Letters to The Editors: Reply to Dr Rose

Dear Sirs,

Dr. Rose would like his work in the area of psychoanalysis and aesthetics to be acknowledged, and I am happy to do so. He might have exhibited more care,

though, in his characterization of my contribution. I focus on a reading of Freud that emphasizes the illuminating discussion of affect that is found throughout his aesthetic writings. I argue, further, that this discussion supplements what Freud says in his other writings about affect. My statement that ‘Freud needs to be updated’ is quoted out of context: it does not refer to what Rose terms ‘the negative psychoanalytic slant of art on emotion,’ but to my appreciation of Freud's interest in both artistic-cultural and scientific aspects of affect. Finally, Rose ignores the crux of my article: that the concept of ‘mentalized affectivity,’ a sophisticated form of affect regulation that entails the capacity to reflect on affective experience through the lens of one's representational history, incorporates a hermeneutic (drawn from art, culture and the clinical realm) and scientific (drawn from contemporary neuroscience) approach to the study of affect.