In a previous lecture[299] I called attention to the fact that emotions
(instincts) innate dispositions and tendencies are fundamental to
personality and I pointed out that in abnormal alterations the
dissociation may involve one or more of these. Certain of these innate
psycho-physiological systems were cited as having been repressed or
dissociated in this case. It remains to study this phenomenon a little
more closely.
Psychologists are generally agreed that of the emotions some are
primary, or elementary, and others are complex, that is compounded of
two or more emotions. Fear and anger, for example, are primary and the
conscious elements, like all primary emotions, in biological instincts.
These instincts serve a purpose in the preservation of the species. Of
the complex emotions scorn and loathing may be taken as examples, the
former, it is believed, being compounded of anger and disgust and the
latter of fear and disgust. There is not a general agreement in regard
to all the emotions that should be regarded as primary. Joy and sorrow,
for example, are classed by some as primary and by some as complex. I
made an effort to note and classify in a tentative way the emotions that
were present and absent in the two personalities A and B and have
arranged them in the following table. In this table the classification
of the primary and complex emotions of McDougall has been followed in
the main.
Of course it is very difficult to determine with certainty if any given
emotion is absolutely absent, as it depends upon suitable conditions
being present for its excitation. An emotion that is repressed might
still be excited if the stimulus were sufficiently strong. Still, it is
significant that emotions which would ordinarily excite a given emotion,
say, tender feeling, or sorrow or fear, in the ordinary normal person,
or did do so in this subject in the A personality, did not do so in the
B personality, or would awaken in the latter only an emotion of joy or
mirth. Under these circumstances, when the A and B personalities
respectively came into being, these differences were easily observed,
and it is noteworthy that then certain emotions were never in evidence
in each respectively, whether potentially present or not.
It is interesting to note that when a primary emotion was absent, for
instance in personality B, that a compound emotion which included this
primary emotion was also absent. It is obvious that dissociation of
personalities in which certain emotions are repressed offer valuable
data for studying the problem of the classification of emotions, more
reliable than do the usual methods of introspective analysis.