Excerpt from Archives of Psychology, Vol. 8

The ancient and medieval schools of medicine were dom inated by two theories, one that human lives were influenced by the planets and the other that an diseases were due to the excess or defect of one of the four humors - yellow bile or choler, black bile, blood and phlegm.81 These physicians have left records that showed them to be shrewd observers, the evidence of recent times going far to confirm their observa tions that mental qualities do tend to occur in groups, the total mental constitution of a man being termed his tempera ment. Though a temperament is not always present in its purity or in a high degree, yet where it is present, the person who possesses it presents a likeness in mental characteristics to another such as is rarely presented by the different mem bers of a single family.

According to Davenport8 temperament is inherited, periodic outbursts of violent temper being a Mendelian dominant. He has worked out formulae for expressing the possibilities in the inheritance of choleric, cheerful, phlegmatic, melancholic and nervous temperaments and their various combinations.

A. In recent years much prominence has been given to the part played by the bodily states in producing exciting emotion.

The evident connection between the visceral disturbances and the psychic states is admitted by practically all but there is division of opinion as to the manner of connection. This sug gests at once the theory of James,15 which is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact and that the feeling of these same changes as they occur is the emotion. Lange and Sergi23 hold that the basis of all feeling and emotion is physiological, visceral and organic and is located in the vasomotor system.

Sherrington23 made some tests of this View by experiment. He chose for his subject a markedly temperamental dog and made spinal and vagal transections which cut off completely and immediately the sensation of the viscera and of the skin and muscles beyond the shoulder. The procedure at the same time cut from connection with consciousness the whole of the circulatory apparatus of the body. As a result of careful experimenting on the dog in this condition he concludes: We may with James accept visceral and organic sensations and the memories and associations of them as contributory to primitive emotions but we must regard them as reinforcing rather than initiating the psychosis. Organic and vascular reaction, though not the actual excitant of emotion, strength ens it. He further states that we are forced back toward the likelihood that visceral expression of emotion is secondary to the central action occurring with the psychical state.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.