Chapter 2 An Overall View of the Psychoanalytic Literature Since Freud

When one considers the work of the psychoanalysts of the first generation, one cannot but be struck by the solitary character of Freud’s reflection on the affect. We seek in vain in the writings of Ferenczi or Abraham, to mention only the most important, for some reflection of Freud’s preoccupations with, for example, the status of affect and of representation in relation to the unconscious. In Ferenczi, one can already observe an extensive use of the notion of affect, which contemporary psychoanalytic practice has confirmed. What has happened to the affect in modern psychoanalytic literature?

In this overview of psychoanalytic work since Freud, devoted to affect, I shall deal with the most substantial, that associated with such names as Brierley, Rapaport, Jacobson, Schur and, lastly, those associated with the school of Melanie Klein, in which Bion occupies an eminent place. All these names belong to the Anglo-American movement. Although Frenchspeaking authors give an important place to affect in their work, few of them have taken the trouble to name it explicitly. In this respect, Bouvet and Mallet are exceptions, as is, in a quite opposite way, Lacan.

Apart from Freud, most of the authors take an article by Ernest Jones, ‘Fear, guilt and hate’ ) as the starting-point of their work on affect. The essential idea of this work seems to be inspired by Melanie Klein’s views on primary affects.1 In his study of these three affects—fear, guilt and hate- Jones shows that a defensive function may be detected in the mobilization of one affect against another; thus fear conceals guilt, just as

hate may serve as a screen against it or, again, hate conceals fear. Jones’s originality consists in showing that things do not stop there.