Two Distinct Psychologies of Emotion 167of emotion. While facial expressions can be classified into
about half a dozen categories, the important steps have been
more analytic and have looked at the constituent compo-
nents of these expressions. Paul Ekman has brought the
analysis of facial movement and expression to a level of
sophistication similar to that applied to the phonological,
phonemic, and semantic components of verbal expressive
experiences (Ekman, 1982; Ekman & Oster, 1979). Ekman
attributes the origin of facial expressions to “affect pro-
grams” and claims that the only truly differentiating outward
sign of the different emotions is found in these emotional
expressions.
Another point of view has considered facial expressions as
primarily communicative devices. Starting with the fact that
it is not clear how the outward expression of inner states is
adaptive, that is, how it could contribute to reproductive fit-
ness, important arguments have been made that facial dis-
plays are best seen (particularly in the tradition of behavioral
ecology) as communicative devices, independent of emo-
tional states (Fridlund, 1991, 1992a; Mandler, 1975, 1992).
Facial displays can be interpreted as remnants of preverbal
communicative devices and as displays of values (indicating
what is good or bad, useful or useless, etc.). For example, the
work of Janet Bavelas and her colleagues has shown the im-
portance of communicative facial and other bodily displays.
The conclusion, in part, is that the “communicative situation
determines the visible behavior” (Bavelas, Black, Lemery, &
Mullett, 1986). In the construction of emotions, facial dis-
plays are important contributors to cognitions and appraisals
of the current scene, similar to verbal, imaginal, or uncon-
scious evaluative representations.
The Conflict Theories
The conflict theories are more diverse than the other cate-
gories that we have investigated. They belong under the gen-
eral rubric of mental theories because the conflicts involved
are typically mental ones, conflicts among actions, goals,
ideas, and thoughts. These theories have a peculiar history of
noncumulativeness and isolation. Their continued existence
is well recognized, but rarely do they find wide acceptance.
One of the major exponents of this theme in modern times
was the French psychologist Frédric Paulhan. He started with
the major statement of his theory in 1884, which was pre-
sented in book form in 1887; an English translation did not
appear until 1930 (Paulhan, 1887, 1930). The translator,
C. K. Ogden, contributed an introduction to that volume that
is marked by its plaintive note. He expressed wonderment
that so little attention had been paid to Paulhan for over 40
years. He complained that a recent writer had assigned to
MacCurdy (1925) the discovery that emotional expressions
appear when instinctive reactions are held up. Ogden hoped
that his reintroduction of Paulhan to the psychological world
would have the proper consequences of recognition and sci-
entific advance. No such consequences have appeared. It is
symptomatic of the history of the conflict theories that de-
spite these complaints, neither Ogden nor Paulhan mention
Herbart (1816), who said much the same sort of thing.
Paulhan’s major thesis was that whenever any affective
events occur, we observe the same fact: the arrest of ten-
dency. By arrested tendency Paulhan means a “more or less
complicated reflex action which cannot terminate as it would
if the organization of the phenomena were complete, if there
were full harmony between the organism or its parts and their
conditions of existence, if the system formed in the first place
by man, and afterwards by man and the external world, were
perfect” (1930, p. 17). However, if that statement rehearses
some older themes, Paulhan must be given credit for the fact
that he did not confine himself to the usual “negative” emo-
tions but made a general case that even positive, pleasant,
joyful, aesthetic emotions are the result of some arrested ten-
dencies. And he also avoided the temptation to provide us
with a taxonomy of emotions, noting, rather, that no two
emotions are alike, that the particular emotional experience is
a function of the particular tendency that is arrested and the
conditions under which that “arrest” occurs.
The Paulhan-Ogden attempt to bring conflict theory to the
center of psychology has an uncanny parallel in what we
might call the Dewey-Angier reprise. In 1894 and 1895, John
Dewey published two papers on his theory of emotion. In
1927, Angier published a paper in thePsychological Review
that attempted to resurrect Dewey’s views. His comments on
the effect of Dewey’s papers are worth quoting: “They fell
flat. I can find no review, discussion, or even specific mention
of them at the time or during the years immediately following
in the two major journals” (Angier, 1927). Angier notes that
comment had been made that Dewey’s theory was ignored be-
cause people did not understand it. He anticipated that another
attempt, hopefully a more readable one, would bring Dewey’s
conflict theory to the forefront of speculations about emotion.
Alas, Angier was no more successful on behalf of Dewey than
Ogden was in behalf of Paulhan. Dewey’s conflict theory, in
Angier’s more accessible terms, was: Whenever a series of
reactions required by an organism’s total “set” runs its course
to the consummatory reaction, which will bring “satisfaction”
by other reactions, there is no emotion. Emotion arises only
when these other reactions (implicit or overt) are so irrelevant
as to resist ready integration with those already in orderly
progress toward fruition. Such resistance implies actual
tensions, checking of impulses, interference, inhibition, or