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VOL. I: THEORIES OF EMOTION. Edited by Robert Plutchik & Henry Kellerman. New York: Academic Press, 1980, 399 pp,, $39.50.
This book, whose focus is on affect theory, is the first volume of a projected series on the topic of emotions. In compiling such a series, it is the aim of the editors to provide some integration in a highly complex field by bringing together the views of researchers and theoreticians from a variety of disciplines.
The present volume lays the foundation for this project. Divided into three major sections called "The Evolutionary Context," "The Psychophysiologic Context" and "The Dynamic Context," it provides a comprehensive overview of current thinking concerning the theory of emotions. By enlisting 14 contributors from a variety of disciplines who are actively engaged in investigating and thinking about the problem of affects, the editors have succeeded admirably in achieving their goal of presenting "broad theoretical perspectives representing all the historical traditions in the study of emotions."
Among the contributors to the book's first section, which takes up the evolutionary perspective, is Robert Plutchik who here presents his latest version of a model of affects first published some two decades ago. Plutchik develops a comprehensive psychoevolutionary theory