Affect And Development

Pablo Cuevas Corona, the Moderator, opened the second day of the 41st IPA Congress panel on ‘Affect and development’ by introducing the main presenters: Robert Emde and James Herzog and the discussants: Rita Frankiel, Antonino Ferro and Romulo Lander. The Moderator was enthusiastic in his participation in this panel, which attempted to grapple with the complex issues around affect and development.

Because Robert Emde' research paper was pre-published in Volume 80 (1999), his presentation consisted of a review. He commented that psychoanalytic clinical thinking had broadened to embrace an organisational model of affect and the integrative influences of affective processes, beginning in early development. This view is informed both by psychoanalytic empirical research, clinical psychoanalysis and by multidisciplinary research. In Emde' opinion, this organisational, integrative view continues Freud' thinking around affects as signals and regulators. Throughout his presentation, he underscored the centrality of affects in object relations and its manifestations for analyst and analysand. Emde' main thesis proposed that emotions guide both aspects of developmental change and developmental continuity and creates developmental integration.

Emde proceeded to outline the six transitional periods that were elaborated in his pre-published paper. These phases are each examples of new and special affective signals demonstrating a new level of psychic organisation within the child and between the child and the family. He asserted that the self-enhancing functions, in contrast to self-maintaining and regulating functions of emotions, have been underemphasised.

In turning to his discussion of the affective core self concept, Emde explained that emotions and developmental continuity refer to a person having a consistent sense of self in the midst of change. Thus, the affective core self relies not only on biology, but also on continuous experience itself, which influences memory and pr