Remarks of Moderator: Recognizing Mood Regulation in Psychoanalytic Therapy

I Should Like to Suggest that more Attention Needs to be Given to the issue of mood regulation in an effort to improve our understanding of mental illness from a psychoanalytic point of view. I believe that mood is a centrally important component of each analytic session, as it is at almost every moment of life. While mood is obviously influenced by current experience, it is also true that mood influences content, thoughts, interests, free associations, and, of course, dreams. In fact, dreams are transparent windows onto mood and its regulation. Every dream interpretation must necessarily take note of mood and allow for it in an interpreting content. Moreover, in every psychoanalytic session we must take note of mood at the outset and follow its vicissitudes.

We hear a good deal of discussion currently about affect regulation. Let me try to make this concept more precise and more useful. I believe that affect is best understood as an aspect of instinct. That connection becomes more relevant if we employ the ethologic concept of instinct rather than the classical psychoanalytic concept. In other words, I suggest here a taxonomy of affect based upon instinct.

We can recognize at least three different qualities of affect in association with each of the instincts with which we work. The appetitive