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Affects, Emotional Reliving, and Insight in the Psychoanalytic Process. Arthur F. Valenstein. Pp. 315-324.
Contribution to Discussion. Emanuel Windholz. Pp. 325-327.
The role of affects and emotion, i.e., emotionally charged remembering and emotional reliving, is discussed in relation to the development of insight. A general theory of affects is reviewed. Psychoanalytic theory as it evolved was often a reflection of the technique in current use. At the beginning, Freud was under the influence of Breuer's experience with the case of Anna O and was using the cathartic method for the treatment of hysteria. Abreaction was essential for 'cure'. Affect (emotion) and tension were in some way equivalent. Psychoanalysis and its technique of free association came into existence when Freud developed the true dynamic theory of conflict at unconscious levels. The first theory of anxiety was concerned with repressed libido, which was directly and automatically converted into anxiety and was also connected with the idea of the habitual working off of affects in normal life, through weeping, laughter, anger, etc.
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) furthered the development of the theory of affects. When drives could not be discharged through direct action, affect as a motor or secretory function could be the outcome. With the advent of systematic ego psychology in 1923, Freud hypothesized that anxiety arose as a signal response warning of danger. However, affects remained closely related to the concept of tension and instinctual discharge. In 1953 Jacobson pointed out that affects are not so much a substitute for inhibited direct instinctual discharge through action as an inner subjective experience associated with changes in instinctual tension, whether increased or discharged.
Valenstein proposes a new concept which he calls 'affectualization'. This is a special defense mechanism built out of affects. Resistance to insight occurs through direct discharge in the form