Loss of control arising from public passions and hidden agendas

The paper describes progress towards producing deep models of emotion. It does this by working towards the development of a single explanatory framework to account for diverse psychological phenomena where control is lost. Emotion theories are reviewed to show how emotions can be described according to various emotional components and emotional phases. When applied in isolation these components or phases can result in shallow models of emotion. The CogAff schema and HCogAff architecture are presented as frameworks which can be used to organise and integrate these various separate ways in which emotion can be described. The examples of losing control discussed in this paper include: short-term emotional interrupts to ongoing processing; experiencing grief after the loss of an attachment figure; longer term emotional strengthening of motivation; using strong emotions to guarantee keeping one’s own commitments; Freudian Repression as a defensive loss of access to painful information; and self-deception as a general strategy in deceiving others.