A UNIFIED INTERPRETATION OF EMOTION AND MOTIVATION *

My purpose here is to show that emotional and motivational phenomena can be validly and profitably described, studied, and interpreted in terms of a common set of neuropsychological concepts. The idea is not new. Customarily, no distinction is made between “motivational” brain and “emotional” or “visceral” brain; the neural structures that are involved in what are called emotional actions, such as escape and avoidance (fear), hostile attack (anger), attachment to objects and places (love), expansive approach (joy), and timid withdrawal (depression), are the same as those involved in so-called motivational actions, such as eating, drinking, copulating, and caring for the offspring. Further, emotions (e.g., fear, anger, love) have frequently been postulated a\ disrupters of motivated behavior. And motives (e.g.. hunger, sex, maternal concern) are widely recognized as contributors to emotional responses. But, apart from some broad earlier formulations (e.g., Duffy, 1941 & 1962: Leeper, 1948 & 1965; McDougall, 1912), no detailed integration of the two concepts within a single neuropsychological schema has 70 far been advanced. The present attempt revts on the emerging view of motivation as being linked as much to environmental incentive stimuli as to internal organismic conditions. I start, therefore, with a tentative formulation of the nature of emotional-motivational processes, a formulation in which the focal concept is that of “central motive state” (CMS). This will be followed by qections dealing with the implications of this formulation for certain traditional problems of emotion and for future research.