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This is a textbook intended for students who have had an introductory course in psychology. It is based on the literature of academic psychology and also on related physiological research, such as that of Cannon and Bard. It digests this very extensive literature and reviews simply and clearly many of the theories of emotion. The author proceeds upon the definition of emotion as a disruption or disorganization of the individual. In other words, when he speaks of emotion he has in mind acute emotional states of sufficient intensity to interfere with normal integrated functioning. The obvious difficulties in this view are resolved to some extent, but not fully, by the concepts of attitude and motivation.
The book is a relatively thorough and well-balanced review of the literature of academic psychology, rather than a presentation of the vital emotional life of man. It may be pedagogically justifiable to limit the presentation to such contributions, but it detracts from the grasp of the subject to omit all reference to the literature of dynamic psychiatry, psychoanalytic or otherwise. Psychiatry has developed so far that several of the academic discussions in the book sound quite outmoded. No matter how scientific the comparison of theories, the cardinal and central point of the scientific method is the observation of the phenomenon to be studied. The meaning and essence of human emotion and its significance in human life can only be grasped by coming to grips with it at first hand, by intensive, continued observation of human beings as they