Intuiting Meanings Is Serious Business

Reviews the book, Das Gemut: Grundgcdanken zu einer phänomenologischen Philosophic und Theorie des menschlicheii Gefühlslebens by S. Strasser (1956). Strasser's present volume on emotivity purports to be a phenomenological philosophy, yet amounts to a psychology of personality. Many Anglo-American psychologists will not like it. They are brought up in the tradition of 'rigoristic partitive-experimental research,' the tradition under which, the reviewer suggests, research findings are unlikely to fall into broad meaningful patterns, being undirected by heuristic theory at the outset. In a concluding discussion the author interprets a large realm of pleasurable emotions under the term of happiness (Glueck). The phenomenological view reveals them as emotions that transcend the sources from which they stem. Strasser proceeds with the description of pre-intentional life, which is under the predominance of the conativeaffective level. His interpretation first reveals pre-intentional urges (Dranghandlungen) in which man is seen to be groping for unknown need-satisfiers, of which the concomitant emotion is uneasiness. Significantly, Strasser's interpretations of emotional predispositions-attitudes, sentiments, emotional bearing, and personal style of life are familiar to Anglo-American psychologists of personality, for all these attitudes can be described or even measured. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)