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Although emotions — or, as they tend to be called in the psychoanalytic community, affects — play a central role in all psychological systems dealing with human interactions, few theoreticians, whether modern or ancient, have busied themselves with the construction of models for categorizing all the various nuances of emotion and their interrelationships.
Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) wrote extensively on the “passions,” the medieval term for the emotions, describing a number of the most important: love, hate, resentment, envy, jealousy, and hope. Further passages on self-love and anger are to be found in his Introductio ad Sapientiam (1524). Elsewhere Vives spoke of how the passions of the soul, “… in opposition to reason, are always girded and prepared for battle, and that if they conquer, the result is the bitterest perdition to man.” He advocated rigid control over the passions, “… lest they beat down our strength” (1531).
Harvey, the great cardiac physiologist, noted the influence of emotion upon the body: “… in almost every affection, appetite, hope or fear, our body suffers, the countenance changes, and the blood appears to course hither and thither.” He drew attention to