W.E.A. LECTURE

Southland Times, Issue 20498, 29 May 1928, Page 4

W.E.A. LECTURE

THE EMOTIONS. The W.E.A. psychology class met at the Y.M.CA building last evening, when there was an attendance of about 60 members. Mr. R. R. McGregor was voted to the chair. The lecturer, Mr. A. G. Butchers, said that normal behaviour was unemotional and very largely consisted of unconscious functioning. Even conscious and directed behaviour was unemotional insofar as it was calm and without .excitement. It was only when something out of the ordinary came along that they began to feel the gentle glow or the burning fires of emotional experience as the case might be. From whatever point of view psychologists regarded the emotions—whether that of the introspectionist, the observationist, or the physiologist—all agreed that there were certain fundamental emotional states which were grounded in the physical inheritance of the individual, and upon which all subsequent emotional behaviour, however complex it might be, was built up. It seemed also to be fairly universally recognized that these fundamental emotions were the result of “metabollic or chemical changes” in the bodily tissues themselves. A purely subjective or conceptual classification and analysis of the innumerable emotional states recognized and verbalized, that is, named, seemed to yield very little of value for the purposes of exact science, however interesting and valuable such a procedure might be from other points of view. A purely observationist treatment yielded more definite and useful, but still only partial results. It was not until both these modes of investigation were combined with the much more valuable physiological method that they arrived at conclusions sufficiently scientific to bear the weight of a sound theory of the emotions, their nature and origin, and the best way to control them. Beginning from the fact that normal functioning was unexcited, that is, unemotional, they observed all non-normal or excited behaviour with a view to (1) classifying its physical symptoms, (2) following up those symptoms to their point of origin That led to an investigation into the way in which the inherited mechanisms functioned both ordinarily and under conditions of excitement. The behaviour of the respiratory, circulatory, digestive, and glandular equipment operating under normal conditions having been studied, they were then in a position to extend their inquiries into the behaviour of the same mechanisms under conditions of excitement such as usually give rise to what were generally recognized as the fundamental emotions, viz., fear, anger, passion, and so on. Experiment with animals and young children yielded results which were confirmed by the facts of physiology, viz., that so-called emotional behaviour was precisely that which was caused by the action of the endocrine glands, and particularly of the adrenal glands, acting through the autonomic (sympathetic) nervous system upon the whole visceral, muscular, and nervous organizations of the body. Emotional behaviour was, therefore, emergency Ifehaviorur. In times of crises the emergency equipment under the control of the adrenal glands was inclined to usurp the function of the associative mechanism of the brain, wiih the result that they had what might be called panic emotional states —that is, states in which the individual lost self-control and exhibited behaviour of the types which they knew as panic, fear, furious rage, lustful passion, uncontrollable grief, religious ecstasy, self-immolating devotion, and so on. In their incipient forms these appeared merely as a slight stirring of normal behaviour, which they lightly and for the most part pleasurably coloured. In this way men were inclined to be timid about something; or just, a little bit angry; or blushed; or experienced slight disappointment or regret about something; or felt “almost persuaded” to believe at church; or entertained an incipient feeling of affection for a new acquaintance. Between such faint stirrings of the emergency equipment and the great emotional outbursts which were characteristic off the crises and tragedies of life, lay all the gradations of emotional conduct, of which the following were outward manfestations familiar to them all—warm glow, reddening face and ears, “all hot and cold,” hot perspiration, cold sweat; quick breathing, quivering lips, stammering tongue, heaving breast, pounding heart, staring eyes, hair on end, sinking stomach, vomiting, faltering and staggering gait, bowed head, fainting, tears, flight, shouting, fighting, passionate loving, sudden conversions; and so on through the whole gamut of overt emotional behaviour. The visceral and glandular processes underlying such behaviour had hitherto escaped conditioning by society to the same extent as the more obvious and tangible reactions of the vocal and muscular mechanisms. That had been largely due to the fact that their inside workings were for the most part unverbalized. Indeed, it had long been considered in the west to be “bad form” even to refer to them. They could, however, be habitized, or trained, no less effectively than the vocal and muscular systems. Thus they might learn to control and direct their emergency equipment instead of letting it get out of hand. Instead of being rushed headlong into passionate behaviour which might wreck their lives they might learn to keep the reins in the hands of their own associative mechanism, and so meet life’s crises with all the added strength of their emotional energies, but without the dangers incident to a panic ’stricken application of them to the situation that had aroused them. In short it was possible to acquire an infallible control of emotional strength through the universally operating laws of habit, with resulting happiness both to themselves and to their fellows. For innumerable examples of those who had failed so to “keep their heads” they had only to turn to the records of the divorce and criminal courts and mental hospitals. There was, in fact, no sounder psychological advice than the familiar admonition not to “get excited.” An interesting discussion followed the lecture in which the following ladies and gentlemen took part.—The chairman, Mesdames H. Sutton and Hannah, Messrs F. Fisher, W. C. Denham, J. L. Petrie, and Grindlay. The subject for next week’s lecture will be “The Physiology of Thought.”