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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Love Quote of the Day:
"Life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences, but rather it's a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan." --Source Unknown

Acceptance (EMOTION) 250507

Psychology
Emotions

Acceptance
Affection
Ambivalence
Anger
Boredom
Compassion
Doubt
Despair
Disgust
Empathy
Envy
Embarrassment
Excitement
Fear
Frustration
Guilt
Gratitude
Grief
Happiness
Hate
Hope
Horror
Hostility
Homesickness
Jealousy
Loneliness
Love
Pity
Pleasure
Rage
Regret
Remorse
Sadness
Shame
Suffering
Surprise
Sympathy
Wrath
v • d • e

In psychology the terms affection and affective are of great importance. As all intellectual phenomena have by experimentalists been reduced to sensation, so all emotion has been and is regarded as reducible to simple mental affection, the element of which all emotional manifestations are ultimately composed. The nature of this element is a problem which has been provisionally, but not conclusively, solved by many psychologists; the method is necessarily experimental, and all experiments on feeling are peculiarly difficult. The solutions proposed are two. In the first, all affection phenomena are primarily divisible into those which are pleasurable and those which are the reverse. The main objections to this are that it does not explain the infinite variety of phenomena, and that it disregards the distinction which most philosophers admit between higher and lower pleasures. The second solution is that every sensation has its specific affective quality, though by reason of the poverty of language many of these have no name. W. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology (trans. C. H. Judd, Leipzig, 1897), maintains that we may group under three main affective directions, each with its negative, all the infinite varieties in question; these are (a) pleasure, or rather pleasantness, and displeasure, (b) tension and relaxation, (c) excitement and depression. These two views are antithetic and no solution has been discovered.

American psychologist Henry Murray (1893–1988) developed a theory of personality that was organized in terms of motives, presses, and needs. According to Murray, these psychogenic needs function mostly on the unconscious level, but play a major role in our personality. Murrary classified five affection needs:

1. Affiliation: Spending time with other people.
2. Nurturance: Taking care of another person.
3. Play: Having fun with others.
4. Rejection: Rejecting other people.
5. Succorance: Being helped or protected by others

Two obvious methods of experiment on affection have been tried:

1. The first, introduced by A. Mosso, the Italian psychologist, consists in recording the physical phenomena which are observed to accompany modifications of the affective consciousness. Thus it is found that the action of the heart is accelerated by pleasant, and retarded by unpleasant, stimuli; again, changes of weight and volume are found to accompany modifications of affection—and so on. Apart altogether from the facts that this investigation is still in its infancy and that the conditions of experiment are insufficiently understood, its ultimate success is rendered highly problematical by the essential fact that real scientific results can be achieved only by data recorded in connection with a perfectly normal subject; a conscious or interested subject introduces variable factors which are probably incalculable.
2. The second is Fechner's method; it consists of recording the changes in feeling-tone produced in a subject by bringing him in contact with a series of conditions, objects or stimuli graduated according to a scientific plan and presented singly in pairs or in groups. The result is a comparative table of likes and dislikes.

Mention should also be made of a third method which has hardly yet been tried, namely, that of endeavouring to isolate one of the three directions by the method of suggestion or even hypnotic trance observations.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

ACCEPTANCE

For other uses, see Acceptance (disambiguation).
Emotions

Acceptance

Acceptance, in spirituality, mindfulness, and human psychology, usually refers to the experience of a situation without an intention to change that situation. Acceptance does not require that change is possible or even conceivable, nor does it require that the situation be desired or approved by those accepting it. Indeed, acceptance is often suggested when a situation is both disliked and unchangeable, or when change may be possible only at great cost or risk. Acceptance may imply only a lack of outward, behavioral attempts at possible change, but the word is also used more specifically for a felt or hypothesized cognitive or emotional state. Thus someone may decide to take no action against a situation and yet be said to have not accepted it.

Acceptance is contrasted with resistance, but that term has strong political and psychoanalytic connotations not applicable in many contexts. Acceptance is sometimes used with notions of willingness: "Even if an unchosen, undesired, inescapable situation befalls me, I can still willingly choose to accept it."

By groups and by individuals, acceptance can be of various events and conditions in the world; individuals may also accept elements of their own thoughts, feelings, and personal histories. For example, psychotherapeutic treatment of a person with depression or anxiety could involve fostering acceptance either for whatever personal circumstances may give rise to those feelings or for the feelings themselves. (Psychotherapy could also involve lessening an individual's acceptance of various situations.)

Notions of acceptance are prominent in many faiths and meditation practices. For example, Buddhism's first noble truth, "Life is suffering", invites people to accept that suffering is a natural part of life.

Minority groups in society often describe their goal as "acceptance", wherein the majority will not challenge the minority's full participation in society. A majority may be said (at best) to "tolerate" minorities when it confines their participation to certain aspects of society.

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