Affects

Affects have a subjective, feeling component which almost always involves a pleasurable or unpleasurable quality (except for feelings which involve detachment or isolation), and thus a motivational quality. They have a cognitive component which involves ideas and fantasies linked to the affective state as it develops and organized around themes related to its motivational quality. And there is a physiological component mediated both through the autonomic nervous system (blushing, crying, rapid pulse and so on) and through the voluntary nervous system (changes in posture, facial expression or tone of voice). The physiological response patterns from which affects arise are said to be nine: surprise, interest, joy, distress, anger, fear, shame, contempt, disgust. These are universal, prominent and may be identified in the first year of life. Because initial biological response becomes linked to encoded memory traces, familiar perceptive patterns mobilize the appropriate affective response in anticipation of what the individual has come to expect by association. Affects are usually closely linked to object representations, self representations and fantasies related to drive states. They may or may not be drive-related or involved in conflict.

An important adaptive function of affects is to alert and prepare the individual for appropriate response to the internal or external environment and to communicate the individuals response to others, thus eliciting in particular the response of those in a caretaking role. Perceptions related to stimuli and their implications (evaluated, integrated and responded to in line with previous experience) determine the nature of the feeling state. Because derivatives of affects may elicit feelings and associations which are painful or may signal danger, they may be dealt with by a number of defensive manoeuvres.