Introduction       A day in the life of a Dutch writer       Main questions and notions       Contexts and contents Chapter 1. Spectators and emotional culture 1.1 Dutch Spectator writers and their ideals       - Mr. Spectator: a preaching Homo Ludens       - National differences in Enlightenment culture       - Social backgrounds of the authors 1.2 The audience       - The rise of a middle-class readership?       - Popularity of the Spectatorial papers over the world       - Letters of readers and the significance of epistolary role-playing 1.3 Emotional culture and history       - Spectatorial attitudes towards the passions       - Historical interpretations of emotional life: emotionology, psychology and vocabulary       - A small emotion lexicon for the eighteenth century       - The representation of emotional cultures in fictional texts Chapter 2. Gender and the tyranny of the passions 2.1 The controversy between Grietje Kenouil and the Hollandsche Spectator       - Throw of the gauntlet       - Grietje Kenouil takes up the gauntlet       - Lament of a second 2.2 Rhetorics of control       - The balance of power between men and women       - The terror of wrath and thirst for power       - Male control versus female submission       - Symbolics and intertextuality 2.3 The stereotype of the wicked woman       - Grietje, Kenau, and Xantippe       - Female power in early modern times 2.4 The notion of the `emotional' woman       - The need of an historicizing and problem-oriented approach       - Gender as a powerful category of meaning Chapter 3. The Personae Intemperantes of the eighteenth century 3.1 Flirtatious coquettes:       - Their disposition       - The sexual balance upset       - The coquette as an a-sexual woman 3.2 Fops, libertines and onanists       - Narcistic desires of the fop       - Effeminacy, or: the sliding scale of sex       - Lustful libertines       - Excesses of the masturbating youth 3.3 The money-hungry miser       - Avarice as passion       - Age and sex of the penny pincher       - The meaning of Dutch frugality 3.4 Tearful clergymen and pious devotees       - The ideal of a reasonable religion       - Religious enthusiasts in the Dutch Republic       - Excrescences of religious emotions elsewhere       - Familiarity and self-criticism 3.5 The scholar and the savante: an unequal pair       - Scholars: the relation between study and spleen       - Savantes: the relation between thirst for power, reading and a neglected family 3.6 The construction of gendered emotional identities Chapter 4. Civilization in excess: psychology as cultural criticism 4.1 Luxury and the decline of the nation       - A collective desire for luxury       - Consumption and the fear for national improductivity       - Aristocratisation, feminisation and frenchification 4.2 The heart under different political and social structures       - Despotism, monarchism and republicanism       - The savage and cultured man: the law of nature versus the civilized world 4.3 Neglected emotions: the failure of education       - Tender mothers       - Dubious domestics and nurses       - Absent or aristocratic fathers       - Francophile schooling 4.4 Emotive reading       - A readers' revolution?       - Dangerous novels       - The educational value of Richardson's novels       - Other edifying reading materials 4.5 The beginnings of a cultural psychology avant la lettre Chapter 5. Body and Soul: The medical and philosophical psychology of the time 5.1 Popularized medical views on the mind       - Blood, phlegm and bile: the humoral pathology       - Physical disposition and character: the theory of temperaments       - Nerves and fibres: the neurophysiology 5.2 The soul from a philosophical perspective       - A subject of problematic speculations       - The origin of the inner motions       - The raison d'être of emotion       - The ethical value of pleasure       - Stoicism and Epicurism       - L'homme machine or l'homme animal       - Universal passions? 5.3 Christianity, Humanism and Enlightenment: a triple stamp on the development of psychology in the Netherlands Chapter 6. The new sensibility 6.1 The outburst of the sensitive mind       - A cult of feeling       - The significance of compassion and philanthropy 6.2 Male tears and benefactions       - The phenomenon of the crying man       - Heroic actions       - Social profile of the philantropic hero       - A rhetorics of tears 6.3 Female embracements and domesticated instability       - Domestic happiness       - Love, friendship and respect       - Gender as destiny       - The discourse of equality assimilated 6.4 A backlash against sentiment       - Fashional sensitivities criticized       - Problems of sentimental reading and other influential factors 6.5 Continuity and incontinuity in an emotional culture Conclusions       Emotions for both sexes       About the meaning of gender       Emotions, identities, contexts and power       Minds in motion       A continuing story