ABSTRACT
The excitatory aspect of emotions is intimately associated with the cognitive elements of the same affect experience and, at the same time, represents the entire organismic participation in the event. Thus, it is impossible to explore the energizing aspects of emotions and still maintain the mind-body split. Hence, this journey of exploration may prove a bit trying to those who are faint-hearted about switching "frames of reference." The activating quality of emotions is both physical and mental. Studying it gives us a chance to reconcile and harmonize the psychological and physiological points of view. If we do not venture into the interface between these views, we remain unprepared to deal with challenges such as the one posed by the experiments of Frankenhauser (1967) and later of Goldstein, Fink, and Meeter (1972), who demonstrated that the injection of a placebo was either arousing or depressing, depending on whether the subjects had been told that they had been injected with a stimulant or depressant.
