Operating with a strong Victorian attitude (Rieff, 1979), Dr. Freud might suggest that a splash of anxiety across our face moves us to anticipating unacceptable urges that could get us in trouble. We want to “tell off our boss” and experience a bout of anxiety when thinking of engaging in this action. A handsome man is attending the conference where we will be speaking. Relationships with our spouse have been problematic recently. We are at a bar in the hotel, and after a couple of drinks, he suggests that we follow up with drinks in his room. Anxiety wells up, and our superego takes charge. We decline his offer.
Hobart Mowrer (1961), a noted behavioral psychologist, might even chime in at this point. He would suggest that our anxiety arises from our genuine sense of Guilt. Our potential actions are not aligned with deeply held values. We are splashed with a bit of stinging anxiety and decide to return to our own hotel room, call our spouse, and do some more preparation for our upcoming speech.
We could also turn to one of Freud’s one-time colleagues, this being Carl Jung. Dr. Jung might enter the conversation about anticipation by agreeing with Dr. Freud that we are strongly influenced when appraising our current setting by unconscious forces. However, these forces arise not from some super-ego or God-driven condemnation of certain urges; rather, they arise from our feminine (animus) and masculine (anima) attraction to certain “shiny” objects, people, and events (Jung, 2013).
We are animated in our anticipation of something we find attractive, compelling, and exciting. It is a bit like what James Redfield (2018) described in his best-selling book, The Celestine Prophecy. I would suggest that something we encounter is “shimmer.” Engaging the concept of synchronicity (also explored by Jung), Redfield wrote about the remarkable vibration that comes with encountering and accessing some deep, integrative energy.
At an even deeper level, our anticipations could be directed by the appearance (real or imagined) of strong archetypal images (Jung, 1978). Our handsome gentleman at the bar might be charming, representing a “puer aeternus” (eternal child) archetype. We are enthralled with his wit and sense that anything is possible in life. If a male, our boss might trigger the archetype of a domineering father. If female, our boss might evoke the archetypal image of a malicious witch. None of these archetypal images represent anything like reality; however, each of them can strongly influence our anticipation of upcoming interactions with the person who elicits one of these images.
We might invite one final set of psychoanalysts into our exploration of Emotions and anticipation. These are the so-called “object relations” theorists and therapists who dwell on the way each of us produces certain psychic objects and allows our experience of these objects to influence how we view and act in the world. Turning not to the archetypal images of Carl Jung, but instead to early life experiences (particularly with one’s mother), the object relations theorists tend to view relationships with other people that are troubled as subject to such dynamics as psychic splitting (this person is either all good or all bad), projection (moving part of oneself that is unacceptable or disturbingly powerful to the other person) and/or containment (looking for someone who can help contain our anxiety) (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983).
We can apply our Polystatic perspective to an appreciation of these dynamics. We might suggest, for instance, that our anticipation of impact regarding a potential action is determined by whether or not we think the person we are planning to engage is good or bad. The Osgood semantic differential is in full operation regarding valence! We might instead anticipate that the person we are engaging will react to us in a way that we might if fully aware of our own perspectives and motives. Beyond what Argyris and Schön proposed, the process of projection involves the unconscious generation of assumptions about other people that relate to our own psyche. We don’t realize that these assumptions are really all about us—not them!
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