The Person in Between Moods and Affects

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the nature of two aspects of human emotional experience—moods and affects—in their relation to the concept of the person. We argue for the importance of the concept of the person in an approach to human emotional experience. This paper differentiates between the concepts of minimal self, extended self, and person. Furthermore, it offers a phenomenological proposal to understand the feeling dimension of moods and affects as critical for the differentiation of human emotional experience, and hence an understanding of that experience. By way of conclusion, we opt for a narrative approach to the question of the normative dimension of emotional experience to clarify the intricate relationship between mood and personhood.

Staging atmospheres: Materiality, culture, and the texture of the in-between

“…Quite often it has been taken for granted as a kind of shorthand for capturing 'collective affects' or individual moods and feelings (Anderson, 2009;Rosfort and Stanghellini, 2009;Stewart, 2011). Or when philosopher Brennan (2004: 1) starts her book on the transmission of affect by asking 'Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and "felt the atmosphere"?'.…”

Abnormal Time Experiences in Major Depression: An Empirical Qualitative Study

“…Emotions are kinetic, dynamic forces that drive us in our ongoing interactions with the environment [73][74][75] , or goal-oriented appetitive orientations [67] . They are functional states which motivate and may produce movements [76,77] and protentional states which project the person into the future providing a felt readiness for action [78] . An emotion situates a person, allowing him to see the things that surround him as disclosing certain (and not other) possibilities, i.e., a given set of affordable actions.…”

Disordered selves or persons with schizophrenia?

“…Whereas 'selfhood' articulates the phenomenological dimension of our experience of being human, 'personhood' requires a hermeneutical elaboration of the phenomenological method, bringing into account the ontological and normative dimensions of human experience ( [15 & ], pp. [29][30][31][32]. This hermeneutic qualification of phenomenology deals with the fact that first-person experience is not merely concerned with self-awareness and experiential objects but also with how the experienced objects and the sense of being a self are experienced as an integral part of a person's life [26].…”

“…Although human emotions are sometimes characterized by intentional and cognitive contents in the sense that I am often able to assess and comprehend my emotional experiences, there is more to our emotional experience than is disclosed and explained by intentional and conceptual analysis. In fact, emotions are often cognitively impenetrable due to the arational, biological aspect of human emotional experience [15 & , [29][30][31][32][33]. Moreover, there is more to the person that one is than the emotions that one feels.…”