Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen,—You will not be surprised to hear that I have a number of novelties to report to you about our conception [Aufassung] of anxiety and of the basic instincts of mental life; nor will you be surprised to learn that none of these novelties can claim to offer a final solution of these still unsettled problems. I have a particular reason for using the word ‘conception’ here. These are the most difficult problems that are set to us, but their difficulty does not lie in any insufficiency of observations; what present us with these riddles are actually the commonest and most familiar of phenomena. Nor does the difficulty lie in the recondite nature of the speculations to which they give rise; speculative consideration plays little part in this sphere. But it is truly a matter of conceptions—that is to say, of introducing the right abstract ideas, whose application to the raw material of observation will produce order and clarity in it.

It will be readily admitted that an exhaustive study of the problems posed by the affect in the field of psychoanalytic theory and practice is impossible. It is necessary therefore to define the boundaries within which my work will operate.

From the theoretical point of view, such a study raises two difficulties. The first concerns the place of the affect in Freud’s work. Indeed, one cannot assign a particular place to the affect in Freud’s work as a whole. Freud did not devote a particular work to the subject. So we have to follow the development of the notion of the affect in the course of his work. The problem of the affect depends on the guidelines operating at the various stages in the development of the theory: the first and second topographies, the various forms taken by the theory of the drives, etc. Sometimes theoretical changes entail a change in the status of the affect, sometimes an appreciation of its functional value will explain a change in