Nearly a decade and a half before de Rivera (1962) documented the incoherent state of the psychoanalytic theory of affects, Bertrand Russell (1948) wrote:

Although, at present, it is difficult to give important examples of really precise mental causal laws, it seems pretty certain, on a commonsense basis, that there are such laws. If you tell a man that he is both a knave and a fool, he will be angry; if you inform your employer that he is universally regarded as a swindler and a bloodsucker, he will invite you