Feeling, at the second level of development, is instrumental in discerning VALUE. Feeling orients us with respect to the objects in our world. By providing us with a means of assessing their relative worth, feeling helps us to decide between alternate courses of action. We are attracted to those objects that feel useful to us or have a positive emotional tone, and are repelled by those that feel harmful or have a negative emotional tone. Feelings and emotion, at this level of development, provide us with the feedback that is essential for successful adaptation to our environment. They are an 'ally in the change process' of the individual (Greenberg and Safran, 1987). ²

Level-two theories of emotion focus primarily on what happens at the second level of development of the feeling function. Accordingly, they seek to understand the role that feelings and emotion play in appraisal and adaptive processes. They provide an explanatory framework that are useful in making sense of therapies designed to facilitate growth in the individual by focusing on developing his or her capacity to feel.

At level-two, emotion is characteristically distinguised from feeling. As opposed to 'feeling', which is seen by the level-two theorist as a vague or non-descript commodity, emotions are conceived as comparatively intelligible entities, susceptible to description. An emotion is an extreme state of excitement or perturbation (Hillman, 1960) ³ occurring in comparatively intense, intermittent episodes. It occurs in response to specific situations and objects in the environment, and involves impulses toward specific behaviors. Any given emotion can therefore be classified with respect to various parameters, including (but not limited to): cause, object, situation, subjective feeling tone, level of intensity, accompanying physiological changes, type of impulses associated with it, etc. Emotion is a complex state of the organism, albeit a temporary one.

There is appreciation, in level-two theory, for the fact that feeling and emotion put us in contact with the SUBJECTIVE aspect of experience. There is a tendency, however, to reify feeling at level-two, and conceive of the emotions almost as if they were things. In level-two theories an endless variety of emotions are, as a result, characteristically distinguished, defined, and LISTED. In one such review, according to Hillman (p. 40), one thousand three-hundred kinds of emotion are delineated.

There are various ways to classify the emotions. Attempts are often made to to discern THE basic (or 'primary') emotions: often conceived of as the 'building blocks' out of which all other emotion can be constructed. Alternately, by 'primary' it is sometimes meant that these emotions cannot be construed as emotions ABOUT other emotions; they are not 'secondary' emotions or 'meta-emotions', as it were. Fear of depression, for example, could be thought of as a 'secondary' emotion, in this sense - insofar as depression itself is considered an emotion.

At level two, theorists are concerned not only with identifying types of emotion, and describing their distinctive characteristics; they also become involved in discussing the nature of the emotional faculty itself. There is an attempt to elaborate the 'laws of relationship' that obtain between emotional forces in interplay, and to understand their causal properties. Level-two theorists are interested in discovering what factors are involved in the development of specific emotions. (Hillman, 41)

At level-two, emotions are sometimes still seen as 'abnormal discharges of nervous energy'- i.e., negatively experienced phenomena. But there is a subtle shift in how such processes are perceived, when compared to level-one. Whereas the DYSFUNCTIONAL nature of emotion is stressed in level-one theory, in level-two theory it is often merely the INTENSITY of the discharge that is of interest, as the following passage indicates:

Thus it seems to us that emotion may be described as an extreme level of affect, tending toward the pathological as a limit. It consists essentially in an abnormal discharge of nervous energy, a discharge which exceeds the amount which can be used for the normal reactions of the individual, and which occurs even when there is no occasion for reaction. (Peiron, in Hillman, 81)

This led early level-two theorists (Troland and others) to explore methods for measuring 'affective intensity' - by means of psycho-galvanometers and electro-encephalography (EEG), for instance. (Hillman, 82-83)

Level-two theories may indeed attempt to distinguish between emotion and feeling on the basis of the intensity of the affective experience. Whereas emotions, conceived as intense events, are considered demanding and distracting, often requiring one's total attention, feelings - although they are also characteristically conceived as intermittent, temporary events in level-two theory - differ from emotion insofar as they are thought to be relatively subtle phenomena that can indeed go unnoticed.

In level-three theory, as we shall see, the presence of an ongoing 'underlying feeling state' is, in contrast to earlier levels, explicitly acknowledged and appreciated. And 'feeling' - thought of as an omnipresent global 'background' phenomena, in constant flux  - is distinguished from 'emotion' by virtue of the fact that emotion is treated as feeling that has thrust themselves into the spotlight of awareness as an explicit 'object of attention'. ⁴ This occurs when events in the outside environment grate against the tacit but deeply entrenched value-judgments and expectations that underwrite our 'world views', forcing us to make such assumptions explicit so that they might be consciously adjusted.

But the distinction that is made at level-three - between what is occurring 'in the background' of the individual's consciousness, and what is occurring 'in the foreground' - does not yet typically occur in level-two theory. So level-two theory, if it is to distinguish between 'feelings' and 'emotions', is left in a position of having to emphasize the OVERWHELMING and characteristically dysfunctional nature of feeling when, because of its intensity, it has attracted attention as an 'emotion':

"The manifestations of feeling life fall easily into two groups. On the one side are the 'emotions', i.e. those states which for a time completely fill out experience and SUBJUGATE all the rest of psychic life; on the other side, 'the feelings', those movements which join with and SERVE other kinds of psychic events and contents, and which therefore have a more special and limited character." (Haag).... although emotion is a total event completely overwhelming all aspects of experience, it is a disorder. Totality, in short, is excessive; it is something negative. (Hillman, 88)

Although it is fair to say that level-two theory treats emotion as feeling that has achieved a level of intensity that threatens to overwhelm and convulse consciousness in a spasm of 'emotionality', there is often a more important insight tacitly embedded in passages such as the one above. In such descriptions one can literally see the dawning of an insight that will only be fully and clearly articulated in level-three theory - the notion that feeling is somehow everpresent in consciousness and fills or pervades it in such a way that might best be described as 'holistic' or 'totalistic' (89). Although the level-two theorist does not yet have the conceptual tools necessary to fully understand this proposition, he nevertheless has some grasp that feeling/emotion comprises the 'subjective side' of any experienced event or situation (271), which is somehow capable of being experienced 'in its entirety' by our feeling states. He does not yet recognize, however - as does the level-three theorist - the importance of distinguishing between underlying 'feeling states', which operate outside of attention, and those specific 'feelings' that cross over into the individual's explicit awareness. Nor does he understand that for 'feeling states' to function properly, they must indeed remain in the background of awareness.

Nevertheless, the level-two theorist does know that one way of 'reading' a situation is through becoming aware of the emotion that 'accompanies' it. The feeling function picks up on the over-all sense of the situation as a whole, and emotion is thus conceived as 'the positive or negative after-effect' of the general attitude that one has toward a situation (or event), apprehended as a whole. (Malmud, in Hillman, 47)

In level-two theory, emotions therefore begin to be seen in a generally positive light:

A principle intention of an emotion is to connect our animal nature with the world in which it is embedded. Emotions respond immediately to the truth of things. They are the most alert form of attention. Disgust turns away from decay, fear warns of danger, desire recognizes beauty, and pity responds to need. ...[One lets] emotion guide behavior into participation with things as they appear.

Emotions are caused by, and offer us information about, 'the world out there'. Emotion is, according to Hillman, '... a PASSIO of the subject. The subject is MOVED by an object or the idea of an object'. It is 'the hyphen, the functional connection between subject and object' (149). It is the Eros (flow of relation) across the Chaos (gap)'. (153)

As mentioned above, in level-two theory there are two principal FUNCTIONS that are attributed to emotion: 1) evaluatory, and 2) adaptive. Let's look at each of these in turn, taking the former first.

The 'Evaluatory' Function of Feeling

At level-two, having ACKNOWLEDGED our feelings, we begin to USE them for the purpose of EVALUATION, and for orienting ourselves (the subject) in respect to objects in our world: feeling as a function 'likes, relates, makes judgements, connects, denies, evaluates...' (102H&V). The feeling function not only evaluates sense-objects, but also 'thoughts, and psychic contents of any kind'. (105: H&V).

The capacity to evaluate relies on more basic component skills involved in the feeling function. For Michotte, our capacity to evaluate resides, for example, in our ability to discern two basic inner impulses in regard to objects in the world: impulses directed 'toward and away from, called integrative and segregative'.

Propensities toward attraction and avoidance form the basis of the subject's 'evaluation' of any given object; they are closely connected to 'pain' and 'pleasure' as subjective reactions to the presence of various types of object. Every object is surrounded by an 'affective tone' that establishes its SUBJECTIVE value for us. Emotion 'reveals the value of an event' (187). It 'cognizes value' (191). Indeed, 'emotion is the primary mode of cognition'! -

Emotion cognizes value. The point has been variously made by Dejean, by Britan, by Lersch, by the Gestalt psychologists, by Jung. ..[Reid speaks of]: "...'emotions of value'... there can arise situations in which the subject is confronted with objects (ideal or actual) which he realizes as revealing 'intrinsic', as opposed to instrumental, value. His reaction to these objects may be emotional, and from the emotional situation may issue the very complex conditions and actions wich are typical of the moral, the artistically creative, and the truth-seeking life. (191)

... Emotion, as value experience, comes before the discrimination of matters-of-fact. Emotion's basic expression is: 'Have a care, here is something that matters!'. 'Importance reveals itself as transitions of emotion.' In short, EMOTION IS THE PRIMARY MODE OF COGNITION.

It is the value not only of things, but of persons also, that are appreciated via our emotions - which are sensitive to their INTRINSIC worth, according to certain level-two theories. Reid posits the existence of 'value emotions', for example, which 'contemplate and feel intrinsic values or ends in themselves' :

... such emotions are related to the purpose of life, not in some instinctual way of self-preservation (homeostasis, or emergency) but through revealing the 'Good'.

For such theorists as Reid, feeling is the function which perceives values that objectively exist in the environment, just as our senses perceive sensory detail.

About this role of feeling/emotion, Hillman says:

The statement that emotion signifies (cognizes) intrinsic values has seemed to entail the statement that SUCH VALUES EXIST, and are powers which draw us onward and upward. The existence of objective values revealed through emotion is the view of Meinong and Scheler. (192)

Furthermore, our CAPACITY to value has the potential to become developed and further differentiated. Our 'feeling function' can be 'educated':

In making judgments the feeling function balances values, compares feeling tones and qualities, weighs importance and decides upon values it discovers. The feeling function on a primitive level is mainly a reaction of yes and no, like and dislike, acceptance and rejection. As it develops, there forms in us a subtle appreciation of values, and even of value systems...(Hillman and von Franz, 110)

The perception of value (that these theorists posit as a function of feeling) is often referred to in contemporary psychology as the 'appraisal' capacity of emotions, after Magda Arnold's terminology.

A key concept in Arnold's model of emotion is this intitial process of intuitive appraisal, through which events are evaluated as good or bad. It is important to note that this appraisal process is characterized as direct and immediate... In this respect it is more like object perception than like the type of higher level cognition that characterizes rational or deliberate judgment. The intuitive appraisal has both a subjective and physiological component to it. Arnold characterizes this appraisal as a sense judgment that is made automatically and unconsciously... It complements perception and produces an immediate action tendency to deal with objects or events in a certain way. In her words: 'Normally, the sequence perception-appraisal-emotion is so closely knit that our everyday awareness is never the strictly objective knowledge of a thing: it is always a knowing-and-liking, or a knowing-and-disliking'. (Greenberg)

Arnold emphasizes the fact that because the initial appraisal of an event or experience is direct and reflexive, it often takes place automatically. And Plutchik grants that such appraisals are not necessarily experienced 'consciously'. (127) But Richard Lazarus, the main proponent, after Arnold, of the importance of appraisal in the emotion process, regards it nonetheless as a COGNITIVE activity:

According to Lazarus, people are evaluators who appraise every stimulus they encounter in terms of its personal relevance and significance. He regards this as a cognitive activity that produces emotion as a response, and theorizes that each emotional reaction is a function of a particular kind of cognition or appraisal. (113)

A debate ensues, however - regarding the role of cognition in the 'appraisal' processes involved in emotion. Since this is a very important controversy, we will briefly trace its development below. But first we want to point out WHY this is an important issue. Insofar as this level-two debate is decided in favor of the primacy or priority of cognition over emotion, emotion would have to be theoretically explained as a 'secondary' phenomenon arising out of rudimentary COGNITIVE (i.e., 'thinking'-based) capacities. This would, in effect, herald a REGRESSION to level-one theory. Remember that one level-one strategy to DEVALUE the role of emotion was to regard it as a 'secondary' phenomenon reducible to other, more primary, mental phenomena.

If, in other words, emotional appraisal is a form of COGNITION, then the concept of 'emotion' can be reduced to other concepts (namely - the concept of 'cognition'), and 'feeling' is thereby reduced to 'thinking'. In this case, ALL talk of emotion (and feeling) COULD, theoretically, be translated into the vocabulary of cognition (and thinking) - and we are back at a level-one view of feeling and emotion!

With this in mind, let us continue with a review of this very significant debate.

Plutchik, although he asserts that thinking or cognition originally evolved in the service of emotions (117), like Lazarus (above) posits a sequence in which cognition precedes emotion in the appraisal process. Zajonc, in contrast, challenged the commonly held assumption that affect is a postcognitive phenomenon, arguing that affective experience often takes place 'prior to any higher-level cognitive processing of information' (Greenberg, 120). Greenberg and Safran (1984, 1986b) agree with Zajonc that it is a mistake to consider emotion to be a postcognitive event. But they also point out that emotion and cognition are 'inferred entities' which can be distinguished for conceptual purposes but are 'in reality fused together and inseparable' - a position that is somewhat reminiscent of Magda Arnold's earlier view (which conceived of 'knowing-and-liking' as a closely knit unit). Safran and Greenberg conclude:

Whether, in the final analysis, Zajonc's argument about the precognitive nature of affect is judged valid or not, we do believe that his work has served a vitally important function. It has challenged the prevailing assumption in experimental psychology that cognition is in some sense more fundamental than emotion. (123)

This debate regarding the alleged cognitive component of emotion was recently joined by Ellsworth (1994), who points out that the answer to this question depends on one's definitions of cognition and emotion:

One's answer to the question of minimal cognitive prerequisites [of emotion] depends on one's definition of cognition and on one's definition of emotion... If sensory information processing is considered cognitive, then most if not all emotions will show some 'cognitive' contribution. If one defines cognition as involving conscious prepositional analysis, then a larger proportion of emotional experiences will be defined as noncognitive, at least at their onset. (The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, 193)

Frijda, who also sees the definition of 'emotion' as pivotal, argues that there exist emotions that do not display a cognitive component :

I think there is no disagreement whatever on the possibility of noncognitive elicitation of affect and mood. I believe that nobody contests the essentially noncognitive determination of the likes and dislikes for particular smells, tastes, and bodily sensations, at least for certain ones. Nothing other than direct prewired determinations appears to be involved ...(199)

Robert Solomon, a contemporary philosopher, in another recent (1994) article begins by arguing the opposite position - that emotion does contain a cognitive element:

... emotions already 'contain' reason, and practical reason is circumscribed and defined by emotion (Solomon, 1976, 1991). (Neitzsche: 'as if every passion didn't contain its quantum of reason!') Our emotions situate us in the world, and so provide not so much the motive for rationality much less its opposition but rather its very framework. Every emotion involves what Gordon (1987) designated a conceptual 'structure' of judgments that can be well wrought or foolish, warranted or unwarranted, correct or incorrect. Anger involves judgments of blame, jealousy includes jugements about a potential threat or loss. ...(294)

But on closer inspection it turns out that he actually wishes to INVERT the relationship between reason and emotion, making emotion the PRIMARY frame! :

My point, then, is not just to defend the rationality of the emotions, a now well-established and much-mulled over thesis, but to establish what one might call the emotional grounding of rationality. What I want to reject here is the now-prevalent idea that rational criteria are simply the presuppositions of emotion or the external standards by which emotions and their appropriateness may be judged. That would leave standing the idea of a rational framework within which the emotions may be appropriate or inappropriate, warranted or unwarranted, wise or foolish. I want to suggest rather that emotions constitute the framework (or frameworks) of rationality itself. ['Sympathy and Vengeance: the Role of the Emotions in Justice', in EMOTION: ESSAYS ON EMOTION THEORY (295)].

Solomon theory is an attempt to affect what we have described, in an earlier paper, as an inversion in the nesting sequence of function-related frames - shifting, in this case, from a T/F (Thinking/Feeling) nesting sequence to an F/T (Feeling/Thinking) sequence. ⁵ In other words, instead of merely conceding that cognitive JUDGMENT precedes emotional reaction, he is suggesting that we think of cognitive appraisal as itself occuring within a framework of wider scope, provided by FEELING - a framework that enables us to discern what is 'right' and what is 'wrong', thereby ultimately providing the foundation for determining what is 'rational'. For Gendlin, as well, feeling (which is preconceptual and preverbal) guides conceptualization (Greenburg, 61). To these views, which tend to emphasize the role of MOOD, we shall return in our discussion of level-three theories.

The 'Adaptive' Function of Feeling

Finally, level-two feeling provides the individual not only with a value-based frame in which 'appraisal' processes become possible, emotion has an ADAPTIVE and REGULATORY function as well. Hillman refers to this when he says :

... the well-known 'emergency' function of emotion in fulfilling a 'homeostatic' requirement as part of the 'wisdom of the body' is widely presented and discussed in detail in the literature. (102)

By using emotion, the individual establishes a 'homeostatic balance of the whole person in his situation'. (263)

Because feeling, at this level of analysis, assists the organism to deal with key survival issues and is therefore biologically adaptive (Sullivan, in Greenberg, 66, and Plutchik, in Greenberg, 117) the capacity to access true feelings is 'the SINE QUA NON of psychological health', as Horney recognized (Greenberg, 66).

According to Greenberg and Safran, who are contemporary proponents of a primarily level-two theory of emotion, emotion is an ally in the change process of individuals. Growth requires not only an unblocking of inhibited feeling, but a COMPLETION of emotional processes initiated by the release of feeling (7).

Without free access to the information generated [by emotion], people cut themselves off from a source of affective information that is essential for adaptive functioning and survival. As people become more open to attending to this source of information and learn to use it as a guide to interpret their worlds, they become more adaptively oriented to their worlds, less defensive, and have less need to guard against their feelings. Thus, attending to and becoming aware of emotions, and in certain instances, being able to express them, helps people to access biologically adaptive information that can aid problem solving and facilitate therapeutic change. (4)

This leads us, quite naturally, to level three theories - which posit not only evaluatory and regulatory functions of emotion, but a SELF-ORGANIZING function as well.

Conclusion

skip to footnotes and references

In this section our focus was on level-two theories, which begin to describe emotion in its rich complexity and variety. We looked, in some detail, at the purposes that are ascribed to emotion by level-two theorists:

• an evaluatory or 'appraisal' function
• an adaptive function

We discussed the current debate over whether emotion or cognition is to be construed as playing a more fundamental role in the appraisal processes associated with the feeling function. We intimated that the rival positions in this debate might be seen as reflecting deeply embedded Type-related biases on the part of the theoriticians who hold these views, and suggested that the outcome of the debate will have important ramifications with respect to whether psychology opts to understand feeling and emotion from a level-two or level-one perspective.