Emotions: The Legacy of James and Freud

The theoretical study of emotions in both philosophy and psychology has undergone revolutionary changes over the last hundred years. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, emotions were commonly conceived of as discrete, episodic and purely affective states of consciousness, states whose connection to cognition, physiological activity, and conduct was that of either cause to effect or the converse. By now they are generally understood as complex states of mind whose existence is not separable from that of other mental states, restricted to episodes, purely affective, or connected to cognition, physiological activity and conduct strictly as a cause or an effect. To explain these changes one needs to go back to the work of two giants of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought, William James and Sigmund Freud. Both James and Freud introduced into psychology conceptual innovations of the highest order, and through these innovations they radically and permanently altered our understanding of the human mind. The new ways of thinking about the mind that developed under the influence of their work freed philosophers and psychologists from the constraints of the old, classical empiricist conception that was born of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy and that had framed and guided psychological studies for over two hundred years. In the study of emotions, in particular, the removal of these constraints opened up possibilities both for recovering conceptions of emotions that preceded the Cartesian revolution and for developing wholly new ones. In each case, the result was to deepen significantly our understanding of the place of emotions in human thought and action.

James's and Freud's innovations in psychology directly opposed the fundamental tenets of the classical empiricist conception of the mind. The mind, on this conception, is a single field of thought and feeling, entirely conscious, and transparent to itself. Further, its states are either simple