Tone Roald creates a new foundation for aesthetics by taking seriously real-life experiences with works of art. Relying upon descriptions of experiences with art in the autobiographical and literary texts of St. Augustine, Denis Diderot, Stendahl, Virginia Woolf, and Proust, as well as fifteen-years' worth of interviews with museumgoers about their most intense experiences with visual arts, Roald explores the variety of aesthetic experiences available to us throughout history and articulates why experiences with art remain important today. The book draws upon phenomenological psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural theory to articulate a taxonomy of basic affective experiences with art. What affect is, what affective experiences with art are like, and what meanings these experiences have for us have been limited in aesthetic theory. Beginning with pleasure, continuing with wonder and resonance, and ending with rapture and serenity, she notably reveals similarities in aesthetic experience across history. Roald's work seeks a democratization of art; not concerned with the "correct interpretation" of the work of art or with idealized responses to art, this eye-opening new approach grants primacy to experience – historical and contemporary – and lays an experiential foundation for the development of a different kind of aesthetic theory.

Edgar Rubin was appointed professor and head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen in 1922, establishing the foundation of the Copenhagen School of Phenomenology. This influential research tradition remains active within the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen today, alongside other psychological approaches. The present volume offers the first comprehensive collection of the key insights from this tradition. By publishing this work, the editors aim to introduce these ideas to a broader audience and highlight the essential role of phenomenology in advancing psychological research.

How does art influence us? In The Subject of Aesthetics, Tone Roald approaches aesthetics as a psychological discipline, showing how works of art challenge our habitual ways of perceiving the world. While aesthetics has traditionally been a philosophical discipline, Roald discusses how it is very much alive in the realm of psychology – a qualitative psychology of lived experience. But what actually constitutes an aesthetics of lived experience? The book answers that question by analyzing people’s own engagement with visual art. What emerges is that the object of aesthetics is indeed the subject.

Emotions are essential for human existence, both lighting the way toward the brightest of achievements and setting the course into the darkness of suffering. Not surprisingly, then, emotion research is currently one of the hottest topics in the field of psychology. Yet to divine the nature of emotion is a complex and extensive task. In this book emotions are approached thought an exploration of the nature of cognition in emotion; the nature of thoughts in feelings. Different approaches to emotions are explored, from brain research to research at the level of experience, and it is argued that all approaches must seriously take into account the experiential dimension. A qualitative study of experiences with art is therefore presented, as emotions and cognition are often expressed in experiences with art. It is the first study of its kind. Descriptions of various affective phenomena are then given which have significant implications for contemporary debates about emotions, resolving several contemporary controversies.

Tone Roald creates a new foundation for aesthetics by taking seriously real-life experiences with works of art. Relying upon descriptions of experiences with art in the autobiographical and literary texts of St. Augustine, Denis Diderot, Stendahl, Virginia Woolf, and Proust, as well as fifteen-years' worth of interviews with museumgoers about their most intense experiences with visual arts, Roald explores the variety of aesthetic experiences available to us throughout history and articulates why experiences with art remain important today. The book draws upon phenomenological psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural theory to articulate a taxonomy of basic affective experiences with art. What affect is, what affective experiences with art are like, and what meanings these experiences have for us have been limited in aesthetic theory. Beginning with pleasure, continuing with wonder and resonance, and ending with rapture and serenity, she notably reveals similarities in aesthetic experience across history. Roald's work seeks a democratization of art; not concerned with the "correct interpretation" of the work of art or with idealized responses to art, this eye-opening new approach grants primacy to experience – historical and contemporary – and lays an experiential foundation for the development of a different kind of aesthetic theory.

Edgar Rubin was appointed professor and head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen in 1922, establishing the foundation of the Copenhagen School of Phenomenology. This influential research tradition remains active within the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen today, alongside other psychological approaches. The present volume offers the first comprehensive collection of the key insights from this tradition. By publishing this work, the editors aim to introduce these ideas to a broader audience and highlight the essential role of phenomenology in advancing psychological research.

How does art influence us? In The Subject of Aesthetics, Tone Roald approaches aesthetics as a psychological discipline, showing how works of art challenge our habitual ways of perceiving the world. While aesthetics has traditionally been a philosophical discipline, Roald discusses how it is very much alive in the realm of psychology – a qualitative psychology of lived experience. But what actually constitutes an aesthetics of lived experience? The book answers that question by analyzing people’s own engagement with visual art. What emerges is that the object of aesthetics is indeed the subject.

Emotions are essential for human existence, both lighting the way toward the brightest of achievements and setting the course into the darkness of suffering. Not surprisingly, then, emotion research is currently one of the hottest topics in the field of psychology. Yet to divine the nature of emotion is a complex and extensive task. In this book emotions are approached thought an exploration of the nature of cognition in emotion; the nature of thoughts in feelings. Different approaches to emotions are explored, from brain research to research at the level of experience, and it is argued that all approaches must seriously take into account the experiential dimension. A qualitative study of experiences with art is therefore presented, as emotions and cognition are often expressed in experiences with art. It is the first study of its kind. Descriptions of various affective phenomena are then given which have significant implications for contemporary debates about emotions, resolving several contemporary controversies.