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In discussing affects we must, to begin with, distinguish between a cognitive, subjective awareness, sometimes called a feeling or affect-felt, and a host of related phenomena, which may be observed by the self or by others. These latter include various tension states or their somatic counterparts, some of which may even be measurable. These have been referred to as affect-expressions, affect equivalents, or as emotions—to distinguish them from affects, or more specifically, from affect-felt.
Rapaport6 has called our attention to the confusion existing about what to label as affect. One difficulty with Rapaport's extremely erudite approach is that affects are considered only in terms of being discharge phenomena of drives. As we shall discuss, this may be rather limiting. In any case, this report concerns itself primarily with the cognitive aspect of affects, or affect-felt.
In terms of cognition, we differentiate between ideation and affectivity. One of Freud's formulations was that drives attain psychic representations as both affects and ideations. Implicit in this view is that some degree of psychic (or ego) organization exists, which can distinguish between, and lay down representations of, ideation and affects. This point presupposes that affects have some kind of pre-history. Since a drive may lead to affect-felt, what is left open is where non-drive experience (e.g. hunger or pain) fits into Freud's theory regarding affects.