Page:Outlines of Psychology (Wundt) 1907.djvu/231

 § 13. Emotions. 201 the same occasion vary from moment to moment. Then too, since this variation from moment to moment is essentially determined by the sense-feelings which arise from the accom- panying physical phenomena, in accordance with the prin- ciple of the intensification of emotions discussed above (p. 194), it is obvious that sthenic and asthenic character which is due originally to certain physiological conditions, often has a more decisive influence even on the psychological character of the emotion than the primary psychical intensity itself. 12. The third distinguishing characteristic of emotions, the form of occurrence, is more important. Here we distinguish three classes. First, there are sudden, irruptive emotions, such as surprise, astonishment, fright, disappointment, and rage. They all reach their maximum very rapidly and then gradually sink to a quiet affective state. Second, we have ''gradually arising'' emotions, such as anxiety, doubt, care, mournfulness, expectation, and in many cases joy, anger, worry. These rise to their maximum gradually and sink in the same way. As a third form, and at the same time a modification of the class just mentioned, we have intermittent emotions, in which several periods of rise and fall follow one another alternately. All emotions of long duration belong in this last class. Thus, especially joy, anger, mournfulness, and the most various forms of gradually arising emotions, come in waves and often permit a distinction between periods of increasing and those of decreasing emotional intensity. The sudden, irruptive emotions, on the contrary, are seldom in- termittent. They are intermittent only in cases in which the emotion may belong also to the second class. Such emotions of a very changeable form of occurrence are, for example, joy and anger. They may sometimes be sudden and irruptive. In such cases, to be sure, anger generally becomes rage. Or such emotions may gradually rise and fall, they are then generally of the intermittent type. In