Sketch for a metapsychology of affect.

Abstract

The author argues that analysing affect, a concept lying on the frontier between the mental and the somatic (Freud, 1915a) has to be an embodied pursuit. This line of argument finds support in Freud's second hypothesis in 'An Outline of Psychoanalysis' (1940), where he writes that psychology should look to the somatic processes to see the true essence of what is psychical and in the first instance disregard the quality of consciousness. From this baseline the concepts of feeling, emotion and affect are differentiated and defined. Feelings and emotions are seen as two psychically perceived expressions of affective processes. The concept of affect is then defined as an affective matrix linked to a predisposition of the bodily systems to react in a certain way to internal or external stimuli. The affective matrix can find expression either in psychically perceived affects--feelings and emotions--or in physically perceived 'affect-equivalents'--psychosomatic symptoms and somatic illnesses. It is finally argued that this hypothesis finds support in the evolutionary perspective delineated by Freud in 'Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety' (1926), where he claims that affects are reproductions of very early, perhaps even pre-individual, experiences of vital importance.