ABSTRACT
This chapter continues making the distinction between the labelling of things and the classification of processes. Emotions are the labels of the experience of limbic structures. Feelings are experiences of cognitions about emotion. Both are most frequently experienced together. In this theory, the term emotionality is used to denote this experience. It is a figure-ground experience. For the most part, a feeling is displayed in focal awareness with an emotion residing in the background of awareness. Unlike the cognitive classification of feelings, the NS’s similarity or analogical process has little or no explanatory component to it. This is the experience of emotion. Feelings are expressed in sentences. They are explanations and frequently contain behavioral instructions. As cognitions they are experiences of the self-regulating aspects of the NS. The book’s theory classifies feelings as selves in the process of equilibrating themselves. They both feed affect hunger and respond to invalidations of the NS’s neurological structure. Emotionalities are shaped by interpersonal engagement as the persons grow from infancy through adulthood and are intimate parts of the person (see Chapter 8). This way of thinking creates a theory of emotionality that is useful in psychotherapy.
