Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions

Jean-Paul Sartre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317914389
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Philosopher, novelist, dramatist and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the greatest writers of all time. He was fascinated by the role played by the emotions in human life and placed them at the heart of his philosophy. This brilliant short work - which contains some of the principal ideas later to appear in his masterpiece Being and Nothingness - is Sartre at his best: insightful, engaging and controversial. Far from constraining one's freedom, as we often think, Sartre argues that emotions are fundamental to it and that an emotion is nothing less than 'a transformation of the world'.

With a new foreword by Sebastian Gardner.

Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions

I. The Classic Theories

We all know the criticisms that have been urged against the peripheric theory of the emotions. How can it explain the subtler emotions? Or passive enjoyment? How can we admit that ordinary organic reactions suffice to render an account of distinct psychic states? How can quantitative and, by the same token, quasicontinuous modifications in the vegetative functions correspond to a qualitative series of states irreducible to one another? For example, the physiological modifications which correspond to anger differ only by their intensity from those that accompany joy (somewhat quicker respiratory rhythm, slight augmentation of muscular tone, increase of biochemical exchanges, of arterial tension, etc.). For all that, anger is not a greater intensity of joy; it is something else, at least as it presents itself to consciousness. It would be useless to show that there is an excitation in joy which predisposes to anger, citing the cases of lunatics who are constantly passing from joy to anger (for instance, by rocking to and fro on a seat at an accelerating rhythm). The idiot who has become angry is not 'ultra-joyful'. Even if he has passed from joy to anger (and there is nothing to justify our affirming that there has not been a number of psychic events meanwhile) anger is irreducible to joy.

It seems to me that the basis common to all these objections might be summarized thus: William James distinguishes in emotion two groups of phenomena; a group of physiological phenomena and a group of psychological phenomena which we shall call, as he does, the state of consciousness. The essence of his thesis is that the states of consciousness called joy, anger and so forth are nothing but the consciousness of physiological manifestations — or, if you will, their projection into consciousness. Now, of all the critics of James who have successively examined the 'state' of consciousness, 'emotion' and the accompanying physiological manifestations, not one recognizes the former as being the projection of, or the shadow cast by, the latter. They find more in it, and — whether they are clearly conscious of this or not — something else. More; for whatever extravagance we may ascribe, in imagination, to the disorder of the body, we still fail to understand why the corresponding consciousness should be, for instance, a terrorized consciousness. Terror is an extremely painful, even unbearable state, and it is inconceivable that a bodily condition, taken for itself and in itself, could appear in consciousness with this atrocious character. Something else; for, in effect, and even if the emotion objectively perceived presented itself as a physiological disorder, as a fact of consciousness it is neither disorder nor chaos pure and simple, it has a meaning, it signifies something. And by this we do not only mean that it is presented as a pure quality. It arises as a certain relation between our psychic being and the world; and this relation — or rather our awareness of it — is not a chaotic relationship between the self and the universe; it is an organized and describable structure.

I cannot see that the corticothalamic sensitivity, recently invented by the same people who made these criticisms of James, provides a satisfactory answer to the question. First of all, the peripheric theory of James had one big advantage: it took account only of physiological disturbances directly or indirectly discernible. The theory of cerebral sensibility appeals to a cortical disturbance that is unverifiable. Sherrington made some experiments on dogs, and one can certainly praise his operational dexterity. But these experiments taken by themselves prove absolutely nothing. Simply because the head of a dog practically isolated from its body still gives signs of emotion, I cannot see that we have the right to conclude that the dog is feeling a complete emotion. Besides, even supposing that the existence of a corticothalamic sensitivity were established, it would still be necessary to ask the previous question: can a physiological disturbance, whatever it may be, render an account of the organized character of an emotion?

That is what Janet very well understood, but expressed without much felicity when he said that James, in his description of emotion, had left out the psychic. Basing himself exclusively upon objective grounds, Janet wants to register only the external manifestations of emotion. But, even considering none but the organic phenomena that can be described and disclosed from the outside, he thinks that these phenomena are immediately susceptible of being classified under two categories: the psychic phenomena, or behaviour, and the physiological phenomena. A theory of emotion which sought to restore the preponderant part played by the psyche would have to treat emotion as a kind of behaviour. Yet for all that, Janet is aware no less than James of the apparent disorder presented by every emotion. He therefore treats emotion as a behaviour that is less well adapted, or, if one prefers, a behaviour of disadaptation, a behaviour of defeat. When the task is too difficult and we cannot maintain the higher behaviour appropriate to it, the psychic energy that has been released takes another path; we adopt an inferior behaviour which necessitates a lesser psychic tension. Here, for instance, is a girl whose father has just told her that he has pains in the arms, and that he has some fear of paralysis. She falls to the ground, prey to a violent emotion which returns a few days later with the same violence, and which finally obliges her to seek help from doctors. In the course of her treatment she confesses that the thought of nursing her father, and leading the austere life of a nurse, had suddenly appeared to her as insupportable. Here, then, the emotion represents an attitude of defeat; it is the substitute for the 'non-maintainable-conduct-of-a-nurse'. Similarly, in his work on Obsession and Psychasthenia, Janet cites the cases of several patients who, having come to make confessions to him, could not finish their confessions, but broke down in tears, sometimes even bringing on a nervous crisis. Here again, the required behaviour is too difficult. The weeping, or the nervous crisis, represents a behaviour of defeat, which substitutes itself for the former by a diversion. The point needs no elaboration; examples are abundant. Who does not remember having engaged in exchanges of raillery with a comrade, and remaining calm so long as the competition seemed equal, but becoming irritated as soon as one found oneself with nothing more to say?

Thus Janet could pride himself upon having reintegrated the psyche with the emotions: the consciousness that we have of emotion — a consciousness which, moreover, is here only a secondary phenomenon¹ — is no longer simply the correlative of physiological disturbances: it is the awareness of a defeat and is a behaviour of defeat. The theory looks attractive: it is indeed a psychological thesis, and yet it is of a quite mechanistic simplicity. The phenomenon of diversion is nothing more than a switching of the liberated nervous energy on to another line.

And yet, how many obscurities there are in these few notions which at first look so clear! Upon better consideration of the case, if Janet manages to improve upon James it is only by making use, implicitly, of a finality which his theory explicitly repudiates. What in fact is a 'behaviour of defeat'? Are we simply to understand by this, an automatic substitute for the superior line of conduct that we cannot pursue? In that case the nervous energy would be discharged at hazard according to the law of the least resistance. But then the emotive reactions would be less like a behaviour of defeat than a lack of behaviour. Instead of an adapted reaction there would be a diffuse organic reaction — a disorder. But is not that just what James is saying? Does not the emotion, in his view, intervene precisely at the moment of the breakdown of an adaptation, and does it not consist essentially of the sum of the disorders that this non-adaptation entails for the organism? No doubt Janet puts the emphasis more than James does upon the defeat. But what are we to understand by it? If we regard the individual objectively as a system of behaviour, and if the deviation takes place automatically, then there is no defeat, it does not exist; all that happens is the replacement of one kind of behaviour by a diffuse set of organic manifestations. If emotion is to have the psychic significance of defeat, consciousness must intervene and confer that signification upon it, there must be a conscious retention of the superior con duct as a possibility and a consciousness of the emotion as a defeat precisely in relation to that superior behaviour. But that would be to give consciousness a constitutive function, which Janet will not have at any price. If one wanted to preserve a meaning in Janet's theory, one would be logically obliged to adopt the position of M. Wallon who, in his article in the Revue des Cours et Conférences, puts forward the following interpretation: In the infant, there is a primitive nerve circuit. All the reactions of a new-born child, to tickling, pain and so on (shiverings, diffused muscular contractions, acceleration of the cardiac rhythm, etc.), are under the control of this circuit, and would thus constitute a primary organic adaptation — an inherited adaptation, of course. Later on, we learn how to behave, and set up new patterns of reaction — that is, new circuits. But when, in a new and difficult situation, we cannot produce adapted behaviour appropriate to it we fall back upon the primitive nervous circuit. We can see that this theory represents a transposition of Janet's view into the sphere of pure behaviourism; for what it amounts to is that the emotional reactions are not seen as a mere disorder, but as a lesser adaptation: the first organized system of defensive reflexes — that of the infant's nerve-circuit — is ill-adapted to cope with the needs of the adult; but in itself it is a functional organisation, analogous to the respiratory reflex, for instance. But we can also see that this thesis differs from that of James only upon the presupposition of an organic unity linking all the emotive manifestations together. It goes without saying that James would have accepted the existence of such a circuit without embarrassment if it had been proved. He would then have held that this modification of his own theory was of little importance because it was of a purely physiological order. Janet, therefore, if we hold him strictly to the terms of his thesis, is much closer to James than he would have cared to say. He has failed in his attempt to reintroduce the 'psychic' into emotion, nor has he explained why there are various kinds of behaviour in defeat; why I may react to a sudden aggression by fear or by anger. The cases he recounts, moreover, are almost all reducible to emotional perturbations not very different from one another (tears, nervous attacks, etc.), much nearer to emotional shock properly so called than to emotion as such.

But in Janet's work there seems to be an underlying theory of emotion — and also of behaviour in general — which would reintroduce finality without mentioning it. In his general expositions concerning psychasthenia or affectivity he insists, as we have said, upon the automatic character of the diversion, but in many of his descriptions he gives us to understand that the patient falls back upon the inferior behaviour in order not to maintain the superior behaviour. Here, it is the patient himself who proclaims his defeat even before he engages in the struggle, and the emotional behaviour supervenes to mask his inability to pursue the line of adapted behaviour. Let us return to the example we were citing above: the patient who comes to see Janet wants to entrust him with the secret of her troubles and a minute description of her obsessions. But she cannot: this is social behaviour that is too difficult for her. Then she bursts into tears. But is she weeping because she can say nothing? Is her sobbing a vain effort to do so, a diffuse upheaval that represents the decomposition of the behaviour she has found too difficult? Or rather, is she not crying precisely in order not to say anything? Between these two interpretations the difference may seem small at first sight: by both hypotheses a course of behaviour proves impossible to maintain, and according to either there is a replacement of this behaviour by diffuse manifestations. Besides, Janet passes freely from the one to the other; that is what makes his theory ambiguous. For in reality there is an abyss of difference between the two interpretations. The former is, in effect, purely mechanistic and — as we have seen — is at bottom fairly close to James's views. The latter, on the other hand, really introduces something new: it alone truly deserves the name of a psychological theory of the emotions; it alone treats emotion as a way of behaving. For, indeed, if we are here reintroducing finality, we can well conceive that emotional behaviour is not a disorder at all; that it is an organized pattern of means directed to an end. And these means are summoned up in order to mask, replace or reject a line of conduct that one cannot or will not pursue. At the same time, the explanation of the diversity of emotions becomes easy: they represent, each one of them, a different way of eluding a difficulty, a particular way of escape, a special trick.

But Janet has given us what he could: he is too uncertain, divided between a finality that is spontaneous and a mechanism on principle. It is not to him that we look for an exposition of this pure theory of emotional behaviour. We find it in outline among the disciples of Kohler and notably in Lewin¹ and Dembo.² Here is wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• FOREWORD TO THE ROUTLEDGE GREAT MINDS EDITION
• Introduction: Psychology, phenomenology and phenomenological psychology
• Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions
• Conclusion