Page:Outlines of Psychology (Wundt) 1907.djvu/221

 § 13- Emotions. igi apperceptive conditions (inner stimulation). Following this inceptive feeling, comes an ideational process accompanied by its corresponding feelings. This process shows, in cases of particular emotions, characteristic differences both in the quality of its feelings and in its rapidity. Finally, the emotion closes with a terminal feeling which continues even after the emotion has given place to a quiet affective state. In this terminal feeling the emotion gradually fades away, unless it passes directly into the inceptive feeling of a new emotion. This last mentioned transition sometimes occurs, especially in feelings of the intermittent type (inf. 13). . The intensification of the effect which may be observed in the course of an emotion, appears not merely in the psy- chical contents of the feelings which compose it, but in the -physical concomitants as well. For single feelings these ac- companying phenomena are usually limited to slight changes in the innervation of the heart and respiratory organs, which can be demonstrated only by using exact graphic methods (p. 96 sq.). It is only in relatively rare cases that, there are added to these minor forms of reaction, mimetic move- ments of even moderate extent and intensity. With emotions the case is essentially different. As a result of the summa- tion and alternation of successive affective stimuli there is in emotions not only an intensification of the effect on heart, blood-vessels, and respiration, but the external muscles are always affected in an unmistakable manner. Strong move- ments of the mimetic muscles appear at first, then movements of the arms and of the whole body (pantomimetic movements). In the case of stronger emotions there may be still more extensive disturbances of innervation, such as trembling, convulsive contractions of the diaphragm and of the facial muscles, and paralytic relaxation of the muscles. Because of their symptomatical significance for the emo- tions, all these movements are called expressive movements.