How I feel is real but not eternal
Course Description
Summary
How have psychologists defined feelings over the years, and how is the field continuing to change? We will begin with the 19th Century, when scientists like Wundt and Charcot brought human perception and mental health symptoms out of the realm of metaphysics. After briefly considering Darwin’s view of emotion and new perspectives on artwork from early asylums, we will evaluate emotion as featured in two central debates from the 20th Century: (1) the psychodynamic approach of Freud, one of Charcot’s students, versus humanism and (2) the behaviorists’ broad rejection of feelings and mental states versus emerging cognitive approaches. We will delve into Ekman’s unique contributions to the study of emotion, inspiration for the recent movie Inside Out, and evidence for and against ties between mood disorders and creativity. Finally, we will review 21st-Century inquiries into emotion regulation, emotional expression, and neurodiversity.
Learning Outcomes
- By doing the work of this course, you will build your knowledge of key moments and theories within psychology relating to emotion and its connections to mental health, such as:
-the emergence of the medical model of psychological distress
-the contrast between conditioning and appraisal explanations of emotion
-universality and culture-specificity of emotional expression
-current debates about the nature and effectiveness of emotion regulation - You will also develop the following skills:
-using Neurotree and forward citation searching to trace the history of theories
-representing different schools of thought in in-class mock debates
-weighing scientific evidence for and against different explanations of emotion
-considering the role of expressive arts in emotion and mood regulation
-explaining current psychological research orally and in writing