Emotions play a central role in the significant events of our lives.

Although they have many

characteristics, so me behavioral and others physiological, emotions are above all psychological.
We feel proud when our loved ones do something worthy. When demeaned, we become angry or
ashamed. We experience joy at the birth of our children, anxiety when threatened, and grief at the
death of a loved one.

Much of what we do and how we do it is influenced by emotions and the conditions that generate
them. Pride and joy about our children revitalize our commitment to advance and protect the
well-being of our family. Loss undermines our appreciation of life and may lead to withdrawal and
depression. Anger at being wronged mobilizes and directs us toward retribution. When "blinded
by rage," our thinking is impaired, which places us at risk. It is even said with good reason that
emotions contribute to physical and mental health and illnesses, positive emotions to health,
negative to illness. Surely so powerful a process deserves careful study. From the time of my first
contact with psychology, I was sure that we would not understand people unless we understood
their emotions. The primary purpose of this book is to offer a theory of emotion that is cognitive,
motivational, and relational, an outlook I have pioneered with respect to psychological stress over
the past forty years, and which I will be explaining as I go along. Although I will often take forceful
and distinctive positions, my intention is not to be polemical but to point to important issues, raise
new ones, and suggest solutions consistent with a coherent and systematic framework for thinking
about the emotions.

Given the long and complex history of thought about emotion, it seems almost rash to venture
forth with yet another analysis. There has been speculation about the emotions for thousands of
years, ranging from brief essays to major works. Recent collections of readings.

Since 1960, and especially during the 1980s, the list of monographs would have to include Arnold
(1960), Averill (1982), Bearison and Zimiles (1986), Clynes (1977), Frijda (1986), a reissue of
Gardner, Metealf, and Beebe-Center's history (1937/1970), Gordon (1987), Harris (1989), Harré
(1986), Hillman (1960), Izard (197I, 1977), Kemper (198I), Lazarus and Folkman (1984), Lewis and
Michalson (1983), Lewis and Saarni (1985), Lyons (1980), Mandler (1984), Ortony, Clore, and …
Before this book appear there will undoubtedly be many more, which make my undertaking
daunting, because a modern theory must avoid merely rediscovering what we already know or
previously believed. Although there is a real need for a novel integration for many reasons,
including epistemological ones, we are a long way from achieving a common framework on which
there will be widespread agreement.

In the first two chapters, I intend mainly to rove over the territory of emotion in preparation for
the theoretical model. I don't mean to suggest by the term rove that the discussion is aimless.
Quite the contrary, r will be examining very systematically a number of ideas that are relevant to
the emotion process. The topics of this chapter include the place of emotion in psychological
thought, diverse discipline-centered perspectives on emotion (such as the individual, the observer,
the society, and the biological species), the adaptational encounter as the proper context of
emotion, difficult issues that need to be resolved, the tasks of a theory of emotion, and a brief
synopsis of the theory.

The Place of Emotion in Psychology

It is inconceivable to me that there could be an approach to the mind, or to human and animal
adaptation, in which the emotions are not a key component. Failure to give emotion a central role
puts theoretical and research psychology out of step with human preoccupations from the
beginning of recorded time. As Plutehik (1962, pp. 3-4) put it so well:

The emotions have always be en of central concern to men. In every endeavor, in every major
human enterprise, the emotions are somehow involved. Almost every great philosopher from
Aristotle lo Spinoza, from Kant lo Dewey, from Bergson to Russell has been concerned with the
nature of emotion and has speculated and theorized about its origins, expressions, effects, its
place in the economy of human life. Theologians have recognized the significance of certain
emotions in connection with religious experience and have made the training of emotions a
central, if implicit, part of religious training. Writers, artists, and musicians have always attempted
lo appeal lo the emotions, lo affect and move the audience through symbolic communication. And
the development in the last hall' century of psychoanalysis, clinical psychology, and psychosomatic
medicine has brought the role of emotion in health and disease sharply lo our attention.

There was a perplexing resistance to emotion in mainstream academic psychology until the 1960s,
especially during the heyday of behaviorism and logical positivism. With few exceptions, the major
introductory textbooks seldom managed more than a single chapter on emotion - if that -
emphasizing mainly its motivational or drive aspects and its physiology. These texts gave much
more attention, however, to perception (and now cognition), learning, motivation, physiology,
personality, psychopathology, and social processes. Emotion and Adaptation have rarely, if ever,
gotten substantial treatment in the standard course curricula of psychology. I hope this situation is
now changing.

The de-emphasis of emotion stands in marked contrast to the rich and central place given to the
topic by the great dramatists and writers of fiction. Ironically, all but social scientists have
recognized that emotions lie at the center of human experience und adaptation. Academic
psychologists have seemed little interested in emotion and because they do not include it in the
core curriculum, they could be said to regard it as a highly specialized, perhaps even exotic topic.
This is all the more noteworthy when one realizes that emotions are thought to be keys to
understanding human problems and p}psychopathology in clinical work. Even though clinical
theories of psychopathology are centered on emotion, the traditional emphasis has not been on a
broad spectrum of emotions, but mainly on anxiety. Seldom has an emotion other than anxiety
been considered a significant causal factor in mental illness. Freudian and reinforcement-learning
theory have shared a common view of anxiety as a drive, acquired in the course of development,
and connected through association and drive reduction with certain events of living. Anxiety is also
said by both theories to motivate pathogenic modes of coping, which succeed in lowering drive
tension or distress but are otherwise dysfunctional Depression and guilt have sometimes been
minor exceptions to this almost exclusive concentration on 'anxiety as the emotion underlying
psychopathology. There is much current interest in the etiology and symptomatology of
depression, and its treatment, and little current interest in guilt, except perhaps among
psychoanalysts. However, depression cannot be regarded, per se, as an emotion; it is a complex
state of emotional distress in which sadness, anxiety, anger, and guilt predominate. Helen Lewis
(197I) has given shame and guilt an important place in neurosis, and this, too, is a minor exception
to the rule that clinical formulations have centered mostly on anxiety. Even less attention has
been given to positive emotions (happiness, pride, love, and relief), which are not usually regarded
as relevant to psychopathology