Affect as Cognition: With Observations on the Meanings of Mystical States

I have attempted to define certain problems concerning the psychoanalytic theory of affects. In the process I have pointed to the necessity of integrating this theory into the metapsychological framework. I have postulated the existence of affect at the very beginning of postnatal existence, even in the undifferentiated phase, and also in its most archaic identity with cognition. I have asserted that in certain areas of psychic functioning they remain indissoluble, although they pursue separate paths in the course of development. With regard to their relationships there must be optimal separation together with optimal fusion. I have described mystical experiences and kindred phenomena as illustrative of the confusions between affect and cognition during the symbiotic phase of infantile development and, I hope, demonstrated the illuminations we may derive from approaching these human experiences from the genetic point of view, without committing a reductionist fallacy. Incidentally, I have spoken of the grave errors which may be imposed upon humanity by asserting that such subjective experiences are evidence of the literal existence of transcendental 'truths' and 'realities'. I have tried to rescue the concept of regression from the quagmire of psychopathology, and have insisted upon the abiding positive values of many infantile experiences. Finally, I have asserted that an essential dimension of man's sound relations with the world around him, with individual objects, animate and inanimate, social groups, ideas, concepts, the arts, and the process of learning and thinking, is the capacity to establish partial and reversible symbioses without the loss of identity and the sense of self.