This chapter presents a new and complete classification of the emotions. This classification develops a rationale for identification of the basic emotions, which are prototypical adaptive reactions to negative and positive experiences of the most fundamental problems of life. The presence of proto-emotions in invertebrates and emotions in vertebrates indicates that emotions have a deep evolutionary history. Related evidence shows that basic emotions involve an equally primordial principle of brain organization—hemispheric laterality—whereby the two hemispheres adaptively engage in opposite modes of information processing. On the level of experience of emotions (but not of perceiving emotions expressed by others), a threefold dimensional conceptualization is added; this divides eight basic emotions into two groups: (i) The RIGHT-type basic emotions—sadness, fear, anticipation, and acceptance—are right-lateralized, emphasize global feeling states, and are adaptive to situations of powerlessness and (ii) the LEFT-type basic emotions—joy, anger, surprise, and disgust—are left-lateralized, function-oriented, and adaptive to processes of attaining empowerment. While evidence shows lateralization of all eight emotions, evidence of the laterality of just one example basic emotion, anger, will be considered. From both RIGHT- and LEFT-type emotions, six secondary and four tertiary emotions are derived. An exclusion rule is imposed on the classification, eliminating all pairings of opposites (e.g., sadness and joy-happiness, fear and anger); the resulting classification consists of 8 basic, 24 secondary, and 32 tertiary emotions, 64 in all.