You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Despite continuous interest and despite his very prolific scientific output, Piaget never published a systematic account of his views on affectivity. The present volume is the first translation into English (by T. A. Brown and C. E. Kaegi) of a series of lectures on the relation between intelligence and affectivity delivered at the Sorbonne and published in 1954 in France.
Piaget makes two general statements in these lectures. The first refers to the nature of affectivity, best understood as the energetics (motivation) and regulatory function of behavior, while the second refers to the relation of cognition to affectivity. Piaget sees the two as interdependent and inseparable ("indissociable"), constituting two different, but complementary aspects of any act of behavior. Affectivity provides the force, the fuel, while cognition provides the structures that underlie all behavior. Piaget argues that affectivity as motivation and regulation may cause accelerations and delays in the development of intelligence; it may disturb intellectual functioning and influence its contents, but it can neither create nor modify structures. All structures, at least at the early stages, are cognitive in nature. In mid-childhood some affective structures are discernible for the first time. These relate to systematized interests and values and have their origins in the child's social relations. Moral feelings and the will appear later on as the structuralization of affects continues.
The major part of the lectures is devoted to the stage-by-stage outline of affectivity in parallel development with cognition. In contrast to the cognitive stages, however, the stages of affectivity are approached abstractly and theoretically. Only occasionally does Piaget refer to direct observations in children's affective expressions, and the reader cannot help but regret the incompleteness of this work. However, as Cowan points out, Piaget's ultimate aim was simply to put forward certain propos