The Laws Of Feeling by Paulhan F

Author:Paulhan, F. [F. Paulhan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136337727
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

III. The relatively unified forms of complex affective phenomena

As the facts of consciousness we have been considering become more and more unified, their complex nature is so much less evident. In cases of violent moral conflict, for example, it is impossible to mistake the complex nature of the feelings experienced ; but when the affective phenomena are relatively well systematized, it becomes more difficult to discern through consciousness the particular nature of the phenomena experienced. Nevertheless, if observation be sufficiently varied, it can very often enlist the aid of induction to distinguish the affective phenomena up to a certain point, and show that their particular tone or timbre is due to the encounter and combination of a certain number of different elements. If I employ the word timbre in speaking of what gives a feeling its special character, it is because no passion, no feeling, is absolutely the same in different individuals ; just as the same note changes in character according as it is emitted by a violin, a flute or a trombone. It seems to me that there is a remarkable analogy between auditory and affective phenomena, and this analogy extends, in my opinion, to all psychical phenomena. In the one case, as in the other, it is a question of a compound impression, which consciousness, unless especially trained, generally perceives as simple; in both cases, this result is probably due to the systematization of impressions, for not every combination of different sounds melts into a single sound, just as not every combination of affective phenomena results in a single affect. In the previous chapter we examined the more or less discordant combinations of affective phenomena; we must now investigate the more harmonious.

In the production of an emotion or a feeling, a considerable part is played by the general condition of the organs and the mind in relation to excitations from without. Often these excitations have merely the effect of liberating in us a certain amount of nervous and mental energy which, according to circumstances, is expended in the awakening of different tendencies. It is a well-known fact that, according to our particular condition, the same things make a pleasant or painful impression, and excite in us very different feelings : love, ambition, hope, fear, etc. I do not wish to dwell upon this here, but rather on the correlative fact of the especial shade, the tone, which the arrival of an excitation from without gives to the feeling already existing in the organism by evoking new tendencies and thus creating new emotive elements.

This case is obviously analogous to those which we studied above, save that there we were dealing with the conflict between the prior state of mind and the phenomena that appeared and created new tendencies, while now we are examining the case in which there is no longer conflict but association.

The fact of systematic association is exceedingly pronounced in violent passions, in overwhelming feelings, when psychical energy is almost entirely absorbed by a single system of tendencies.

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