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Emotion, Thought and Therapy A Study of Hume and Spinoza and The Relationship of Philosophical Theories of Emotion To Psychological Theories of Therapy, 1st Edition Entire Volume Download

The book 'Emotion, Thought and Therapy' by Jerome Neu explores the philosophical theories of emotion as articulated by Hume and Spinoza, and their implications for psychological theories of therapy. It argues that thoughts play a crucial role in understanding and classifying emotions, challenging the Humean view that emotions are primarily feelings with incidental thoughts. The text also examines how these philosophical perspectives can inform and enhance therapeutic practices, particularly in psychoanalysis.

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268 views16 pages

Emotion, Thought and Therapy A Study of Hume and Spinoza and The Relationship of Philosophical Theories of Emotion To Psychological Theories of Therapy, 1st Edition Entire Volume Download

The book 'Emotion, Thought and Therapy' by Jerome Neu explores the philosophical theories of emotion as articulated by Hume and Spinoza, and their implications for psychological theories of therapy. It argues that thoughts play a crucial role in understanding and classifying emotions, challenging the Humean view that emotions are primarily feelings with incidental thoughts. The text also examines how these philosophical perspectives can inform and enhance therapeutic practices, particularly in psychoanalysis.

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Emotion, Thought and Therapy<br/>
A Study of Hume and Spinoza and the Relationship
of Philosophical Theories of Emotion to

Psychological Theories of Therapy

Jerome Neu

f
V*
|) fj Routledge
m m
i
Taylor &.Francis Group
published in 1977
First
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

This edition first published in 2022


by Routledge<br/>
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge<br/>
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business


© Jerome Neu 1977
All rightsreserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
or

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or


retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publisher's Note<br/>
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points
out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer<br/>
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
correspondence they have been unable to
from those contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 0710086008


ISBN: 978-1-032-35015-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-32501-7 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-35046-2 (pbk)

Book DOI 10.4324/9781003325017


Emofion,Thought
& Therapy
A Study of Hume and Spinoza and the Relationship of Philosophical
Theories of the Emotions to Psychological Theories of Therapy

Jerome Neu

Assistant Professor of Humanities


University of California, Santa Cruz
First published in 1977
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street,
London WC1 E 7DD and
Broadway House,
Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames,
Oxon RG9 1EN

Set in Monotype Bell


and printed in Great Britain by
Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol

Copyright Jerome Neu 1977

No part of this
book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Neu, Jerome
Emotion, thought & therapy.
1. Hume, David –Psychology
2. Spinoza, Benedictus de Psychology
–

3. Psychotherapy History
–

I. Title
152.4'092'2 B1499.E/
ISBN 0-7100-8600-8
For Stuart and Renee Hampshire
Contents

Acknowledgmentsix
1
Introduction

I Hume
1 Impressions of Reflexion
7
2 Pride and Double Association
8
10

3 ‘Limitations’
4 Association: Resemblance and Simplicity11
5 Association: Simplicity and the Essential16
6 Impressions of Pleasure and Pleasant Impressions 20
7 Self and the Idea of Self
24
8 Emotion and Object26
9 Object and Effect28
10 Object and Cause
32
11 Thought-Dependence36
12 Sympathy and Knowledge of Other Minds46
13 Calm Passions53
14 Thought, Turbulence, and Action56
Hume’s Classification of the Passions (diagram)68

II Spinoza
1 Conatus and Unconscious Desire 71
2 Pleasure and Pain and the Spinozist Analysis of Love 76
3 Active/Passive and the Intellectual Love of God 79
4 More Adequate Ideas and Activity81
5 Transforming Emotions84
6 Intellectual or Social Emotions92
7 Active Emotion and Action 97
III Thought, Theory and Therapy
1 Non-Analytical Therapies107
2 Behaviour Therapy and 'Effectiveness'108
3 Lévi-Strauss and Quesalid
112
4 Consensus and Curing
114
5 Structuralist Explanation: Coherence and Correspondence
and Curing
117
6 Psychoanalysis and Shamanism: The ‘Same Forces’? 122
7 Little Hans and Little Albert, Psychoanalysis and Behaviour
Therapy: On Aetiology and Displacement124
8 Nosology and Anthropology128
9 Psychoanalysis and Behaviour Therapy: The Effectiveness
of Interpretations 133
10 Insight Enough135
Is Not
11 Freud’s ‘Theory’ of the Emotions139
12 Unconscious Fantasy and Emotion 143
146

13 Spinoza: ‘The of
Philosopher Psychoanalysis’

In 152
Summary
Appendix A: On Objects and Causes157

Appendix B: On Thoughts and Emotions165

Appendix C: On a Humean View of Fantasy169


Notes175

Bibliography181
Index
189
Acknowledgments

At various points, in a variety of ways, a number of people have helped


to make this book possible. I would like especially to thank Rogers
Albritton, Stanley Cavell, Patrick Gardiner, Pam Matz, Pat Patterson,
and David Pears.
Part III includes material previously published in Man: The Journal
of the Royal Anthropological Institute (Vol. X) and Psychoanalysis and
Contemporary Science (Vol. IV).
Preparation of the manuscript was assisted by Faculty Research
Funds granted by the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Jerome Neu
Introduction

The world of and the world of thought are not unrelated. How
feeling
they related, however, is a matter of dispute. I will be discussing
are
Hume and Spinoza as the best and most systematic representatives of
two different traditions of argument about their relation. Hume and
those who follow him treat emotions as
essentially feelings (‘affects’
or ‘impressions’) with
thoughts incidentally attached. Spinoza and
those who follow him, on the other hand, treat emotions as essentially
thoughts (‘beliefs’ or ‘ideas’) with feelings incidentally attached. I
think that strong arguments can be produced to show that the Spinozists
are closer to the truth, that is, that
thoughts are of greater importance
than feelings (in the narrow sense of felt sensations) in the classification
and discrimination of emotional states. Spinoza can, for example,
account for ranges of intellectuality among emotions and within particular
emotions that Hume has difficulty even in recognizing. It is no
part of these arguments to deny the importance of affects or feelings or
other elements constituting emotions, but rather to understand how
these elements fit together and to bring out the special importance of
thoughts in discriminating mental states one from another. To say that
thoughts are ‘essential’ is to say, for example, that what is most distinctive
about my anger is the belief (roughly) that someone has caused
me harm, and that without that belief or something like it my state
could not be one of ‘anger’.The point here is more than the general
linguistic one that one could not mark the difference between apples and
oranges if one lacked separate labels for them, that one might not be
able to notice the difference if one had no
way to describe it in that –

case there would none the less be apples and oranges (one just might
suffer from an unfortunate tendency to confuse them, in ordering over
the telephone and so on, under the heading of ‘fruit’). But in the case
of emotions, without appropriate beliefs one lacks not only the capacity
for discriminating emotions, but also the emotions themselves. Appropriate
beliefs (whether conscious or unconscious) constitute an essential
part of what it means to have an emotion. If one has no ground for
ascribing the appropriate type of belief to oneself or to another
– –

one then has no ground for attributing one type of emotion rather

than another. Distinguishing a person’s beliefs provides us with the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003325017-1
Introduction

interpretive grounds for recognizing his emotions. But in order to be


angry there is no particular feeling or sensation I need have; indeed, if
I happen to have a particular sensation (e.g. my stomach churns) it is
relevant to my anger only if I believe (something like) it is due to
someone’s causing me harm. Detached from my beliefs, a stomach ache
does not amount to anger or to any other emotion. We will be pursuing
these points and looking at how understanding the ways in which we
discriminate and identify emotions may help us in understanding how
we may (in some ways) change them.
Different views on the roles of thought and feeling in the nature of
emotions have further implications. For example, the Humean and
Spinozist theories yield very different perspectives on the power of
poetry. For the Humean, the poet can at best provide a new label for
an old feeling. Where emotions
are essentially affects, mental
feelings
or sensations (as in the James-Lange theory) the perception of
or

physiological changes, there is no reason in the nature of things why all


people (and even all animals, i.e. non-language users) should not be
open (without special training or contexts) to all emotions. Gaps in
feeling would be rather like gaps in sensation, requiring either wider
experience or (like colour-blindness) medical treatment. The poet
would have nothing special to offer.
The situation is rather different on a Spinozist view. The poet, in
giving one a new way of describing the world, could also be giving one
a new way of conceiving and so perceiving and experiencing the world:
he could extend one’s emotional life. ‘We say a dog is afraid his master
will beat him; but not, he is afraid his master will beat him tomorrow.
Why not?’ (Wittgenstein, 1953, section 650). Conceptions of time
depend on language, and so a creature without language will lack an
emotional life extended in time. Where emotion is essentially characterized
through thought, a new way of thinking can also be a new way
of feeling (now taken in a broad sense). A person who was closed to
certain sorts of understanding and perception, would also be closed to
certain emotions. The poet might provide valuable therapy for such
limitations (as Wordsworth did for Mill).
Here, however, I will be concerned with the implications of Spinozist
theory in another area. I think that it can contribute to showing that
Freudian or, more generally, analytic therapies make philosophic sense.
That is, we can begin to understand how people’s emotional lives might
be transformed by consideration and interpretation of their memories,
beliefs, fantasies, and so on; how knowledge might help make one free.
If thoughts or beliefs are essential constituents of emotions, we can go
some way towards understanding how psychoanalytic therapies (as
opposed to ‘non-rational’ behaviourist manipulations) can alter emotional
life by changing beliefs. This is not to argue that psychoanalysis works
better than other therapies, or even that it works. It may well be that
Introduction

for some sorts of problems electrical shock, for example, is the most
effective treatment available. But when shock works, its mechanism is
opaque to us. When psychoanalysis works, we may find in Spinoza the
beginning of an understanding of how it works.
Therapy through 'insight' depends importantly on the nature of
unconscious thoughts and beliefs. Considering the role of thought in
ordinary emotional contexts may help us to explain that importance.
We may be able to extend our ordinary model of the emotions to include

the cases dealt with by psychoanalysts. But before we can proceed to do


so, we must determine the type of model to which our ordinary attitudes
and emotions are amenable. The contrasting models I will explore are
those delineated by Spinoza and Hume. I have said that Spinoza’s view
of the emotions is reflected in modern analytical therapies. I believe
that Hume’s view is similarly reflected in modern ‘non-rational’ psychological
therapies. The theory that informs modern behaviour therapies
apparently rejects reference to introspectable inner states (those states
which Hume termed ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’). But more significant, I
think, is the fact that both Hume and the behaviourists neglect the
importance of thoughts. They do this in different ways, but the under-
lying theories of emotion and mind here come together. Hume neglected
the significance of thoughts and beliefs, assimilating them (not to
behaviour) but to feeling. The behaviourists, in their turn, assimilate
both thought and feeling to their manifestations in behaviour. But
thoughts cannot be simply read off from behaviour and mechanisms of
association are inadequate for accounting for the relations of thoughts.
In any case, the role of thoughts in discriminating mental states is not
sufficiently appreciated. In this, and in their model and mechanisms of
the mind, the behaviour therapists are among the modern representatives
of the Humean tradition of argument about the emotions.
Our discussion here will begin with a detailed analysis of the theories
formulated by Hume and Spinoza and move on to a survey of psychological
therapies and the roles they assign to thoughts. We will find
that there is spectrum of philosophical theories of emotion and a spectrum
a

of psychological theories of therapy, and that behind both lie


differences on the nature and importance of thought-dependence. A
Spinozist understanding of how thoughts are built into emotions can, I
think, help us to understand Freudian and other analytic theories and
therapies. That is, it can help us to see how reason can be more than
merely the slave of the passions.

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