Goals:
- Be able to understand ways in which affects influence each other and ways in which affects establish priority.
- Each member should pick three different hypotheses and give a personal, clinical, or literary example that would illustrate these interactions.
Readings:
AIC I-II, “Affect Dynamics,” Chapter 9, SuperVolume I, pp. 151-184.
Bulletin, v4, #1-2-3, 1997, Donald L. Nathanson, “A Goal Is an Image,” pp. 1-6.
Bulletin, v2, #2, 1995, Verda Little, “Affect Theory Study Group Session 2,” pp. 19-21.
Discussion Questions:
- What affect is most likely to be noticed? How does density determine attention?
- What affects are most likely to appear in dreams—why?
- How do affects influence each other?
- Tomkins gives nineteen hypotheses concerning the relation of affect to positive or negative outcomes.
- Can you think of a personal, literary, or clinical example for each of these hypotheses? (For instance, “Reduction of negative affect is rewarding.” When one learns that a feared outcome is not going to occur, one can heave a sigh of relief. Example: The biopsy shows that a supposedly malignant tumor turns out to be benign.)
- How does learning change the expression of innate affect?
- Can an affect be unconscious?
- What are general images?
- What are the four general images concerning the expression of affect?