1. Toward a General Theory of Emotion
Professor Gerald C. Cupchik
Department of Psychology
University of Toronto
Lecture Available at:

2. Emotional Experiences
Emotions
- are fundamental phenomena in-the-world.
- occur in situations involving real or imagined episodes.
Emotional Experiences
- take place in a context and are multilayered:
Perceptual, Cognitive, Affective, Bodily
Goethe: Describe different aspects of phenomenon and indicate contexts which affect them or within which they occur.

3. - Avoid Reductionism!
- Don’t assume that accounting for emotions in terms of bodily responses solves the problem.
- Consider dimension of Abstract – Concrete:
- Abstract: Thought and seeing relations.
- Concrete: Bodily responses in brain and viscera.

4. General Principle - You always see the world in an affective way.
Cognition – Emotion [or cognition – affection] complementarity:
“You can’t have one without the other.”
The question becomes:
“How do mind and body affect each other?”
“What kind of mental process goes with what kind of bodily process?”

5. Adaptation to needs or challenges
Situational Themes
Adaptation to needs or challenges
Is it real?
Search for Meaning
Is it true?

6. Motivational Psychology and the Action Model
1. Life theme: ADAPTATION
2. Historical context:
(i) 18th Century Enlightenment: emphasis on covariation of rational judgment and feelings – are decisions wise?
(ii) Darwin’s world: Adapt to challenges and resolve needs.
(iii) 20th Century Behaviourism (emphasis on bodily states & drives) and Cognitivism (emphasis on strategic planning).

7. 3. Fundamental assumptions:
(i) Presumes separation of mind and body.
(ii) No emotion here please… it’s irrational and gets in the way… it must be filtered out and reduced to generalized arousal!

8. Emotion = (a) Cognition + (b) Arousal
Formula
The model is really about thoughts and feelings.
Emotion = (a) Cognition + (b) Arousal
(a) planning and executive functioning mind
- thoughts enabling us to analyze world
- respond to categories of stimuli that resolve need

9. Feelings are the shadow of cognition!
(b) feeling dimension of bodily arousal which provides energy and facilitates problem focus.
- feelings of pleasure and excitement that reflect impact of our worlds and purity of bodily resonance.
Feelings are the shadow of cognition!

10. Psychology of Emotion and the Experience Model
1. Life theme: Search for emotional meaning in life.
2. Historical context:
(i) 18th Century Romanticism and shift from passion to emotion with increasing secularization of society and emergence of self.
(ii) Goethe’s emphasis: whole systems evolving over time.
(iii) Jamesian emphasis: emotional experiences shaped by feedback from viscera and facial/bodily expression.

11. (iv) Psychodynamic emphasis: power of situated personal meanings that shape subject matter of emotional experiences.
(v) Phenomenological emphasis: distortions in time, space, sensation, causality, and social connection that shape form of subjective experience.

12. 3. Fundamental assumptions and principles:
(i) Presumes interrelation of mind and body in emotional experiences that evolve over time.
(ii) Spontaneous (fast) and unreflective response to symbolically perceived meanings in social world.
(iii) Symptomatic expression of physical and dysfunctional responses to situations the fundamental meaning of which elude the person.

13. (iv) Humanistic valuation of an effort after holistic reconciliation of mind and body through exploration of hidden meanings.
(v) Feelings provide the form of an emotional experience.

14. Summary of Basic Processes
Action Model
Mechanistic – homeostatic process
Experience Model
Vitalistic – Self-sustaining multileveled system

15. Basic Principles Action Model
Matching: if you have a need, you are sensitized to stimuli that will satisfy it.
Experience Model
Coherence: you preserve essence of personally meaningful situations at all level of reaction… sensory, cognitive, bodily, experiential.
When situations merge with meaning of situation, you have an emotion.

16. Living the personal search for being-in-the-world.
Action Model
Living the dimension of bodily response in terms of pleasure and excitation.
Experience Model
Living the personal search for being-in-the-world.