Response to Commentaries

I am indebted to my colleagues for seriously considering my essay, encouraging me where they agree, and showing me problems where they disagree. Perhaps the distinction I make between affect and mood should be sharpened, or at least I should observe the distinction more consistently. In the essay I dodged defining affect since its meaning to my readers is well known, if not always given precisely. I subscribe to Panksepp's proposition that consciousness probably exists in all mammals and possibly in less-evolved creatures, and that its ultimate function is to perceive and record affect. “Affect is a neurodynamic quality of consciousness—a quality that is quite indescribable verbally but has dimensional attributes such as valence, arousal, and surgency,” Panksepp and Pincus write, and they remind us of the appraisal function of affect.

While not all affective experience is generated as a component of an instinctual process, many of the more intense affects that intrude into our consciousness are. And for these I have provided an original taxonomy based upon the position of that type of affect in the structure of the instinctual process. As my discussants note, I did not fail to allow for affects that are not immediately associated with, or derive from, instincts. Neubauer refers to these as “based on external influence from the ego apparatus.” I did not deal with those affects that arise in the course of the individual's interaction with the group, such as shame, guilt, and envy, nor those associated with ego states and activities including aesthetic experience, humor, the uncanny,