A theory of affects is proposed, based upon the exploration of affects in the psychoanalytic situation. The correspondence between structural characteristics of affects as revealed in the psychoanalytic situation and recent neuropsychological and developmental studies of affects is noted. Affects are seen as the “building blocks” of drives. The latter are conceived as hierarchically supraordinate motivational systems that organize their component affects along a “libidinal” and “aggressive” line and are clinically reflected in signal affect states.
Early object relations are seen as determining the cognitive aspects of affects. Early representations of self and others, framed in the context of an affect state, are fixed in the form of an affective memory. It is further proposed that internalization of early object relations determines the organization of the tripartite structure. These findings are correlated with Mahler's developmental schemas. Thus the psychoanalytic theory of drives and an object-relations theory are linked by the structural and developmental character of early affects.
