Plato ' s legacy : Relationships between cognition , emotion , and motivation 1 Klaus

1 These notes summarize the introductory parts of keynote addresses at meetings of the Société Psychologique de Québec, Québec 1993, and the Assoziatione Italiana de la Psicologia delle Emozioni, Milano 1994. The remainder of the talk consisted of an outline of a nonlinear dynamic system account of emotion. Psychologists feel at ease with behavior they can observe it, classify it, even manipulate it quite successfully. But they have serious difficulties with mental phenomena that control and accompany behavior -like thoughts, emotions, or action tendencies. As implied by the concept mental these processes occcur inside our head and are thus not directly observable. While we may get some glimpses from a person ́s verbal report concerning current thoughts, feelings, or motives or from the effect of the central processes on the periphery, such as physiological symptoms and motor expression in face, voice, and body, we are always constrained by the need to infer the nature of mental activity (Scherer, 1992).