ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with theories of emotion in psychology. Roughly speaking, psychoanalytic theories seem to be in the nature of general, holistic models of mental functioning, whereas psychological theories are based on a more circumscribed view of systems and their functions. Richard Lazarus believes that the resurgence of a cognitive emphasis in psychology and an increased sophistication concerning the role of biological and cultural elements are the factors that have helped to restore the concept of emotion to the center of attention. It seems that, taken as a whole, Lazarus's theory is one of the most important and robust frameworks contemporary academic psychology has provided until for conceptualizing the emotions. In his 1981 paper, Silvan Tomkins makes several important points concerning the state of affect theory in psychology. Both drives and affects, which Tomkins sees as involving body responses quite distinct from the other bodily responses they are presumed to amplify, require general, nonspecific arousal, which Tomkins calls amplification.
