Third International Conference on the Teaching of Psychology
ICTP-2008
Leonid. V. Kulikov,
Saint-Petersburg State University,
Russia




THEME OF "FEELING" AS A SECTION OF THE COURSE ON «PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY»

Many current textbooks on psychology of the personality have lack of chapters disclosing such mental phenomenon as feeling (for example, Rubinshtain S. “Fundamentals of Psychology”, 1989, Asmolov A. “Psychology of Personality”, 1990, Nemov R. “Psychology”, “Psychology of Personality” ed. by Ermakov P., Labunskaya V., 2007, Gleitman atc., “Basic Psychology”, 2000) Even authors of books especially devoted to emotions do not focus on or even omit information on feelings, emotional experiences and moods.

The issue that the emotional manifestations are highly various, often remains undiscovered. Feelings have significant specificity; therefore their unification with emotions is not reasonable in many cases. Emotions prepare a personality and an organism to react on a situation and they regulate human behavior in certain conditions. An emotion is an experience in this actual moment (acute, current, and short-term). Emotions have psychophysiologic nature, include psychic, vegetative, and psychomotor components. Feelings are experience of disposal to surrounding reality (to people, to their actions, to things, to phenomena, to events) and to him- or herself. Feelings are relatively stable experience, they relate with events, in which the object of feelings is include.

Absence of the section under discussion in textbooks on psychology of the personality raise certain challenges for students. First of all, it concerns students focused on forthcoming professional activity as a psychologist-consultant, psychologist-psychotherapist, psychologist working in services of emergency psychological help and other areas.

It is possible to give examples, showing the increasing demand for concepts from area of psychology of feelings. To our opinion, they have a high potential for the description and interpretation. It should be noted that in ordinary consciousness and in the majority of popular books issued in huge circulations, complicated questions of psychology of influence, transfer of emotions and moods in interpersonal interaction are treated. Most part of these books is written not by academic psychologists or professional psychotherapists. Their authors are representatives of "alternative" psychology and psychotherapy. The psychology of feelings certainly should take the place in the list of courses of the open psychological education, in order to support education of the broad audiences of the population.

The report discloses, a spectrum of concepts concerning matters under discussion and a structure of chapter on psychology of feelings. The structure can be following:

  • Basic concepts: sensation, affect, experience, feelings, relation, attitude, state, mood. Emotions and feelings. Relationship and feelings.
  • Phenomenology of feelings. Descriptions of feelings. (strength, width, lability, stability of feelings).
  • Feeling classification. Feelings to the world. Control feelings: satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Interaction feelings: closing, moving away.
  • Individuality and feelings. Desire and passion.
  • Diagnostic methods for feelings and mood.
  • Training for feeling realization.
  • Practice of feeling and mood control.

Back to index of presentations

 

Home Page


© 2008 Victor Karandashev