ABSTRACT
It is appropriate to segue from memory to emotion since in many respects their stories are similar. Each demonstrably varies greatly across time and cultures in how they are conceptualised and the range of phenomena to which they refer. Also, like memory, emotion is inextricably entangled with all the other psychological phenomena, processes and states which comprise our lives. In some ways emotion is even more problematical. Whereas the category ‘memory’ dates back to antiquity (even if its meanings have oscillated over time) ‘emotion’, in English, only became firmly established around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while some cultures lack any such generic category even though possessing specific emotion terms. Moreover, while memory can be seen as a relating to technical issues of how past experiences are stored and recovered, emotion pertains to the very meaning of human life and is a topic of study, far beyond Psychology, in anthropology and cultural history for example.
