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This is a collections of twelve essays, edited by Massimo Ammaniti and Nino Dazzi, by various authors who have contributed, through their work and experience, to the study of affects, and in particular, of their function in interpersonal relationships. The book has an introduction written by the editors, and is composed of three
sections: the first deals with the theory of affects, the second with the role of affects in the development of the child, and the third with affects in clinical practice.
Ammaniti and Dazzi, as well as being university professors, are psychoanalysts, and it is clearly evident that their specific experience in the field has influenced their approach to the volume. It is immediately obvious that the subtitle The Nature and Development of Interpersonal Relations refers in particular to the early relationship between the human infant and the environment of upbringing, and the links between this and the infant's development, and with all the other interpersonal relations, especially the psychoanalytic one. This involves an exploration of whole areas of knowledge regarding psychology, neurophysiology and psychoanalysis, both in the theoretical and experimental spheres. And it also involves exploring issues of great interest to the sciences concerned, and to clinical practice itself.
The introduction deals principally with the relationship between psychoanalysis and affects. After referring to the important role that Darwin attributed to the affects in the theory of evolution, where they are seen as fundamental features of human communication and as the basis for schemes of affective reaction in the central nervous system, Ammaniti and Dazzi tackle the problem of the Freudian notion of affect in the sphere of the drive theory “based on energy and structure”, and hard pressed to describe the occurrences of a “psychology of meanings”. At the same time, they point out that Freud had already become aware of these difficulties, and had attempted to ove