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A systematic statement of the psychoanalytic theory of affects would be most useful for the development of psychoanalytic technique. Such widely various phenomena are labeled affect that we are in danger of being led astray by the term.
One of the obstacles to a systematized theory is the survival of overlapping formulations from three phases of the development of psychoanalysis. In the first phase the theories of catharsis and psychoanalysis were not sharply separated. Affect was equated with the quantity of psychic (drive) energy, which was later described as cathexis of the drives. It was believed that in the formation of symptoms, affects prevented from discharge remain fixed to the pathogenic idea or fantasy and find outlet in conversion. In therapy, it was thought, the discharge of the dammed-up affect drains the pathogenic idea of its force and influence. Anxiety was explained as affect or libido (the terms were still interchangeable) transformed by being repressed.
In the middle phase, which began with The Interpretation of Dreams, the id was the center of interest. Rapaport classifies Freud's theoretical formulations of this period into metapsychological structural categories, as follows. 1. An economic or cathectic theory according to which discharge of affect serves to diminish tension resulting from drives. This discharged affect is called 'affect-charge'; it bears some of the cathexis of the drive. 2. A dynamic or 'conflict' theory. When discharge of the cathexis of drives meets opposition, either because the drive lacks an object or because it is checked by internal controls, the discharge of affect-charge serves as a safety valve. 3. A topographic theory. Affect-charge is regarded as representing a drive in much the same way as an idea can. Affect-expression and affect-experience arise from discharge of cathexis; ideas arise from cathecting of memory traces. The distinction is made that when ideas are repressed they persist as actualities