Thwarted Action Needed -- Informational Theories of Emotions

Abstract

The Russian psychologist L. Vygotsky wrote: "The path of definitionand classification followed by psychology over the course of several centuriesled to the fact that of all the chapters of this science, the psychologyof feeling appeared to be fruitless and tedious."The merit of E. A. Salzen, the author of "Thwarted Action State Signalling Theory," is that much more important. He has tried to suggesta synthetic theory of emotions that integrates their psychologic, neurologic,and evolutionary-biological aspects. While reading Salzen's paper,I became convinced of the similarity of a number of its theses with myapproach to the nature of emotions, elaborated by me since 1964 (Simonov,1991).