Emotion appears after the perception of some external incident, a chain of events in which a person is involved. Researchers often try to explain emotions in terms of the nature of these circumstances. Undoubtedly, a provoking event may well be perceived as defining an emotional response when it elicits emotions that we regard as normal and justified. To give a classic example of James: at the turn of the road we come face to face with a huge bear and experience an emotional shock, we suddenly learn about the death of a loved one, we lose our entire fortune, our job — these situations cause a sharp emotional reaction in most people. But observations show that emotional disorders can occur when circumstances do not seem to us to provoke such behavior, which confirms that we need to look for the condition for the emergence of emotions by no means only in the external situation.
A 23-year-old girl, Ib, was sitting at the table with her father when he suddenly felt unwell and complained that his left arm became heavy: “Will I be paralyzed?” — he said. The girl screamed, sobbed, rushed about the room, she began to convulse. She woke up two hours later in her bed, carried into the room by her father. She later said: “What happened to me is quite natural: my father was paralyzed, then he dies, for me this is a great misfortune and loneliness, I can’t do anything, everything is useless, of course I had a strong emotional shock.” The girl still had weakness and indifference for some time, and the recovery lasted long enough.
Here is an example of a more complex emotion. Gib, 23, was present when her parents attempted suicide by throwing themselves out of a window. She screamed, she began to have convulsions, and for several minutes a temporary clouding of her mind continued, judging by the incoherent words she uttered. Subsequently, for fifteen days she felt well, it seemed that the disorder had passed. But after this time, systematic convulsive crises, somnambulistic disorders, disturbances of will and memory began.
Irene, a girl of 26, was present at the tragic death of her mother. She immediately had convulsions and temporary insanity, later the condition recovered somewhat, however, remaining strange, and after a week there was a state of indifference and a feeling of emptiness, as well as retrograde amnesia for the events of the past few months. Periods of convulsions and delusions were repeated from time to time, in which Irene again and again reproduced the events of her mother’s death. This severe disorder dragged on for several years.
There are three stages in the evolution of emotional disorder. The first group of behavioral disorders appears immediately or almost immediately after the event, for example, after the words of the father in the case of Ib. This first phase is usually short and lasts from a few minutes to one or two days. In the second period, emotional balance seems to be more or less completely restored; this incubation stage can last from several days to several weeks (sometimes months). The emotional disorder that unfolds in the third period is no longer an emotion in the full sense of the word; it can last for years.
Over the years, I have been consistently struck by the peculiarities of emotion that can be revealed in the study of neuroses. I have described them in many papers, but I think that more attention should be paid, more importance should be attached to the theory of emotions. In works concerning the mental state of hysterics, I emphasize the fact that the emotions of patients are always the same, they do not show adaptation to circumstances, they are simple, strong and have a destructive effect on more complex, subtle feelings, awareness of feelings, memory, arbitrary decisions. Emotion, apparently, plays a role opposite to will and attention, which contribute to synthetic activity, the creation of more and more complex formations with the participation of thinking. Emotions, on the other hand, are a disruptive force.
For a long time, people have noticed that a person engulfed in emotion becomes, as it were, lower than himself: mental state, education, moral education can change significantly under the influence of emotion. Laycock, in 1876, spoke of the curious case of a man who, in an emotional state, began to speak again in the vernacular. I gave many such examples, as well as cases when a person lost spelling skills. Sometimes emotion completely suppresses speech, but most often only certain forms of it, adapted to certain circumstances, are destroyed: a report at a conference is difficult, an answer is given at an exam, the right word is not found at the moment. Voice features may also change: the voice becomes higher or lower than usual, stuttering, hiccups, sobs appear.
Many observations of everyday life confirm these observations: surprise, surprise, the need for quick response, which play a significant role in emotions, often force us to move from high-level, precise to more general and simple forms of behavior. So, we usually dress neatly, but if we are afraid of missing the train, there can be no question of any thoroughness and sophistication. We refrain from revenge and do not strike the enemy, but when the danger is really great, we defend ourselves by all possible means. A similar substitution of more complex, perfect actions for more gu.e.mi often occurs in the case of emotions. They lead to the disappearance of the action that had to be performed under the circumstances, and its replacement with more elementary reactions. Ib, having heard her father’s complaint, should have got up from the table, approached her father, asked questions, examined his hand, taken care of him, helped. She was certainly capable of all these activities and took care of her father and mother more than once when they were ill. But she did nothing of the kind at that moment, which is typical for all situations when a person is engulfed in emotion. It is these processes that convince us of the idea that emotion develops about events for which a person is not ready and cannot adapt. Of course, we cannot be perfectly adapted to the whole stream of new circumstances that we have to face, but we are changing something, looking for new ways of behavior. A person overcome by emotion “refuses” any kind of such attempts — falls into a stupor, falls asleep, beats in hysterics, makes many useless movements. Here we are faced with the disappearance of acts of adaptation, any of its attempts, with the diffuse activity of the whole organism, a return to primitive forms of behavior. In a situation of emotional crisis, we are faced with the same ancient, old actions that do not correspond to the variability of the present moment. The patient plays again and again, reproduces the scene of violence or the death of the mother — events that occurred years ago.
Considering emotions from the point of view of the hierarchy of forms of behavior, we can say that an integral characteristic of emotions is regression to lower forms of behavior. “Emotion,” I say in Obsessions, “is a significant change in the level of the mental, leading not only to the loss of the synthetic function and the reduction of behavior to automatic, which is clearly seen in cases of hysteria, but also to the suppression of higher forms of behavior and the reduction of mental tension to the level lower reactions” [1, p. 523]. The most primitive manifestations of the psychic include convulsive movements, and even lower are changes in respiration and blood circulation. In this regard, a strong emotion leads to convulsive reactions or visceral changes. These processes can be both an indirect consequence of the suppression of higher functions, and a consequence of the direct excitation experienced by the body. This regression partly explains the subsequent state of exhaustion. The tendencies activated in the emotions are the primitive tendencies of self-preservation, attack or flight. They always have a large energy charge and tend to stop only when fully discharged.
Emotional difficulties and regression to more primitive forms of behavior are often described as a mechanical consequence of circumstances. This is what happens in the study of emotional disorders in soldiers who have gone through the war, problems caused by all sorts of upheavals. But the event itself does not explain the difficulties that can be observed. An event acquires an emotive status because it is followed by an affective reaction. By itself it does not have this characteristic, and in the same circumstances many other people have no difficulty. Emotion is not a simple consequence of an event, but should be considered as an active reaction of a person.
Today we talk about emotion as a manifestation of difficulties in regulating behavior, but this may not always have been the case. All regulators of action have their development, their evolution. They are not needed in a simple mechanical system that responds with the same movement to the same stimulation every time and does not respond to stimuli to which it is not directly tuned. The higher acts appeared very gradually, they were at first few and difficult to realize. Under favorable circumstances, these elegant and somewhat more advanced forms of behavior could be carried out, but in case of danger, would it not be prudent to return to more elementary acts, albeit more gu.e.m., primitive, but providing immediate protection? These primitive behavioral acts served our ancestors in good stead, and under certain circumstances man again turns to them. Reflex behavior, simple reactions have been used for centuries. Isn’t it natural that at some point a person who is at a higher stage of development, but for one reason or another is not able to use higher forms of behavior, instinctively returns to these primitive acts? They have a huge energy charge. For a primitive being, it was not the improvements, not the complication of the action, not the superstructures and «excesses» that were important, but its strength, which reflects the way of overcoming the difficulty by using strong and numerous movements of the whole body instead of a movement of small, but true and accurate. Emotion suppresses complicated and often risky, unreliable behaviors and replaces them with many simple actions, the value of which is limited, but the reliability is undeniable. It replaces quality with quantity and for a moment creates an illusory feeling of power. Returning back is also connected with the destruction of the problem posed by external circumstances. The stimulation of action is itself part of the action. So, for a being that does not have a speech function, a question is not a stimulation to a complex action, a question is nothing, it does not exist. This also happens in the affective reaction, when questions of propriety or decency disappear, as well as many other social problems; it is a way of resolving the issue by eliminating it.
Thus, the regression of behavior that we observe in the case of emotion can be useful in certain kinds of circumstances, and the disorganization of higher forms of behavior cannot be regarded as simply a reaction to an event, but serves as a manifestation of human activity. Emotional regulation can be considered as a primitive form of behavior regulation characterized by complete energy discharge. Later there will be opportunities to make it more accurate and not so rigid and straightforward. The prerequisites for emotional forms of response are rather not in the situation, but in the person himself, in his behavior, reactions to the situation.
Literature
- Janet P. F. Obsessions and la psychasthenie. V. 1. Paris: Alcan, 1903.