Introduction

Freud gained impetus from the philosophy and science of his time as he reformulated his models of the mind. He saw fit to use the then current work of linguists, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and biologists to complement the data he gathered in the psychoanalytic situation. His notions about groups heavily weighed on the sociologist Le Bon. His ideas about the death instinct were based on romantic philosophy then current, citing Schopenhauer, and also on the biological observations on lower organisms citing A. Weissmann and invoking Darwin as well. In his writings on negation and the antithetical meaning of primal words he borrowed from linguists and philologists as well as from his earlier interest in aphasia influenced by the neurologist Hughlings Jackson. Thus, from the beginning, Freud and other psychoanalysts reached out into the broader intellectual world and integrated ideas derived from the data of other disciplines in the surround. Reciprocally psychoanalysis then reinfluenced oher sciences and humanistic endeavors.

The final section of our volume deals with integrative perspectives on affective experience. We offer five presentations devoted to the integrations of psychoanalysis and linguistics, cognitive psychology, and sociocultural, historical, and literary interpretations of love. The last essays on love may invite controversy, but each is anchored in a psychoanalytic perspective, while also using observations derived from literature and history.

The fact that we speak about emotions as well as experience them forces us into a nominalist position, rendering some uncertainty as to whether the inner experience of affect is