Pleasure - unpleasure : an experimental investigation on the feeling-elements / by A. Wohlgemuth.

  • Wohlgemuth, A. (Adolf), 1868-
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pleasure - unpleasure : an experimental investigation on the feeling-elements / by A. Wohlgemuth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    operation in an emotion of joy (Rule XIX) and destroying the Unpleasure of the pain (Rule XLII). ! The next experience I will endeavour to analyse and explain by these rules is narrated by Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad, chap. 18: Mark Twain had, when a boy, run away from school once and having a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed he crept through a window into ‘his father’s office in order to pass the night there on a _ lounch (? couch). In the dark he espied on the floor a shapeless mass which he failed to make out and which scared him. As the moon crept slowly round. shedding its light through the window it revealed gradually the corpse of a man with a stab in the chest. Mark Twain terrified got out again by the window and hurried home. They whipped him and, he says, he “enjoyed it. It seemed perfectly delightful.” _ This seemingly paradoxical experience may possibly be explained as follows. (2) As Mark Twain hurried home the state of terror doubtless con- tinued. The perseverating image of the murdered man, the thoughts and ideas and the organic sensations (Rule XIX), his attitude of mind (Rule XXIV) all these were connected with and went to make up the emotions of fear and terror and were all extremely unpleasant. (b) The conative movements of flight from the horror were pleasant (Rule XXXVII), but this feeling-element was probably too weak to assert itself (corollary to Rule XLIII, p. 240). ; (c) When he reached home the sight of the house was pleasant owing to its associations (Rule XLIX). (d) The intensity of these Pleasures was increased by contrast after the Unpleasures of the fear and terror (Rule XXX]). (ec) Powerful organic sensations were produced, also highly pleasant, which gave rise to the emotion of joy (Rule XX). (f) The sight of his parents, the sound of their voices, -the idea of having escaped from that horrible situatton in the presence of the murdered man, all were pleasant and added further Pleasures to those of the emotion of joy (Rules XXVIII and LXXIII). (g) The flicks with the whip caused pain which was unpleasant (Rule LIV), but (h) these sensations of touch and pain increased the reality of the whole experience and this idea influenced the unpleasant feeling-element of the pain (Rule XXVI). (1) The feeling-element of this idea of the reality was pleasant in itself and together with the intense Pleasures of the existing emotion of