The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormalPrince, Morton
Science
The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormal
Prince, Morton
Psychology, Pathological; Subconsciousness
Summing up, then, we may say _one of the chief functions of emotion_ is
to provide the conative force which enables ideas to fulfill their aims,
and one of the chief functions of sentiments to control and regulate the
emotions.
Besides the instinctive dispositions proper there are other innate
dispositions which similarly provide conative force and determine
activities. For the practical purposes of the problems with which we are
concerned, the conative or impulsive forces of all such innate
dispositions and the sentiments which they help to form are here, it
should be understood, considered together and included under instincts.
=The conative function of emotion.=—I shall take up in a later
lecture[223] (in connection with the psychogenesis of multiple
personality) the instincts and sentiments for discussion in more detail.
The point to which I wish in this connection to call attention is that
when a simple emotion-instinct, or an idea linked with an instinct (a
sentiment) is awakened by any stimulus, _its impulsive force is
discharged in three directions_: the _first_ is toward the excitation of
those articulated movements and ideas which guide and carry the instinct
to fruition—to fight in the case of anger, to flee in the case of fear,
to cherish in the case of love, etc. _Second_ (accessory to the first)
the excitation of many of the various visceral functions which we have
reviewed reinforces the instinctive movements; e. g., for pugnacity or
flight the increased respiration and activity of the heart increase the
supply of oxygen and blood to the muscles; the secretion of sweat
regulates the temperature during increased activity, the increased
secretion of adrenalin and the increased secretion of sugar may, as
Cannon suggests, respectively keep up the emotional state (after the
cause of the fear or anger has subsided) and meet the demand of the
muscles for an extra supply of food, etc.
Later experiments of Cannon seem to show that the adrenal secretion
removes the fatigue of muscles; and, further, that stimulation of the
splanchic nerves will largely recover fatigued muscles, increasing the
efficiency as much as 100 per cent.[224] As emotion discharges its
impulses along splanchic pathways to the adrenal glands, the inference
as to the function of emotion in overcoming fatigue is obvious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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