Perhaps the most interesting attempt to deny the existence of emotion is Gilbert Ryle's. He tried to refute the common sense view that emotions are something we experience by reducing them to mere 'dispositions' of a body to behave in certain ways under certain circumstances. This is, at one and the same time, the most extreme of the denial theories, but also one of the most convincing and influential. Ryle provided the philosophical foundation on which was constructed what is sometimes referred to as the 'strict' behaviorist view in psychology.

In the following passage Hillman describes Ryle's position:

... we find him writing vigorously against the idea of emotions as things and against the idea of emotions as internal or private experiences. "...In neither of these senses [in which the word 'emotion' is used] are we asserting or implying that the overt behaviour is the effect of felt turbulence in the agent's stream of consciousness. ...Impulses, described as feelings which impel action, are para-mechanical myths...Consequently, though the description of the higher-level behaviour of people certainly requires mention of emotions.... this mention does not entail inferences to occult inner states or processes.... Motives and moods are not the sorts of things which could be among the direct intimations of consciousness, or among the objects of introspection, as these fictitious forms of Priveleged Access are ordinarily described. They are not 'experiences', any more than habits or maladies are 'experiences'. (35)

According to this view, feelings and emotions cannot be directly felt or EXPERIENCED as objects of introspection, because there ARE no 'inner experiences' - only 'outer behavior' exists. This view may seem somewhat strange to anyone who, after consulting his or her own experience, might find it difficult to understand how it could be said that such experiences DO not (and COULD not) exist. And many behaviorists since Ryle have backed off from this 'strict' position. But this, nonetheless, IS Ryle's position. And it continues to have great influence on contemporary psychology in general (and on the psychology of emotion in particular). Greenberg and Safran ³, commenting on the state of psychology in the late 1980s - almost forty years after Ryle's work - remarked that 'Since the 1950s', when his view was fashionable, 'introductory psychology texts have been virtually devoid of the terms 'feeling' and 'emotion''.(13)

Although feeling and emotion 'exist' for Ryle, it is only as abstract 'dispositions to behave'. What it means, for instance, to say that we are 'sad', is that we have the disposition, in certain situations, to cry, mope, become withdrawn and silent, etc. In this view, to attribute sadness to a person is to say nothing about her 'inner states and processes', as inner states are themselves 'fictitious entities'.

Indeed, it is Ryle's intention, by calling inner states 'occult', to lump together those who might want to describe feelings as inner EXPERIENCES with those who would argue for the existence of Martians - as if to say that to experience feeling is, in its own right, a rather bizarre thing to do. Ironically, at the present moment in history, it is Ryle's attempt to view inner experience itself as 'occult' that seems rather peculiar. We might surmise, judging from his theory, that Ryle was an extreme 'thinking' type who had repressed and distorted his own feelings beyond recognition.

It is important to note that in what might be called 'strict' or 'strong' (meaning 'extreme') level-one theories, such as Ryle's, feeling and emotion are dismissed A PRIORI, that is - as a matter of definition or principle. The possibility of their existence is denied by PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT. Anyone wishing to appeal to the evidence of his or her own experience is constrained from doing so by the rules of the (behaviorist) philosophical game: no appeal to 'experience' is permitted, as inner experience does not exist. This, we would point out, is denial PAR EXCELLENCE.

There are alternative level-one theories that do not attempt an 'a priori' denial of emotion, but conceive of them, instead, as inessential 'epi-phenomena'. These are not denial theories proper (as the existence of emotion as an experiential event or a useful concept is not what is being denied). What IS denied, rather, is that emotions are ESSENTIAL phenomena having instrinsic or instrumental WORTH. According to this view, emotions accompany physiological processes and can be subjectively experienced, but otherwise have no function. They play no useful role whatsoever in our lives; they have no value. We would be better off not having to suffer them.

Other level-one theories that do not directly characterize emotion as 'epi-phenomenal' DO, however, treat them as a form of 'excess'. These two concepts are indeed closely related, as both terms connote superfluousness and imply that emotion has an 'accidental' (as opposed to 'essential') status in human experience. But to the superfluous status of emotion attributed to it by those who would conceive of it as 'epi-phenomenal' is attached the additional warning, by those who would see it as 'excess', that emotion has the capacity to cause adverse effects. Feeling is not merely superfluous, it is dangerous. Consider the following passage, from D.T. Howard's 'A Functional Theory of Emotions':

'I have always been interested in that question, as to the value of emotional states, and the conclusion to which I come is that they have absolutely no value at all, but represent a defect in human nature.' (D.T. Howard). (208)

In theories that construe emotion as constituting a dangerous level of 'excess', affect is also alternately desribed as overwhelming or confusing. Emotions are disruptive and produce disorder, agitation, irresolution and illness - they are often linked to 'the irrational', to uncontrollable passionate 'desire', and to 'the fall [eg, moral decline]' (207). Emotion is, in a word, detrimental. C. Wolff, for example, in 'The Psychology of Gesture', states that 'Emotion is a kind of malady which by its inner pressure produces in man agitation and irresolution . It is the want of direction and certainty and the conflict between inner tension and adequate expression which makes strong emotions resemble madness'.(C. Wolff) (207). D.T. Howard describes emotion as 'a confused and scattered state of consciousness', 'without focus or margin'. It is 'a state of disruption', and totally superflous (if not injurious) to the organism. (208) In Freud's early years he saw it as 'toxic discharge', a theory which Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls described as Freud's 'excremental theory of emotion'. (Greenburg, 68)

Insofar as emotion is disruptive it is primarily because it causes us to deviate from 'rational' processes and take leave of 'order' (defined in rationalist terms). Emotion, in other words, is productive of DISORDER. The DISORDER view has ancient historical roots. According to Hillman, it '... uses a moral and ontological model the foundations of which lie deep in antiquity. The PHAEDRUS myth of the disorderly and irrational horse is a classic formulation'. (209)

The Stoics, he tells us, who considered affects 'unnatural' (insofar as they fall short of an ideal RATIONAL metaphysical order), declared war on the 'passions' and recommended an attitude of 'a-pathy' (literally 'non-feeling' or 'freedom from feeling') as opposed to em-pathy and/or sym-pathy. Later, 'in accordance with the great tradition of rational philosophy', Kant held that emotions are abnormal events and 'diseases' of the mind because they are irrational.

More recently in the history of disorder-theories, there appear ones that treat emotion as a breakdown of the system, with pathological implications. The very value of being human (conceived of in rationalist terms) is called into question by emotion. Strasser proclaims, for instance, that 'the personal dignity of the human being disappears in the emotions'. When emotion manifests there is immanent danger of the collapse of 'rational' values (the values associated with 'thinking' types).(215). 'The root metaphor of the disorder view', Hillman tells us...

... is a kind of ontological agoraphobia, which identifies irrational emptiness with evil. A clear example of theory of emotion built on this model is put by Descuret in the middle of the last century. For him, emotion (passion) arises out of desire, which arises from 'need', which in turn signifies emptiness. (210)

Leeper attributes the 'disorder theory' itself to the age of rationalism, 'which came to life again in Freud and psychoanalysis and in modern rational technology with its social milieu.' (217). Feeling, in an age of reason, is reduced to 'emotionality' - a state of affairs in which we currently suffer, according to Hillman:

In individuals where feeling is relatively undeveloped, ie unconscious in the sense of unadapted, it will be emotional since it will tend to be under the influence of the unconscious, thus becoming symbolic. In our culture, where the function of feeling and its products is given rather short shrift, feeling has indeed become emotional...(269)

It should be explicitly noted here that again (as in the case of Ryle) there is a 'rationalist' agenda behind the construal of 'emotion' as essentially negative, and it is a bias that is deeply embedded in ALL level-one theories of emotion. If 'feeling' and 'thinking' are not, as Jung believed them to be, a mutually exclusive pair of 'polar opposites', it is at least demonstrably true that theorists throughout the ages have TREATED them as if they were! Defenders of reason, as we have seen above, often seem intent on discrediting the role (if not the very existence) of feeling in our lives - as if to value feeling would diminish the status of reason.

Some level-one theories construe emotion as having a second-class standing when compared to other phenomena, a view closely related to both of the concepts of emotion discussed above (emotion as 'epi-phenomena' and emotion as 'excess'). In this view emotion, a secondary phenomenon, originates OUT OF other, more primary, phenomena. Frink, for example, sees emotion as the 'undischarged action' of the organism. It occurs when direct action is suppressed, and is therefore a sign of inhibited action (and possibly indicative of disfunction in the organism - as it is presumably ACTION, not emotion, that is required in situations). Emotion is a sorry substitute for action. Hillman comments about this and related theories:

These views make a questionable implication about the nature of man [sic]. If we assume that where there is emotion there is conflict (inhibition, blocking, arrest) and also assume alongside that where there is conflict there is a 'lowering', an imperfection, then we take a view of man which hardly allows emotion. It becomes semi-pathological (Janet), destructive (Luria), substitutive (Tuttle), inappropriate (Drever), disharmony (Paulhan). As a sign of human frailty it is best got rid of. (205)

In contrast to Ryle's view, which is an 'a priori' attack on the very existence of feeling and emotion, these theories seek to present empirical 'a posteriori' evidence to show that emotion has little, if any, value - and therefore may as well NOT exist.

There is a subclass of such theories, associated with what Hillman calls the 'rational approach to psychotherapy', the goal of which is conceived as 'curing oneself OF emotion'. In the following passage he describes this approach :

The aim is separation (analysis) of the elements, a rational method having for its result dispassionate ideas and images on one side and motor discharge of emotion on the other. It is a therapy of representations, curing representations of their emotional attachments. It is not a therapy of emotion, curing emotion of their fixated images. ...They do not seek to cure emotion, but to cure one OF emotion. That this is not possible by voluntary and intellectual means has long been observed...Even the Stoics, whose aims and attitudes are much like [these modern-day rationalists] ...noted that rational methods failed to subdue the passions. Even the ideal man, although not consenting to them, still suffered them. (180)

The goal of such therapies is to banish emotion completely, to expel and be rid of them (Greenberg, 53). Less radical theories (but nonetheless 'rationalist') aim to inhibit them, control them, or 'educate' them, making them less counter-productive.

What all level-one theories have in common is the belief that emotion is basically negative. While some theorists maintain that ALL emotion is disorder, others associate disorder only with certain 'negative emotions', and yet others maintain that only repressed (and thereby) UNCONSCIOUS emotions are prone to cause disorder and are therefore suspect. Even these latter views, however, while reserving the right to view some emotion as helpful, are essentially corrupted by a deep seated fear and skepticism regarding emotion, which emphasizes its negative aspects.

And even though some theorists (although we would not consider these 'level one' theorists proper) concede that the disorder that is initiated by emotion can be useful, they still emphasize DIS-order as emotion's characteristic function. It is not until we get to higher level theories of emotion, however, that we discover perspectives that view 'disorder' as serving a larger concept of order, either :

1. by compensation (re-dressing a lost balance);
2. by being in itself a new kind of order IN STATU NASCENDI; or
3. by being the dissolution of a non-serviceable order and so making possible a new systematization. (216)

And it is not until we conceive of emotion as functioning to produce ORDER at a higher level that we can understand the true value of producing 'disorder'.

Level-one theories, in disparaging disorder, block personal transformation by seeking to justify the AVOIDANCE of the liminal (in-between) or 'deconstructive' phases that such transformation requires. Insofar as the maintenance of an individual's 'personal paradigm' or world view is conceived as necessary to his or her ontological security, emotions leading to its deconstruction will be perceived as threatening the organism with potential destruction. In contrast, insofar as the individual seeks, or is open to, transition to a new or rival paradigm, the emotions leading to deconstruction of the old paradigm (and hence to a 'liminal', or disordered state) may be conceived of as serving a larger purpose. To the extent that this latter situation prevails, even negatively EXPERIENCED feelings are ultimately appreciated. They enable the detection of anomaly in the environment and announce the impending break-up of outmoded or overly-rigid paradigms. This sophisticated view of 'disorder', although it is more in keeping with contemporary views regarding the inherently orderly nature of 'chaos', is not, needless to say, a level-one view.

There is one final question that we should address before closing - is there a POSITIVE function that level one theories of emotion can play? Level-one theory attempts to optimize the security of the organism, and minimize disruption and change. The repression (or even denial) of feeling can (under certain circumstances) save the individual from overpoweringly destructive threats - as Alice Walker points out in the case of children who avoid the pain of abuse by shutting down emotionally. But as an overall strategy for living life, feelinglessness has a high cost - it diminishes the capacity of the organism to optimize its welfare and achieving self-actualization. It ought not to be valorized by theories that seek, through blanket condemnation of emotion, to impugn the feeling function.

Conclusion

skip to footnotes and references

In the above we have traced level-one theories from their more extreme to lesser extreme forms. We discussed

• Theories that attempt to deny the existence of feeling and emotion by treating them as fictitious entities;
• Theories that conceive of them as superfluous: epi-phenomenal, excessive, or secondary bi-products of more primary phenomena; and, finally
• Theories that impugn emotion by viewing them as 'accidental' (ie 'non-rational') occurences that are essentially detrimental.

Please note that it should be understood that although level-one theory may appear to some to be a thing of the past, an anachronism, the issue that separates level-one views of feeling from level-two views - whether emotions are fundamentally irrational and destructive (level-one) or biologically adaptive (level-two) - is a question that is still hotly debated today. In this debate, behaviorists and cognitive therapists ironically side with early Freudian theory, which conceives of the 'id' or 'unconscious' as a seething cauldron of fearful and contradictory feelings and desires and finds no functional significance for emotion in human activity(65ff, 70).

As late as the 1980s, reports Greenburg, Zajonc still found it necessary to urge other investigators in the field

... to recognize the central and primary role of emotion in human functioning, and to reexamine the commonly held assumption that emotion is a mere epiphenomenon. (109)