Commentary by Rainer Krause

After reading these very interesting papers on the emotions I got the impression that it might be helpful to the reader to get to know in more detail the cultural, methodological, and professional background of the authors. I believe that some of the puzzling differences as well as similarities in views and ways of interpreting the existing data and knowledge are tied to implicit or unconscious cultural differences which should become explicit. Only then can they function as fruitful heuristics. The neglect of social and cultural differences is a possible shortcoming the editors should be aware of. The cultural differences in the understanding of affect, its expression, and handling present differences as big as those among the different forms of psychoanalysis. It is my feeling that they are related. As Hochschild (1979) and others have shown, rules for the experience and display of feelings are the essentials in self definition of culture, with the inclusion of the scientific community.

Affect theory in both contemporary classical Freudian and object relation psychoanalysis, only to mention two variants, are very different, as reflected in these commentaries and other works (e.g., Green, 1973; Krause, 1997, 1998). Nevertheless, Green, Yorke (1999), as well as Solms and Nersessian agree that a “firm foundation for a psychological theory of affect exists in the work of Freud.” The four authors jointly adhere to Freud's conceptionalization of Trieb (drive/instinct) which Panksepp (1999), Shevrin (1999), and myself (Krause, 1997, 1998) would want to give up in its existing form. These differences are by no means academic, in fact, they are related to different treatment techniques (Hamilton, 1997).

Since Ferenczi (1932) through Alexander and French (1946) until today a debate about the curative power of insight versus corrective emotional experience has been going on (Haynal, 1993). Insight of course was never defined as purely cognitive (Moser, 1962), but for a long t