A Discussion of the Panel on the Affects

I listened to the papers presented during this panel with great interest: undoubtedly the field of the affects, which is so important in the analytic relationship, is today being investigated from other angles of research such as developmental psychology. Prospects of a fruitful exchange between the clinical field and that of empirical research are beginning to emerge, although one should remain aware of the need to avoid making mechanical translations from one field to the other. The panel included a discussion of the early phases of development and of the interactions between mother and child, in which the affects play an important role as signals between the partners designed to regulate the rhythms of the interactions. However this situation is very different from the analytic one, because in the latter case, unlike the child in its first months of life, the patient has acquired a fairly well organised representational world. For this reason the affects are not simply signs of an existing and contingent interaction but are an integral part of the self representation and of the significant figures. The intersubjective level is more pregnant than that of interaction, and is the expression of internal representations which influence not only behaviour and plans, but also perceptions, thoughts, affects, and access to information. Therefore in the analytic relationship the representational models of