“To the extent that I managed to translate the emotions into images… I was inwardly calmed and reassured.”
~C. G. Jung
As far back as 1907, Jung proposed a theory that the emotions are at the foundation of the psyche. As primal sources of the higher functions, they motivate and shape the development of thought, action, value, imagery, energy and new consciousness. We look at the distinctive facial and bodily expressions of seven inherited emotions, each with its own intrinsic pattern or category of archetypal imagination.
The natural process of symbolic development transforms the emotions into a sensitive network of feelings, complexes and ultimately the highly evolved expressive patterns of human culture. These include the ceremonial actions of prayer and worship; the arts, especially dance that mirrors the beauty of nature; the formal, emphatic gestures that punctuate scholarly argument; and the social customs that mediate human relationship.
Joan Chodorow, Ph. D. is an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She is the author of Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology, The Moving Imagination and the editor of Jung on Active Imagination. She lectures and teaches internationally.