Also A Wish To Share

• A Wish to Share by D.William, Ph.D., 3/11/98
  
  

Dr. William - I read your post with a strong sense of understanding your position. I have been a clinical psychologist for nearly 25 years and, like you, have become increasingly wary of being seduced by yet another set of attractive ideas promulgated by appealing, bright, charismatic people. In fact, the lack of well-defined, firmly established empirical foundations, along with the tendencies of theorists and their disciples to either ignore or twist phenomena that do not fit their theories, led me to adopt an atheoretical eclecticism more than a decade ago.

I held onto this not very happy eclecticism until last August --- when I happened upon this forum, and like you, with rapt attention, read all the posts from the beginning, as well as some of Nathansonís and Tomkinsí writings. What intrigued me most was the foundations of affect theory - in particular the empirical identification of the nine basic affects as distinct patterns of facial expressions, physiological phenomena, body postures, vocalizations and phenomenological experiences. These 9 affects were identified and validated primarily through observations of infants and through extensive cross-cultural studies. There is much empirical evidence that these 9 affects (interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, distress-anguish, anger-rage, fear-terror, surprise-startle, shame, disgust, and dissmell) are innate human reaction patterns (some of which we share with other animals) - wired in, not a matter of choice, and not constructed by us. Prior to Tomkins they were either poorly understood (eg in psychoanalysis, cognitive theories and therapies, and various theories of emotion) or totally ignored (eg behaviorism).

The understandings Tomkins constructed from this well-grounded basis are very powerful. Iím a beginner at studying affect/script theory but have already seen a number of difficult issues that I could not previously grasp make sense. I have pursued my studies of affect/script theory with an "Iím from Missouri, show me" attitude and will continue to do so. I am a veteran of too many futile theoretical wars to allow myself to be ambushed again!! I encourage you to continue in your "catching up."

No Replies