The Psychology of the EmotionsRibot, Th. (Théodule)
Science
The Psychology of the Emotions
Ribot, Th. (Théodule)
Emotions
This chapter was first published in the _Revue Philosophique_ for
October 1894. It called forth some new communications, two only of
which have been added to the original text. The affirmation of a
type of affective memory has, as I expected, provoked both
criticism and denial. My principal opponent, Prof. Titchener, has
published on this subject a somewhat extensive article in the
_Philosophical Review_ (November 1895), in which he reproaches me
with not having cited a single case of pure emotional memory—i.e.,
memory from which all sensory and ideational elements are absent,
and where there is a revival of feeling _as such_. An example of
this kind, which should be quite conclusive, seems to me almost
impossible to produce. A pleasure, a pain, an emotion, are always
associated with a sensation, a representation, or an act; revival
necessarily bringing back the intellectual state which forms part
of the complexus and supports it. But the real question is
elsewhere: Is revival, in certain persons at least, a dry record,
or a _felt_ state? In this last case—and it does occur—there is
the recollection of the emotional state as such.
There is another objection: Can it be said that an emotion is the
reproduction of an antecedent emotion, and not a new emotion? The
reproduction of an emotion can itself be nothing other than an
emotion, but it bears the marks of repetition. Without returning
to what has been said above, I remark that those contemporary
psychologists, who study with admirable patience the mechanism of
memory, neglect that of its most general conditions. Now the chief
of these is that every recollection must be a _reversion_, by
virtue of which, the past once more becoming a present, we live at
present in the past. The recollection of an emotion as such does
not escape the action of this law; it must become actual once
more—must _be_ a real emotion, whether acute or obtuse.
Taking account of the criticisms, and of the new material supplied
to me, I may once again sum up my inquiry thus—
1. The emotional memory is _nil_ in the majority of people.
2. In others there is a half intellectual, half emotional memory,
_i.e._, the emotional elements are only revived partially and with
difficulty, by the help of the intellectual states associated with
them.
3. Others, and these the least numerous, have a true—_i.e._,
complete—emotional memory; the intellectual element being only a
means of revival which is rapidly effaced.
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CHAPTER XII.
THE FEELINGS AND THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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