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Freud's psychoanalytic theory is based upon innate drives and their vicissitudes thorough the developmental process. Human infant seeks an emotional bond with the mother because of her role in the expression and satisfaction of his aggressive and libidinal drives. In Otto Kernberg's ‘Object Relations Theory’ attachment and emotional bonding of the infant to the mothering object is primary. In early life there are innate tendencies as instincts and affective dispositions. The infant is born to an interactional world with such an instinctual hardware. Instinctual components are innate perceptive, behavioral, communicative and psychophysiological patterns and stimulation mechanisms. They are inherited, intermittent and biological behavior patterns activated by physiological and environmental stimuli. They are shaped in the satisfying and frustrating relations with the mother and the others (‘objects’). Developmental factors play an important role in their structuralisation.
Affects are also instinctual structures. Their basic biological function is to signal the needs of the infant to the environment and thus initiate the infant-mother interaction. Affects have an appraisal function and code the perceptual experiences as good or bad. That pleasure or dissatisfaction dimension is the core quality of affects. Affects are the corner Stones of drives and bridge biological instincts with psychic drives. Aggressive and libidinal drives are higher organizations formed by the integration of the mental representations of affects.