The James-Lange theory of emotions : a critical examination and an alternative theory / by W.B. Cannon.

  • Walter Bradford Cannon
Date:
[1927?]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The James-Lange theory of emotions : a critical examination and an alternative theory / by W.B. Cannon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    associational and motor elements explain all.’’? The main evidence cited for the theory is that we are aware of the tensions, throbs, flushes, pangs, suffocations—we feel them, indeed, the moment they occur—and that if we should take away from the picture of a fancied emotion these bodily symptoms, nothing would be left. According to Lange‘ stimulation of the vasomotor center is ‘‘the root of the causes of the affections, however else they may be con- stituted.” ‘‘We owe all the emotional side of our mental life,” he wrote, ‘our joys and sorrows, our happy and unhappy hours, to our vasomotor system. If the impressions which fall upon our senses did not possess the power of stimulating it, we would wander through life unsympathetic and passionless, all impressions of the outer world would only enrich our experience, increase our knowledge, but would arouse neither joy nor anger, would give us neither care nor fear.’ Since we are unable to differentiate subjectively between feelings of a central and peripheral origin, subjective evidence is unreliable. But because wine, certain mushrooms, hashish, opium, a cold shower, and other agencies cause physiological effects which are accompanied by altered states of feeling, and because abstraction of the bodily manifestations from a frightened individual leaves nothing of his fear, the emotion is only a perception of changes in the body. It is clear that Lange had the same conception as James, but elaborated it on a much narrower basis—on changes in the circulatory system alone. A CONSIDERATION OF THE VISCERAL FACTORS The backflow of impulses from the periphery, on which James relied to account for the richness and variety of emotional feeling, was assumed to arise from all parts of the organism, from the muscles and skin as well as the viscera. To the latter, however, he inclined to attribute the major rédle—on “‘the visceral and organic part of the expression,” he wrote, “it is probable that the chief part of the felt emotion depends.”® We may distinguish, therefore, his two sources of the afferent stream. We shall first consider critically the visceral source. In connection therewith we shall comment on Lange’s idea that the vasomotor center holds the explanation of emotional ex- perience. 3 James, op. cit., 123. *Lange, op. cit., 73. *James, op. cit., 116
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