The Person and Primary Emotions PDF
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Recent Research in Psychology Peter A. Bertocci The Person and Primary Emotions Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg London Paris Tokyo Peter A. Bertocci Borden Parker Bowne Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Boston University Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bertocci, Peter Anthony. The person and primary emotions. (Recent research in psychology) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Emotions-Philosophy. 2. Motivation (Psychology) -Philosophy. 3. Philosophical anthropology. I. Title. II. Series. BF531.B47 1988 152.4'32 88-19989 © 1988 by Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc. in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Camera-ready copy provided by the author. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-387-96812-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-3914-7 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4612-3914-7 To Gordon Allport Brand Blanshard HywelLewis Frederick R. Tennant No science can be more secure than the unconcious metaphysics it presupposes. Alfred North Whitehead Adventure of Ideas, p. 197. All books on the psychology of personality are at the same time books on the philosophy of the person. .. .In most psychological texts, however, the philosophy is hidden. Gordon W. Allport Pattern and Growth in Personality, p. xi. PREFACE I shall propose that the unlearned motives of persons are primary emotions. I am not surprised that many informed readers will wonder where I have been for the last five decades when even the conception of unlearned motives (instincts, drives, urges) has been shown to be little more than the result of undisciplined investigation? And here I am proposing that in the nature and dynamics of some emotions that persons experience we can gain more adequate understanding of human motives at the unlearned level. During the last five decades I have spent most of my time teaching the histlDry of philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics and theory of value, the psychology of personali ty, and th~ philosophy of personality. Increasingly I have paid special attention to the ways in which claims about ~the nature of man influence the theory of motives, emotions, and I feelings. What kept impressing me is the way in which the viii interpretation of the "findings" about motives, feelings, and emotion reflect unargued conceptions of human nature, or that the views of fundamental motives, feelings, and emotions unduly dominate the underlying conception of the person. In focusing attention first on the essential nature of a person I shall be discussing issues that are actually basic to our more analytical interpretation of the nature and dynamics of the primary motives or primary emotions. My strongest regret is that I have not been able to indicate explicitly the influence of contemporary psychological scholars whose work has helped me avoid stumbling more than I have. A book that one has been writing all his academic life owes so much to his teachers, colleagues, students--even typists--who have been generous with their gifts. They remain unnamed but not forgotten. I cannot but acknowledge the good fortune for the aid, especially on psychological matters, of Professors Gordon W. Allport, R. Freed Bales, Abraham H. Maslow, and Thomas F. Pettigrew. To be urged on by such as Professor Brand Blanshard, Edwin A. Burtt, and Frederick R. Tennant, in addition to experiencing the support of Professor Edgar S. Brightman, my teacher and colleague, is good fortune indeed! ix A Guggenheim Fellowship enabled me to spend most of the year 1960-1961 at King's College, University of London, where H. D. Lewis went more than the second mile in helping me to clarify persistent issues about the nature of the self. I am grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for allowing me to spend a month at the Villa Serbelloni at Bellagio, and to the Boston University Graduate School for opportune aid. My brother, Angelo P. Bertocci, has once more kept me from stylistic blunders and conceptual errors. Had the commitment, far beyond duty, of Ronald L. Carter, Dean of Students at Boston University, not been allied with that of my patiently courageous wife, this venture would never have come this far. Would that this work could be a worthy tribute to the efforts of so many over the years. Peter A. Bertocci CONTENTS DEDICATION v PREFACE vii 1. The Person as a Unified Agent 1 2. The Person and the Unconcious 40 3. The Person's Body 72 4. Feeling: Its Nature and Context 106 5. Considerations Basic to a Theory of Emotions in Persons 132 6. Can Primary Emotions be Primary Motives? 165 7. A Theory of Primary Emotions 197 8. primary Emotions: Sex and Organic Needs 221 9. Primary Emotions: Anger, Fear, and Tenderness 247 10. Primary Emotion: Zest 279 11. Primary Emotions: Sympathy, Wonder, Creativity 299 INDEX 321 CHAPTER ONE The Person As a Unified Agent A. The person as conscious agent 1. The consciousness that persons have of themselves, their capacity for self-awareness or self-consciousness, distinguishes them from all other living beings including those that are most like them. Whatever the scope and limits of consciousness and self-consciousness may be, only the self-conscious being can know them as he inspects his activi ties, differentiates them, and relates them to each other'and to any beings-events other than themselves. 2. There is nothing in these statements that precludes any specific view of the nature of the scope of conscious and self-conscious knowing. Indeed, none of us remains long unaware of the difficulties of inspecting his own 2 consciousness without seeking other avenues to trustworthy reports about its nature. The eminent psychologist of personality, Gordon W. Allport, mindful of the difficulties of validating claims made on the basis of immediate or direct experience, was not given to underrating the importance of publicly verifiable, objective evidence. Nevertheless, he emphasized that "the core of the objective method is still the reliance each scientist places upon the testimony of his own fugitive and overlapping conscious states. He can work with the Unconscious or with Bodily Constitution only as they are distilled into his own consciousness". 1 3. Since so much in this book depends on the inspection and interpretation of conscious experience, it will be well to face the question: Is there direct conscious experience that is "innocent" of the interpretation that selects and relates experiences to other (interpreted) experiences? My basic reply: If there is a "neat," uninterpreted experience, it would be that of an infant who for the first time sees, or tastes, or smells , qualities, say, that he will later learn to "identify" as orange juice, and this owing to the fact that they do appear together despite changes in context. Thus, the problem that stalks each of us as knowers is to differentiate what is given (experience) and what is taken (interpreted experience).
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