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pleasantness and unpleasantness. These four are: tension and relaxation (Spannung–Lösung), excitement and quiescence (Erregung–Beruhigung).[1] Relaxation is opposed to tension and quiescence to excitement as pleasantness is opposed to unpleasantness, so that we have three pairs of opposites or, as Wundt calls them, ‘dimensions’ of feeling. The arguments for this view may be summarized as follows:
- The Wundtians point out that emotional states differ, according to common consent, not merely as pleasant and unpleasant, but also as exciting or quieting, straining or relaxing. Both melancholy and terror, for example, are unpleasant emotions, yet the first is quieting, or depressing, while the second is as clearly exciting.[2]
- This purely introspective argument is verified and supplemented by experiment. Alechsieff, whose experimental study is one of the best and most recent of those put forth by members of the Wundtian school,[3] stimulated his subjects in such wise as presumably to bring about emotional experiences, and recorded both pulse and breathing, and introspection. The introspective records first (1) clearly indicated the occurrence of straining and relaxing, exciting and depressing emotions; next (2), sometimes asserted the occurrence, in emotional experience, of elemental consciousness other than sensations, pleasantness and unpleasantness; finally (3) showed (in opposition to the results—later to be described—of Hayes) that either pleasantness or unpleasantness may occur in combination with any one of the four other ‘feelings’. In other words, the records indicated that in pleasurable emotion subjects were sometimes in a state of tension, but sometimes relaxed, sometimes excited and sometimes depressed; and that in unpleasant emotion subjects were now relaxed, now strained, and now excited, again depressed. The objective results of these experiments are summarized by Alechsieff in the following scheme adapted from Wundt:[4]
- ↑ “Physiologische Psychologie”, 5te Ausg., 1902, II, pp. 284 ff. (Cf. “Grundriss”, 1896, 1905; “Vorlesuugen über die Meuschen u. Thier Seele”, 1897; “Gefühl und Bewusstseiusanlage”, 1903).
‘Quiescence’ is Royce’s synonym for ‘Beruhigung’. Wundt has two equivalents for the term, namely ‘Depression’ and ‘Hemmung’. For telling comment on the really divergent signification fo the three terms, cf. Titchener, op. cit., pp. 145 ff.
- ↑ Cf. Wundt, already cited; Alechsieff cited in the next note; J. Royce, “Outlines of Psychology”, 1903, pp. 176 ff.; O. Vogt, Zietschr, f. Hypnotismus, VIII, p. 212, 1899 (and other writers cited by Alechsieff and Ttichener, op. cit.).
- ↑ “Die Grundformen der Gefühle”, Psychologische Studien, 1907, III, pp. 156 ff.
- ↑ Cf. “Grundruss”, 1904, § 7, 104.
