Penser l'affect L'affect a-t-il toujours raison ?

Affect, a specific concept in metapsychology as a representative of the drive, is both a moving quantity, an energetic force of transformation and a quality of cathexis in small quantities, the articulation of the two aspects being essential to the pleasure of thinking and the capacity for astonishment. Drawing on Freud's work, the theorizations of André Green and Michel Fain, as well as cultural contributions, the author examines the work of affect in the analytic process, the analyst's theorizing thought and the countertransference. Unlike neurosis, where the drive representative implies a differentiation between affect and representation and an articulation of the two topographies, with hysteria and the dream-work as the paradigm, in the non-neurotic clinical domain (borderline states and psychosomatics), the paradigm is that of trauma, pain and pathological mourning. The loss of affective quality or the negativization of affects that are excessive or lacking, unbound and without psychic attributes, is thought of in relation to the non-differentiation of the agencies, in particular the superego. Thinking about affect thus requires a theory of the ancestor as the founding principle of the psyche and the group. The reattribution of quality to affects calls for a particular cathexis in the paternal function and thirdness.