Reconstructing the history of emotions: Revisiting Elizabeth Duffy’s rejection of the term “emotion”.

Abstract

A frequently recounted narrative about the history of the scientific study of emotion moves quickly from the 19th century pioneers, Charles Darwin and William James, to the 1960s when the cognitive turn and basic emotions approach reemerged. The early-to-mid 20th century is often passed over as a period of behaviorist domination where little substantive work on inner states such as emotion took place. While the neurological theories of James Papez and Paul MacLean proposed during this period are usually mentioned, psychological experimentation and theorizing are typically given short shrift when discussing this era. Reconsideration of the life and work of Elizabeth Duffy (1904Duffy ( -1970, a trenchant critic of the use of emotion as a scientific term during the 1930s and 1940s, reveals that many contemporary debates about the definition of emotion and its relationship to other psychological terms were engaged with vigor during this supposedly arid period for the scientific study of emotion. Duffy questioned the adequacy of everyday language for describing foundational psychological constructs. In her opinion, the term emotion was too imprecise and poorly defined to be of use for scientific purposes The professional difficulties faced by female scientists of her generation are among the multiplicity of factors that contribute to the lack of historical attention to Duffy's work. Here we present Duffy's life and work as a case study of the "emotionology" of second-generation American women psychologists.