Early notebooks by Dona Torr
Torr01 - The contents of these notebooks can be loosely defined as covering three main subject areas: Love and Hate; Psychology and Science; Collectives and Customs, here follows a summary of each area. Donna Torr's research on Love and Hate focusses predominantly on love; this focus encompasses both intense adult love and a deep regard for a person's welfare, such research provides a context for Torr's exploration of the necessity of reciprocity in such feelings in order for pity to be acceptable. The extracts on sexual love express the intense joy of having love reciprocated, an area explicated in the research on Joy; however, the extracts relating to sexual love also explore the detrimental effects upon a lover when their love is not returned and faces infidelity or rejection. The study of hatred seeks to uncover both how love can turn to hate and how impersonal hatreds are formed, through varied examples of hatred's manifestations. Torr's research on Children's Love and the Love for Nature demonstrates how love itself can become manifest in childhood, whether in regard to the opposite sex or to nature, and how it can develop over the years. Torr's research on Science and Psychology covers issues both theoretical and observational as extracts of Charles Darwin's self-observations attempt self-analysis and extracts discussing other instances of self-valuation explore vanity alongside pride and abuse of power. Selections from the research of Kohler and of Freud provide a more theoretical view of behaviour by people and animals; the selections from Freud's work focus on the development of sexuality in children, as does Havelock Ellis' analysis of Freud's work, whilst the selections from Kohler's work focus on adaptability in animals. The work on Collectives and Customs explicates the mores of Respect and Honour as cultural concepts. Factors relating to the formation and demonstration of respect can be contrasted with commentary on honour by Jonathan Swift and John Dryden. Marriage and Religious Conversion are explored as cultural phenomena from the moment of their conception to the consequences of their occurrence. The research on Ethics then uncovers how the ethical comes to be considered as ethical in relation to common interest and how the unethical act is punished. The core emphasis underpinning this research is a focus on the motivations behind the actions of humans and animals, whether emotional, developmental, or societal; the particular focus is upon how external actors and phenomena affect the motivations of the individual. |
