However, our current approach has compressed a huge field of human functioning under one abstract term which has not served to create understanding. Emotions have been looked upon as “merely” emotions, a “soft” and private matter that can be dismissed.
What has been labeled as “emotions” is, in fact, one particle on a grand territory of health on the Vital level.
In calling upon to changes, I agree with Thomas Dixon from the University of London, who in his paper (Oct. 2012, Emotion Review, Vol. 4, No. 4, Pp 338–344) explains why the current agenda is problematic:
“The word “emotion” (imported into English from the French émotion) was in use already in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many of the most influential theorists of “passions” and “affections” had been moral philosophers, clergymen, or both. By the 1890s, the word “emotion” started to cover all that was previously understood by the terms “feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, passions, sentiments, affections.”
…. The key figure in inventing the category of “emotion” was the Edinburgh professor of moral philosophy Thomas Brown, first published in 1820. A second key figure was another Edinburgh physician and philosopher, Charles Bell. For Bell, an “emotion” was a movement of the mind. In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, this previously “everyday” word became a scientific term. Darwin and James were both influenced by these works.
….“Emotion” is certainly a keyword in modern psychology, but it is a keyword in crisis. Interviews with leading emotion scientists, together with responses from other experts demonstrate that there is still no consensus on the meaning of this term and some even believe that it should be thrown out of psychology altogether.”
The relevance of understanding the practicalities of emotions goes far beyond being merely a matter of taste, philosophy, or whether or not one has a mental health issue.
As a psychiatrist and a professional instructor of the AoCC technology, I propose to expand the current approach to these vital phenomena by introducing a new term for future research:
“Wellbeing on the Vital Level of Functioning”