Feelings and Emotions

The Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines feelings as:

1. The function or the power of perceiving by touch.
2. Physical sensation not connected with sight, hearing, taste, or smell.
3. A particular sensation of this kind: a feeling of warmth; a feeling of pain.
4. The general state of consciousness considered independently of particular sensations, thoughts, etc.
5. A consciousness or vague awareness: a feeling of inferiority.
6. An emotion or emotional perception or attitude: a feeling of joy; a feeling of sorrow.
7. Capacity for emotion, esp. compassion: to have great feeling for the sufferings of others.
8. A sentiment; attitude; opinion: The general feeling was in favor of the proposal.
9. Feelings, sensibilities; susceptibilities: to hurt one's feelings.
10. Fine emotional endowment.
11. In music and art, an emotion or sympathetic perception revealed by an artist in his or her work: a poem without feeling.
12. The general impression conveyed by a work: a landscape painting with a spacious feeling.
13. Sympathetic appreciation, as of music: to play with feeling.

The Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines emotions as:

1. An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.
2. Any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, love, etc.
3. Any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencing love, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certain physiological changes,as increased heartbeat or respiration, and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking.
4. An instance of this.
5. Something that causes such a reaction: the powerful emotion of a great symphony.

The words "feeling" and "emotion" blur together. Instead of find your own defintions, lets go to their meaning. There are feelings/emotions that we feel from the core spiritual center within us. Then there are feelings/emotions that are our instrument panel of the body. One is spritual based, and the other is more animal based. Animal based emotions (or feelings) have opposites. Like we hate the cookies or love them. But with a spritual emotion (or feeling) there is only love and no opposite.

Mixtures of emotions and feelings often occur simultaneously. For example, if a little boy runs away from his mother, when she find him, she is ready to hug and scold him at the same time. Thus anger and love can occur at the same time.

Earlier Attempts of Mapping the Mind

Many books have been written on how the mind seems to work. Earlier works were very simple approaches to the problem. Hippocrates, for example, classified the mind into the sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. Sprangers grouped the mind into parts: political, religious, social, economic, aesthetic and theoretic. Jung's classified everyone into introverts, ambiverts and extroverts. McDougall presented fourteen instincts, and phrenological charts. Freud's mind map of ego, id, and super ego were akin to the trinity of the soul, the devil and God.

Charles Hampden-Turner, in his Maps of the Mind, carriers diagrams for some sixty "mind-maps". Each diagram presented a theme including: history, religion, physiology, cybernetics, psychobiology, paradogmatic and myth. This book has some historical value, but there is no attempt to provide a cohesive theory of how the mind works.

Hunter B. Shirley

Shirely was the first to provide a computer like model of how the mind might work. Shirely wrote the book Mapping the Mind in 1983. This theory of the mind was based on many years of observation of facial expressions. He did not use psychological terminology to impress and confuse, but common sense and simple observations. Using data to generate theories, instead of speculation, the theories have much more validity. Shirely studied people's expressions and their reactions to situations. He presented his conclusions in so that models could be generated by software programmers.

In his book he relates to a breakthrough as reported in the January-February 1972 issue of the Journal of Psychology. It was entitled Psychovector Analysis: A New Discipline within the Behavioral Sciences. In simple terms, this article said:

1. It was one of the first extended sets of field studies of man functioning in his normal habitat that had been conducted over a several year period. It was conducted in eleven countries on three continents.

2. The findings from these field studies conclusively demonstrated that people of all races, colors, creeds, classes, languages, religions, sizes sexes, and occupations employed basically the same expressive signaling system for communicating the identity and significance of what was going on within them at any given moment

3. During this period of field studies, a simulation model of personality based on information conveyed by man's expressive signaling behavior had been designed.

4. The psychovector model of personality, as it was called, constituted the first completely specified personality model; this simulation model of personality traces every aspect of personality function and malfunction known to man. This feat which, if true, would make the model a tool of great value to be used in solving some of the most vexatious problems afflicting man and society.

5. A new form of psychotherapy which utilized this model as a guide had been developed for treating mental illness and had already been characterized as having a highly increased effectiveness over traditional methods, but as to the time required for treatment and the degree of care.

Shirley described four basic emotions. Each of these emotions can be frustrated or blocked bringing a total of twelve basic states. (As pointed out in his book, People can have two basic states going at the same time. Each combination is another emotion.)

According to Shirley we have four basic emotional states:

I am - Unity - Healthy Pride -- assimilative self-awareness (we are jouous when we love ourselves)
I want - Mobility -Desire -- acquisitive movement (we are happy when we get stuff)
I love - Affinity -Human love and friendship -- herd sociability (we can be in love with another)
I wonder - Variety - Curiosity -- looking for something new, exploratory endeavors (we find love in discovery)

When these emotions are reduced by frustration (towards the Neurotic State):

Pride turns to Shame
Desire turns to Anger
Human love to Pathos (extreme loneliness)
Curiosity to Distraction (unfocused, anxious)

When these emotions are reduced to hopelessness we find (towards the Insane State):

Pride turns to Contempt
Desire turns to Fear
Human love turns to Hauteur (repulsiveness)
Curiosity turns to Disdain (lack of notice)

I added:

When the love emotion is raised to the divine level we have (Divine State):

Divine Pride generates more spiritual self,
Divine Desire directs to more spiritual goals in the material world
Divine human love enhances a spiritual relationship
Divine curiosity produces spiritual learning

Helpful Word Definitions

Impulses originate quickly from our sensations and lead to spontaneous action.
Sensations are feelings that originate directly from our perceptions and lead to impulses.
Attitudes are the longer term remembered feelings that have been woven into one's personality. Attitudes allow us to weigh alternative actions, then constrain and discipline our conduct.
Moods reflect one's emotional energy.
Appetites are signals that reflect our needs. There are animal appetites such as hunger, thirst, sex and spiritual appetites such yearning for truth, inspirational music and closeness to God.
Thoughts are the cognitive experience where we compare, infer, evaluate, judge, make decisions and plan.
Anxiety is the wavering or frustration of an emotion. It is not well focused (hypofocus) and may result in causing circular thinking and worry.
Attraction is the aggressive high focus (hyperfocus) of an emotion.

The Emotion and Feeling LIst

With four groups of emotions contain four emotions each, we have a total of sixteen emotions or 256 possible combinations. Combined with different energy levels and simultaneous emotions, the result is a huge spectrum of emotions. Some of the emotions in the spectrum are listed below.

Admiration Pride/Affection
Affection -strong attachment
Agitation -strong confused feelings
Antagonism Contempt/Anger
Apprehension Fear/Distraction
Ardor -intensity of passion
Belief Affection/Curiosity
Consternation Pathos/Distraction
Cordiality -warmth of manner
Deep sense -strong and intelligent idea
Determination Pride/Desire
Disappointment Fear/Pathos
Disgust Contempt/Hauteur
Dread Shame/Fear
Eagerness -impatient desire to accomplish
Earnestness -deep, resolute desire to accomplish
Ecstasy -extreme delight
Endurance -power to bear pain
Enthusiasm -extraordinary fervor
Embarrassment Shame/Pathos
Experience -something undergone or enjoyed
Fanaticism -extravagant zeal
Ferment -intense excitement
Fervor -intensity of feeling
Flurry -sudden confused state of mind
Flush -sudden elation or excitement
Fluster -confused state of mind
Fullness of the heart -generosity
Furore -overmastering passion for
Glow -fervency of intensity of felling
Gusto -keen enjoyment; relish
Heartiness -earnestness and sincerity
Hectic -a habitual flush
Hope Desire/Affection
Indignation Anger/Hauteur
Impression -the effect produced on the mind
Inspiration -divine influence; elevating influence of genius or occasion
Interest Desire/Curiosity
Passion -overpowering feeling
Pathos -tender or sorrowful feeling
Perturbation -agitation of the mind
Pother -continued confusion
Pulsation -a beating or throbbing of the heart
Response -act or feeling as a result of an appeal
Ruffle -state of slight vexation
Scorn Contempt/Disdain
Sensation -an impression made on the mind through the senses
Sincerity Pride/Curiosity
Shock -starting emotion; violence to the feelings
Stew -a state of agitating excitement
Sex -body feelings (warm tickles)
Sufferance -experience of pain or evil
Suffering -severe pain
Supportance -assistance to an ill person
Suspicion Hauteur/Disdain
Sympathy - fellow feeling for one in pain or trouble
Thrill -a tremor of feeling or excitement
Tolerance -allowing what is not altogether approved
Turn -a shock, as from an alarm
Unction -that quality in language or address which excites emotions
Regret Shame/Distraction
Vehemence Anger/Disdain -strength or impetuosity of feeling or passion
Verve -the enthusiasm of a poet or artist
Warmth -slight passion
Zeal -enthusiastic devotion

This list of emotions show how wide emotions can run. Note that most feelings are shared with animals whereas only the lower (often evil) emotions are shared with animals. Other more human emotions are enhanced by the virtues we acquire in life.

TOP

Comments

HOME PAGE