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The Two-Stage Model of
Emotion and the Interpretive Structure of the Mind
Marc A. Cohen,
Seattle University
Empirical evidence shows that non-conscious
appraisal processes generate bodily responses to the environment. This
finding is consistent with William James’s account of emotion, and it
suggests that a general theory of emotion should follow James: a general
theory should begin with the observation that physiological and behavioral
responses precede our emotional experience. But I advance three arguments
(empirical and conceptual arguments) showing that James’s further account
of emotion as the experience of bodily responses is inadequate. I offer
an alternative model, according to which responses (physical states)
are perceived and interpreted by a separate cognitive process, one that
assigns meaning to those responses. The non-conscious appraisal process
and the interpretive process are distinct, hence a two-stage model of
emotion. This model is related to Schachter and Singer’s two-factor
theory. Their often-discussed experiment showed that interpretation
can play a role in producing emotions. But they do not show that interpretation
is necessary for producing emotions in general, outside of the experimental
conditions that generated unexplained arousal in subjects. My two-stage
model supports this stronger claim by situating the interpretive process
in a comprehensive model of emotion.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Prof. Marc A. Cohen, Department of Management, Seattle University, 901
12th Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98122–1090. Email: cohenm@seattleu.edu
Notes on the Unconscious
Fred Vollmer, University of Bergen
An unconscious mental state, according to Searle, is a physical (brain)
state that has the power to cause a state that is intrinsically intentional
and aspectual — a power whose realization is more or less permanently
blocked. Language, in Searle’s view, is not intrinsically intentional.
I argue that language is an authentic way of representing reality under
some aspect, and should, therefore, be regarded as a genuine mental
phenomenon. An unconscious mental phenomenon should be defined as a
physical state that can cause conscious experiences and speech acts,
but is not doing so at present. While Freud believed that unconscious
mental events were just like conscious ones (minus being conscious),
he was also aware of the type of theory advocated by Searle. This theory,
Freud thought, had problems with explaining gaps in mental life. But
filling in gaps in sequences of conscious mental events with unconscious
mental happenings of the same type, is unrealistic.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Fred Vollmer, Dr. philos, Institutt for samfunnspsykologi, Christies
gate 12, 5015 Bergen, Norway.
Email:
Fred.Vollmer@psyk.uib.no
A Reanalysis of Relational
Disorders Using Wakefield’s Theory of Harmful Dysfunction
Guy A. Boysen, State University of New York,
Fredonia
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines
disorders as occurring within an individual, but there is an effort
to have relational disorders included in the manual. Wakefield (2006)
supported this position by arguing that relational disorders are consistent
with harmful dysfunction, which states that mental disorders exist when
the failure of an evolved mental mechanism is judged to be harmful by
a culture. However, an alternative assessment of relational disorders
using harmful dysfunction is possible. Considering relational disorders
to be harmful dysfunctions leads to the abandonment of mental mechanisms,
contradicts the natural selection of functions, and allows conflict
with society to be a mental disorder. Ultimately, the harmful dysfunction
definition of mental disorder does not operate similarly for individual
and relational disorders.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Guy A. Boysen, Ph.D., Psychology Department, W357 Thompson Hall, SUNY
Fredonia, Fredonia, New York 14063.
Email: guy.boysen@fredonia.edu
Critical Notice
The Bounds of Cognition.
Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa. Malden,
Massachusetts: Wiley–Blackwell, 2008, 216 pages, $74.95 hardcover.
Reviewed by Justin C. Fisher, Southern Methodist
University
Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa have long been the loyal
opposition in the debate about extended cognition. Contemporary humans
regularly use external devices to process information. Many of us store
telephone numbers in our cell phones rather than our brains. Alzheimer’s
patients use trusted notebooks to store all kinds of information (Clark
and Chalmers, 1998). Expert Scrabble players continually reorganize
their letters to more quickly see possible words they might play (Kirsh,
1995). Fans of extended cognition have held that the information processing
performed partly within such external devices is enough like traditional
cases of cognitive processing that it also deserves to be called “cognitive
processing.”1 Adams and Aizawa have been two key figures to stand against
this tide, arguing that we should instead view these as mere cases of
external tool use, and that, at least for the time being, we should
reserve the term “cognitive processing” for processes that occur inside
creatures’ heads.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Professor Justin C. Fisher, Department of Philosophy,
Hyer Hall 207, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750142, Dallas, Texas 75275. Email:
fisher@smu.edu
Book Reviews
Irreducible Mind: Toward
a Psychology for the 21st Century. [With
compact disk containing F.W.H. Myers’s classic two-volume Human Personality
(1903) and selected contemporary reviews of Human Personality.] Edward
F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso,
and Bruce Greyson. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, 800
pages, $79.95 hardcover. Reviewed
by Andreas Sommer, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine,
University College London
Since the publication of Henri Ellenberger’s monumental
The Discovery of the Unconscious (Ellenberger, 1970), academic
interest in the work of the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR),
the first scientific body to systematically investigate reported psychic
(or “psi”) phenomena and altered states of consciousness, has grown
slowly but steadily. Historians of science have recognized the importance
of the Society’s early work, particularly that of Frederic Myers (1843–1901)
and Edmund Gurney (1847–1888), on hypnosis, dissociative identity disorder
and other psychological phenomena (Alvarado, 2002; Gauld, 1992; Koutstaal,
1992). Frederic Myers is to be regarded as an important early depth
psychologist, and his influence on colleagues like William James, Pierre
Janet, and Théodore Flournoy (Crabtree, 1993; Shamdasani, 1994; Taylor,
1983, 1996), and also Carl G. Jung (Shamdasani, 2003), has been documented
as significant.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Andreas Sommer,
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College
London, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, United Kingdom. Email: a.sommer@ucl.ac.uk
The Self-Evolving Cosmos:
A Phenomenological Approach to Nature’s Unity-in- Diversity.
Steven M. Rosen. Hackensack, New Jersey:
World Scientific Publishing, 2008, 272 pages, $88.00 hardcover, $48.00
paperback. Reviewed by Walter Glickman,
Long Island University
When the new Hadron Collider fires protons at each
other at near light speeds, the collisions are expected to approach
conditions that existed soon after the Big Bang and to give rise to
particles never before “observed.” Physicists hope to “see”
what some assume to be the basis of dark matter, cutely named sparticles
— selectrons, squarks, and so forth. By “finding”
still more exotic specks of matter, aptly named “particle physicists”
anticipate great breakthroughs in their understanding of matter and
cosmogony, and to get closer to unifying the basic forces of nature.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Wally Glickman, Ph.D., Department of Physics, Long
Island University, 1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, New York 11201–5372. Email: walglick@aol.com |
