ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three forms of transcendent feelings in world-focused savoring: thanksgiving, marveling, and surrendering oneself to a person or group. It provides an integrative conceptual framework for understanding and distinguishing different types of savoring processes in more depth. The chapter considers different types of savoring responses more generally in terms of their basic functions. It distinguishes savoring experiences, and their underlying savoring processes, in terms of whether they are primarily world-focused or self-focused in their general directedness, and whether they primarily entail cognitive reflection or experiential absorption. Extending the clinical implications of the conceptual model, the chapter proposes that each of the primary savoring processes has a lower order negative counterpart or "opponent process" that, when activated, captures attentional resources and precludes that particular type of higher order savoring experience. Positive events or moments that are discrete and of short duration are more challenging for savoring than are events or experiences of long duration.
