Page:Outlines of Psychology (Wundt) 1907.djvu/222

192 //. Psychical Compounds. As a rule they are entirely involuntary, being either reflexes following emotional excitations, or else impulsive acts prompted by the affective components of the emotion. They may be modified, however, in various ways through voluntary intensification or inhibition of the movements or even through intentional production of the same, so that the whole series of external reactions which we shall have to discuss under, volitional acts, may enter into these expressive movements (§ 14).

5. According to their symptomatical character, expressive movements may be divided into three classes. 1) Purely intensive symptoms; these are always expressive movements for more intense emotions, and consist in strong movements when the emotions are of middle intensity, and in sudden inhibitions and paralysis of movement when the emotions are violent. 2) Qualitative expressions of feelings; these are mimetic movements, the most important of which are the reactions of the oral muscles, resembling the reflexes following sweet, sour, and bitter impressions of taste. The reaction for sweet corresponds to pleasurable emotions, the reactions for sour and bitter, to unpleasurable emotions, while the other modifications of feeling, such as excitement and depression, strain and relief, are expressed by a tension of the muscles. 3) Expressions of ideas; these are generally pantomimetic movements which either point to the object of the emotion (indicative gestures) or else describe the objects as well as the processes connected with them by the form of the movement (representative gestures). These three classes of expressive movements correspond exactly to the psychical elements of emotions; the first class corresponds to the intensity of the psychical elements, the second to the quality of the feelings, and the third to the ideational content. A concrete expressive movement may unite all three forms in itself. The third class, that of expressions of ideas, is of special psy-