Universal Expressive Needs: A Critique and a Theory*

Abstract

This article proposes a theory of expressive needs common to all human beings, which grow out of biologically based “coarse emotions”: grief, fear, anger, shame, joy, and love‐attachment. In order to locate the new theory within the framework of existing thought on the relation between culture and biology, I classify, in a provisional way, the major theorists as belonging to one of the following schools of thought: instinctivist, culturist, or humanist. The weakness of each of these positions is outlined, and the way the new theory corrects the weaknesses is described.