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This wide-ranging volume addresses some of the more important areas in which theoretical confusion and at times contradiction have prevailed ever since Freud developed his several theories of anxiety. Given the centrality of affect in psychoanalytic thinking, it is disappointing that more clarity has not emerged; perhaps a narrower range might have
achieved a clearer view. Nevertheless this book is a worthwhile effort to integrate non-psychoanalytic viewpoints and research data, for example from cognitive science, with psychoanalytic perspectives
The first of three rather loose sections focuses on development, particularly the interplay of cognitive and affective systems. Robert Emde argues persuasively for a reconsideration of the role of affects: Freud's pleasure / unpleasure principles and the drive discharge model have found little support in the last half-century of research. Emde reviews relevant work in neurophysiology, cognitive science, and linguistics, he discusses the role of the emotions in moral development; and he provides a succinct summary of negentropy pleasure and its sources.
Michael Lewis discusses the self-conscious emotions, particularly shame, which he locates at the interface between thought and feeling - the affective reaction to a negative self-evaluation. Lewis sees his theories as relevant to cognitive behavioural therapy but does not comment on their implications for psychoanalysis.
Henri Parens argues that early “aggressiveness” appears to be non-destructive, unlike hostile aggression generated by excessive unpleasure in early life, and that the urge to explore, to investigate, to assimilate, to “get it right” is probably deserving of drive status. This reviewer found Parens confusing when he attempted to show that his propositions differ from the frustration / unpleasure hypothesis, and to explain the need to retain classic drive theory.
Jerome Kagan, one of the few authors to define his terms, mistrusts categories of emotion derived fro