ABSTRACT
The discussion of emotion has been about as confused as that of any topic in psychology, partly because the terminology is often equivocal and partly because tradition carries great weight in this part of the field and it is hard to keep a modern point of view consistently. The present chapter deals with emotional disturbance instead of emotion, for reasons to be made plain; and the discussion is limited in other respects. It is not concerned mainly with sham rage and the hypothalamus, or with emotion as a kind of awareness, or with emotion as it may exist in states of quiet affection and the like. “Emotional disturbance” here is used to refer to the violent and unpleasant emotions, roughly, and to the transient irritabilities and anxieties of ordinary persons as well as to neurotic or psychotic disorder. Let me offer what justification I can for such an arrangement of topics.
