I. Physiological theories
William James distinguishes two groups of phenomena in emotion: a group of physiological phenomena and a group of psychological phenomena, which we will call after him states of consciousness; the main thing in his thesis is that the states of consciousness called «joy», «anger», etc., are nothing but the consciousness of physiological manifestations — their projection into consciousness, if you like. However, all of James’s critics, while consistently considering «emotion» as a «state» of consciousness and accompanying physiological manifestations, do not want to recognize in the former only a projection or shadow cast by the latter. They find in them something more and (whether they realize it or not) something else. More, because no matter how hard we try to carry the bodily changes to the extreme in the imagination, it would still be incomprehensible why the consciousness corresponding to them should suddenly become a terrified consciousness. Horror is an extremely painful, even unbearable state, and it is incomprehensible that a bodily state, taken for itself and in itself, would appear to consciousness with such a terrible character. Another, because if emotion, being perceived objectively, can really appear as a kind of disorder of physiological functions, then as a fact of consciousness it is not at all disorder or pure chaos; it makes sense, it means something. (…)
This is exactly what Janet understood well, but did not express very well when he said that Djeme, in his description of emotions, omitted the psychic. Rising solely on objective ground, Janet wants to register only the external manifestations of emotions. But, even considering only organic phenomena that can be described and detected from the outside, he believes that these phenomena can be immediately divided into two categories: mental phenomena, or behaviors (conduites), and physiological phenomena. A theory of emotions that would like to restore the primacy of the mental would have to make behavior out of emotion. But Janet, like Djeme, is, despite everything, sensitive to the appearance of disorder that every emotion presents. Hence, he makes the emotion less adapted behavior, or, if you like, the behavior of unfitness, the behavior of defeat. When the task is too difficult and when we cannot keep the higher forms of behavior that would be adapted to it, Then the liberated mental energy is spent in another way: we adhere to lower forms of behavior that require less psychological stress. Take, for example, the girl whose father had just told her that she had pain in her arm and was afraid of paralysis. She rolls on the ground in the grip of a violent emotion that returns a few days later with the same force and forces her to eventually seek medical help. During treatment, she admits that the thought of caring for her father and the harsh life of a nurse suddenly seemed unbearable to her. Emotion represents here, therefore, the behavior of defeat, it is a substitute for such «behavior of the nurse, which cannot be kept.» In the same way, in his work Obsessions and Psychasthenia, Janet cites numerous cases when the sick, having come to him for confession, cannot finish speaking and in the end burst into sobs, and sometimes even nervous attacks. Here, too, the behavior to be adopted is too difficult. Crying, nervous fit are the behavior of the defeat, which takes the place of the first through deviation. There is no need to insist on this — there are many examples. Who does not remember how, exchanging jokes with a friend and remaining calm while the situation seemed equal, you became irritated precisely at the moment when there was nothing more to answer. Janet can thus boast that he has reintroduced the psychic into emotion: the consciousness with which we perceive emotion, consciousness, which, however, is here only a secondary phenomenon, is no longer a mere correlative of physiological disorders; it is the consciousness of defeat and the behavior of defeat. The theory looks seductive: it is psychological and yet retains a downright mechanistic simplicity. The phenomenon of deflection is nothing but a change in the path for the released nervous energy.
And yet, how much is unclear in these few concepts, at first glance so clear. If one looks closely, one can see that Janet manages to overcome James only through the covert use of the notion of the final goal, a notion that his theory explicitly rejects. (…) In order for emotion to have the meaning of a psychic defeat, consciousness must intervene and communicate this meaning to it; But this would mean giving consciousness a constitutive role, which Janet does not want in any way. (…)
But in many of his descriptions, he makes it clear that the patient «throws» into lower behavior in order not to accept the higher. Here the patient himself proclaims his defeat without even attempting to fight, and the emotional behavior masks the inability to accept the adapted behavior. Let us take again the example that we gave above: the patient comes to Jeanne, she wants to entrust him with the secret of her disorder, to describe to him in detail her obsessions. But she cannot do this, for her this is too difficult social behavior. Then she bursts into sobs. But is she crying because she can’t say anything? Are her sobs a futile effort to act, a diffuse shock that would represent the disintegration of overly difficult behavior? Or is she sobbing precisely in order to say nothing? At first glance, the difference between these two interpretations seems insignificant: both hypotheses suggest behavior that cannot be accepted, both hypotheses suggest the replacement of behavior with diffuse manifestations. Therefore, Janet easily passes from one of them to another: this is what makes his theory ambiguous. But in fact, these two interpretations are separated by an abyss. The first is indeed purely mechanistic and, as we have seen, is essentially close enough to the views of James. The second, on the contrary, actually introduces something new: only it deserves the name of the psychological theory of emotions, only it makes behavior out of emotion. The fact is that, indeed, if we here again introduce the idea of finality, then we can consider that emotional behavior is not mental confusion at all: it is an organized system of means that are directed towards an end. And this system is designed to mask, replace, reject behavior that they cannot or do not want to accept. Thus the explanation of the difference of emotions becomes easy: each of them represents a different means of avoiding difficulty, a special evasion, a kind of fraud.
But Janet gave us what he could: he is too indefinite, divided between spontaneous finalism and principled mechanism. And we will not demand from him a presentation of the theory of emotions as behavior in its purest form. We find her sketches among the students of Koehler, namely Levin and Dembo. Here is what P. Guillaume writes about this in his Psychology of Form:
“Let’s take the simplest example: the subject is asked to get an object placed on a chair, but without leaving the circle drawn on the floor: the distances are calculated in such a way that it is very difficult or even impossible to do this directly, but it is possible to solve the problem indirectly. Here the force directed towards the object takes a clear and concrete direction. On the other hand, in these tasks there is an obstacle to the direct performance of the action; an obstacle may be material or moral, such as a rule that one is obliged to abide by. Thus, in our example, a circle that cannot be crossed forms a barrier in the perception of the subject, from where a force comes, directed in the direction opposite to the first. The conflict of two forces causes tension in the phenomenal field. (…) Therefore, the subject is in some way enclosed in a space limited on all sides: there is only one positive exit, but it is closed by a kind of barrier. This situation corresponds to the following diagram:
Rice. 1. O is the subject. (+) — target, single line — outer barrier, double line — inner barrier.
Running away is just a good solution, because you have to break down a common barrier and accept lower self-esteem. Closure, encapsulation, which raises a protective barrier between the hostile field and the «I», is another solution, also mediocre.
The continuation of the experience under these conditions can lead to emotional disorganization and to other, even more primitive forms of release of tension. Attacks of anger, sometimes very acute, which occur in some people, are well studied in the work of T. Dembo. The situation is undergoing structural simplification. In anger, and also, no doubt, in all emotions, there is a weakening of the barriers that, separating the deep and superficial layers of the «I», usually provide control over the action from the deeper layers of the personality and self-mastery; there is a weakening of the barriers between the real and the unreal. On the contrary, since the action is blocked, the tensions between the outer and the inner continue to increase: the negative character extends equally to all objects of the field, which lose their own value. Since the privileged direction of the goal has disappeared, the differentiated structure imposed on the field by the task is destroyed. (…)
And so we finally come to the functional concept of anger at the end of this long quotation. Of course, anger is neither an instinct, nor a habit, nor a sober calculation. It is a sudden resolution of the conflict, a way to unravel the Gordian knot. And we, of course, rediscover Janet’s distinction between higher and lower or deviant modes of behavior. But only here does this distinction take on its full meaning: it is we ourselves who bring ourselves into a state of complete inferiority, because at this very low level our demands are less, and we are satisfied with less expense. Not being able to find a subtle and precise solution to the problem in a state of high tension, we act on ourselves, we “sink down” and turn ourselves into a creature that can be satisfied with gooey and less adapted solutions (for example, tearing a leaf, on which the conditions of the problem are written). Anger, therefore, appears here as a flight: the subject in anger is like a person who, lacking the opportunity to untie the knots of the rope that binds him, wriggles in all directions in his fetters. And the behavior of «anger», less adapted to the problem than the higher — and impossible — modes of behavior that could solve it, is, however, precisely and perfectly adapted to the need to relieve tension, to shake off this leaden veil that weighs on our shoulders. From now on, it will be possible to understand the examples that we have given above. A patient with psychasthenia comes to Jeanne to confess to him. But the task is too difficult. And now she finds herself in a cramped and threatening world that expects precise action from her and which at the same time rejects it. Janet himself, by his attitude, shows that he is listening and waiting. But at the same time, with his prestige, his personality, etc., he repels this confession. It is necessary to avoid this unbearable tension, and the patient can do this only by exaggerating her weakness, confusion, turning her attention away from the action to be performed, and turning it on herself (“how unhappy I am”), turning Janet from a judge into comforter, exteriorizing and acting out the very impossibility of speaking in which she finds herself, turning the clear need to give this or that information into a heavy and undifferentiated pressure that the world puts on her. It is then that there are sobs and hysteria, a nervous fit. (…)
However, at the point where we thus arrived, we could not find satisfaction. The theory of emotion as behavior is perfect, but in its purity and in its very perfection we can see its insufficiency. In all the examples that we have given, the functional role of emotion is undeniable. But she is just as incomprehensible. I understand that for Dembo and Gestalt psychologists, the transition from trying to find a solution to a state of anger is explained by the destruction of one gestalt and the formation of another. And I can still understand the destruction of the form as «an unsolvable problem», but how can I allow another form to appear? One must think that it is given precisely as a substitute for the first. It exists only in relation to the first. There is, therefore, only one process, which is the transformation of form. But I cannot understand this transformation without first introducing consciousness. It alone can, through its synthetic activity, endlessly break and restore forms. Only it can be aware of the ultimate goal of emotion. (…)