The Psycho-Analysis of Affects

As time goes on it becomes clearer that the recent fallow period in the development of psycho-analysis is due to a comparative neglect of the problem of affect. The obscurity surrounding early stages of ego organization or the nature of early ideational content is as nothing compared with the obscurity that clouds the understanding of primary affects and their vicissitudes. And this for a number of reasons. Not only is ideational content easier to grasp than the more labile and impermanent expressions of affect, but the exploration of affect tends to arouse greater subjective resistances. Moreover, clinical observers naturally focus their attention rather exclusively on those affective reactions that are most frequently and most obviously responsible for pathological states. Thus the constant reference made during recent clinical discussions to the factor of 'anxiety' (either manifest or latent) tends to give the impression that analysts regard this state and its immediate sequelæ, hate and guilt, as the only affective responses of early childhood and therefore as the mainsprings of neurotic or psychotic reaction. Similarly a recent recrudescence of interest in transference is justified by its sponsors on the ground that the latent anxiety content of these transferences has not been duly appreciated. Although praiseworthy enough this over-emphasis is not without its dangers. Therapeutically regarded the essence of transference is the displacement of affect, and undue concentration on the 'anxiety-hate-guilt' group is likely to impede understanding of other important affective reactions.

Yet another factor in the comparative neglect of affects is the tendency to be too exclusively interested in ideational derivatives of instinct (e.g. in the more stereotyped forms of primitive unconscious phantasy); or again, to consider such unconscious phantasies solely in terms of the specific instinct from which they are felt to be derived. By so doing the observer is lia