Since the seventies there has been renewed interest in the study of the affects. When reconsidering this theme, it is customary to recall, as Rapaport (1953) pointed out, that no systematic discussion of it exists. Yet it is well-known that psychoanalysis takes a particular interest in this very field. Psychoanalysts have always accepted the view that treatment can bring about no significant transformation in the patient that does not involve the working through of transference affects and that it is useless to reconstruct (or construct) the patient's past if this process is not matched by a parallel affective experience.

As is well-known, the phenomena and implications that Rapaport tried to highlight in his historic paper were extremely complex. In this work he was