Emotional cognition based on Antoni Kępiński's work

The aim of this paper is to define the role of emotions in decision-making mechanisms in the concept of information metabolism -an original research project of the Polish psychiatrist Antoni Kępiński. Emotions constitute a subjective (first-person) expression of the subject's relation to his or her environment, resulting from the basic principles defined as biological laws; decisions made on the basis of emotional process and current body states are the foundation for information processing. This postulate anticipates further neurobiological research and has been referred to in Antonio Damasio's work. Determination of a biological role of emotions enables identification of their place in a psychotherapeutic process described by information metabolism. Emotions through their relational dimension constitute the genesis of the meaning of an individual life. Thanks to the definition of the emotional process as a source of connections between an individual and their world, whose aim is the choice of a possibly most optimal procedure, emotions may be treated as a basis for the situation of understanding. The notion of understanding used in this context in relation to the views of Kępiński relates in a substantial part to the subjective individual experiences and is theoretically juxtaposed with the notion of explaining. The proposal of interpretation of the model of Kępiński's psychiatry, based on understanding resulting from the emotional process, displays many common elements with various ways of approaching the psychiatric theories, e.g. biological psychiatry or post-psychiatry.