be afraid of, something to justify his frightened state?
This may be the way in which abnormal fears sometimes arise: a
naturally timid individual is thrown by some obscure stimulus into the
state of fear, and then attaches this fear to anything that suggests
itself, and so comes to be afraid of something that is really not very
terrific, such as the number two, "I mustn't do anything twice, that
would be dangerous; if I do happen to do it twice, I have to do it
once more to avoid the danger; and for fear of inadvertently stopping
with twice, it is best always to do everything three times and be
safe." That is the report of a naturally timorous young man. We all
know the somewhat similar experience of being "nervous" or "jumpy"
after escaping from some danger; the organic fear state, once aroused,
stays awhile, and predisposes us to make avoiding reactions. In the
same way, let a man be "all riled up" by something that has happened
at the office, and he is likely to take it out on his wife or
children. Slightly irritating performances of the children, that would
usually not arouse an angry reaction, do so this evening, because that
thing at the office has "made him so cross."

In the same way, let a group of people get into a very mirthful state
from hearing a string of good jokes, and a hearty laugh may be aroused
by a feeble effort that at other times would have fallen flat.

In such cases, the organic state, once set up in response to a certain
stimulus, persists after the reaction to that stimulus is finished and
predisposes the individual to make the same sort of reaction to other
stimuli.

{134}

Emotion and Instinct

Anger, fear, lust, the comfortable state appropriate to digestion,
grief (the state of the weeping child), mirth or amusement, disgust,
curiosity, the "tender emotion" (felt most strongly by a mother
towards her baby), and probably a few others, are "primary emotions".
They occur, that is to say, by virtue of the native constitution, and
do not have to be learned or acquired through experience. They are
native states of mind; or, as modes of behavior, they are like
instincts in being native behavior.

One distinction between emotional and instinctive behavior is that the
emotion consists of internal responses, while the instinct is directed
outwards or at least involves action on external objects. Another
distinction is that the emotional response is something in the nature
of a preparatory r