Emotion Affect and Feeling
These three words are closely associated and frequently used within the same context.
When we are affected by something, a stimulus of some kind, an event or even a memory, we experience an emotion as a result. Affect is a biological pattern of events, triggered by a stimulus. Affects are innate, each one having its own exact programme. A more precise meaning of the word affect has been introduced by the work of Silvan Tomkins, the American psychologist, whose Affect Theory appeared in the first two volumes of his book Affect Imagery Consciousness in 1962 and 1963. Later Script Theory was added and his work was concluded by Volumes 3 and 4 published in 1991 and 1992.
Feeling is about the awareness of an affect and is an ability to appreciate and comprehend. The ability to feel a particular affect may be switched off by a distraction or denied by a cultural upbringing. An example is the familiar 'stiff upper lip' attitude, a learned and practiced device to avoid acknowledgement and a display of feeling.
Emotion adds another dimension to this established pattern. Every time an individual experiences an affect it is logged and filed away in the memory. The memory of previous experiences is added to the feeling, amplifying the awareness, to create the emotion.
To summarise an affect is a biological, innate, instinctive response to a stimulus and is fleeting, very brief. It becomes a feeling through awareness and knowledge and an emotion by the additional recall of previous experience from memory.
Donald Nathanson, in his excellent book ‘Shame and Pride’, (1992: 50), succinctly summarises the impact of these three words.
' affect is biology, feeling is psychology and emotion is biography.’
Tomkin's Central Blueprint
1) Positive affect should be maximized.
2) Negative affect should be minimized.
3) Affect inhibition should be minimized.
4) Power to maximize positive affect, to
minimize negative affect, to minimize
affect inhibition should be maximized.
(Tomkins - Affect Imagery Consciousness Vol-I 1962, 328. Also 327-335; AIC-2 1963, 261-291.)
Tomkins' Central Blueprint provides some guidance in not disowning ANY of our affects (3 & 4 above) while emphasizing the need to maximize the rewarding / pleasurable (positive-1 above) and minimizing the punishing / painful (negative-2 above) affects.