The Developmental Significance of Affective States: Implications for Psychoanalytic Treatment

Despite the central therapeutic importance of affective states and the voluminous literature that exists on that subject (see Arlow, 1977; Green, 1977), numerous authors have indicated that psychoanalysis lacks an adequate theory of affects (Arlow, 1977; Brenner, 1974; Green, 1977; Jacobson, 1971; Rapaport, 1953; Ross, 1975). The roots of this felt inadequacy can be found in the intellectual history of psychoanalytic affect theory, in Freud's choice of an economic or drive-discharge model for affect expression. By postulating a topographic separation of affect from cognition, which in turn precludes a developmental view of affects, the drive-discharge model has obstructed the theoretical understanding of affective states. Hence, until recently, the evolving knowledge of the development of self and object representations was prevented from contributing significantly to the theory of affects. In this paper we shall suggest a point of view through which the postulated schism between affect and cognition can be mended and the significance of affective states in the structuralization of the representational world (Sandler and Rosenblatt, 1962; Stolorow and Atwood, 1979) can be comprehended.

Rapaport (1953) aptly summarized the evolution of Freud's thinking about affect. Prior to the formulation of the structural theory, affects were seen solely as drive-discharge processes, safety valves which dissipated dammed-up drive cathexes (Freud, 1915a, 1915b). Within the structural theory, affects could still occur as drive-discharge phenomena, but a second view of affects (specifically, anxiety) as anticipatory signals produced and utilized by the ego became pre-eminent (Freud, 1926). Rapaport attempted to integrate these two conceptions, proposing that in the course of ego development affect discharges are “tamed” through alterations of their discharge thresholds which render them suitable as signals. In contrast, we suggest that the two theories are not only incompatible, but d