus singled {174} out for examination. Attend to the noises in the
street and they stand out clearly, attend to the internal sensation of
breathing and it stands out clearly, but attend to your pleasant state
of feeling and it retreats out of sight.
In the second place, sensations are "localized"; you can tell pretty
well where they seem to come from. Sensations of light, sound and
smell are localized outside the body, sensations of touch are
localized on the skin (or sometimes outside), taste sensations are
localized in the mouth, organic and muscular sensations in some part
of the body. On the other hand, pleasantness and unpleasantness are
much less definitely localized; they seem to be "in us", without being
in any special part of us.
In the third place, feelings differ from sensations in having no known
sense organs. There is no special sense organ or set of sense organs
for the feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness, as there is for
warmth or cold. Some sensations are pleasant, to be sure, and some
unpleasant; but there is no one kind of sense organ that has the
monopoly of either sort of feeling.
Feeling-Tone of Sensations
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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