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.
The lack of a satisfactory theory of affects in psychoanalysis and psychology has been widely recognised. The two complementary books, Affects as a Process by Joseph Jones and Affect, Object, and Character Structure by Morton Kissen, make rigorous and informed attempts to propose a remedy to this problem. Jones states that a major reason for the lack of a satisfactory theory of affects in psychoanalysis is that Freud's covert philosophical agenda underlying his metapsychology stripped affects of their process role. He then argues intelligently that we should return to affects the process property that has been taken away, to pave the way for a satisfactory and clinically helpful theory. Affect, Object, and Character Structure examines the subject of affect in the significant contexts of object relations and character structure. Furthermore, the importance of ‘positive affects’ in human interactions and the intolerance of positive affects in neurotic disorders is emphasised. Kissen suggests that psychoanalytic theory has ignored the important function of positive affects in human development and their dysfunction in neurotic symptomatology and character disorders.
Following Lichtenberg, Jones uses the conceptual model of motivational systems with affects in the central position. He endorses four of the five motivational systems proposed by Lichtenberg but challenges the concept of aversive system. Instead of the latter, Jones poses two systems, one organised in infancy to respond to the need for self-protection triggered by fear and one organised to respond to competitive/territorial needs triggered by rage, contempt and shame. The following are the six motivational systems with specific affects that serve as their monitors: (1) regulation of physiological requirements (Freud's self-preservative instinct); (2) attachment/affiliation (the core of object-relations theory and Freud's libido theory); (3) assertiveness (competence/mastery system); (4) aversive reaction thr