The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse (New Library of Psychoanalysis, 38)

393 Pages·1999·2.37 MB·English

by  Andre Green

The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic
Discourse
The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse is a seminal work on
one of the most neglected topics in psychoanalysis, that of affect.
Originally published in French as Le Discours vivant, and considered a
classic in the psychoanalytic world, the book is structured into three parts:
• Affect within psychoanalytic literature
• Clinical practice of psychoanalysis: structure and process
• Theoretical study: affect, language and discourse; negative hallucination.
Written in a clear, lucid style, connecting theory to both culture and
clinical practice, The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse will
appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, and also to those involved
in cultural studies.
Andre Green is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Paris.
THE NEW LIBRARY OF
PSYCHOANALYSIS
The New Library of Psychoanalysis was launched in 1987 in association
with the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London. Its purpose is to facilitate a
greater and more widespread appreciation of what psychoanalysis is really
about and to provide a forum for increasing mutual understanding between
psychoanalysts and those working in other disciplines such as history,
linguistics, literature, medicine, philosophy, psychology and the social
sciences. It is intended that the titles selected for publication in the series
should deepen and develop psychoanalytic thinking and technique,
contribute to psychoanalysis from outside, or contribute to other
disciplines from a psychoanalytical perspective.
The Institute, together with the British Psycho-Analytical Society, runs a
low-fee psychoanalytic clinic, organizes lectures and scientific events
concerned with psychoanalysis, publishes the International Journal of
Psycho-Analysis (which now incorporates the International Review of
PsychoAnalysis), and runs the only training course in the UK in
psychoanalysis leading to membership of the International
Psychoanalytical Association—the body which preserves internationally
agreed standards of training, of professional entry, and of professional
ethics and practice for psychoanalysis as initiated and developed by
Sigmund Freud. Distinguished members of the Institute have included
Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, Ronald Fairbairn, Anna Freud, Ernest Jones,
Melanie Klein, John Rickman and Donald Winnicott.
Volumes 1–11 in the series have been prepared under the general
editorship of David Tuckett, with Ronald Britton and Egle Laufer as
associate editors. Subsequent volumes are under the general editorship of
Elizabeth Bott Spillius, with, from Volume 17, Donald Campbell, Michael
Parsons, Rosine Jozef Perelberg and David Taylor as associate editors.
ALSO IN THIS SERIES
1 Impasse and Interpretation Herbert Rosenfeld
2 Psychoanalysis and Discourse Patrick Mahoney
3 The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men Marion Milner
4 The Riddle of Freud Estelle Roith
5 Thinking, Feeling, and Being Ignacio Matte-Blanco
6 The Theatre of the Dream Salomon Resnik
7 Melanie Klein Today: Volume 1, Mainly Theory Edited by Elizabeth Bott
Spillius
8 Melanie Klein Today: Volume 2, Mainly Practice Edited by Elizabeth
Bott Spillius
9 Psychic Equilibrium and Psychic Change: Selected Papers of Betty Joseph
Edited by Michael Feldman and Elizabeth Bott Spillius
10 About Children and Children-No-Longer: Collected Papers 1942–80
Paula Heimann. Edited by Margret Tonnesmann
11 The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941–45 Edited by Pearl King and
Riccardo Steiner
12 Dream, Phantasy and Art Hanna Segal
13 Psychic Experience and Problems of Technique Harold Stewart
14 Clinical Lectures on Klein & Bion Edited by Robin Anderson
15 From Fetus to Child Alessandra Piontelli
16 A Psychoanalytic Theory of Infantile Experience: Conceptual and
Clinical Reflections E.Gaddini. Edited by Adam Limentani
17 The Dream Discourse Today Edited and introduced by Sarah Flanders
18 The Gender Conundrum: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives on
Femininity and Masculinity Edited and introduced by Dana Breen
19 Psychic Retreats John Steiner
20 The Taming of Solitude: Separation Anxiety in Psychoanalysis Jean-
Michel Quinodoz
21 Unconscious Logic: An Introduction to Matte-Blanco’s Bi-Logic and its
uses Eric Rayner
22 Understanding Mental Objects Meir Perlow
iv
23 Life, Sex and Death: Selected Writings of William Gillespie Edited and
introduced by Michael Sinason
24 What Do Psychoanalysts Want?: The Problem of Aims in
Psychoanalytic Therapy Joseph Sandler and Anna Ursula Dreher
25 Michael Balint: Object Relations, Pure and Applied Harold Stewart
26 Hope: A Shield in the Economy of Borderline States Anna Potamianou
27 Psychoanalysis, Literature and War: Papers 1972–1995 Hanna Segal
28 Emotional Vertigo: Between Anxiety and Pleasure Danielle Quinodoz
29 Early Freud and Late Freud Use Grubrich-Simitis
30 A History of Child Psychoanalysis Claudine and Pierre Geissmann
31 Belief and Imagination: Explorations in Psychoanalysis Ronald Britton
32 A Mind of One’s Own: A Kleinian View of Self and Object Robert A.
Caper
33 Psychoanalytic Understanding of Violence and Suicide Edited by Rosine
Jozef Perelberg
34 On Bearing Unbearable States of Mind Ruth Riesenberg-Malcolm
35 Psychoanalysis on the Move: The Work of Joseph Sandler Edited by
Peter Fonagy, Arnold M.Cooper and Robert S.Wallerstein
36 The Dead Mother: The Work of Andre Green Edited by Gregorio
Kohon
NEW LIBRARY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS37
General Editor: Elizabeth Bott Spillius
The Fabric of Affect in the
Psychoanalytic Discourse
ANDRE GREEN
Translated by Alan Sheridan
First published as Le Discours vivant,
Presses Universitaires de France, 1973
London and New York
First published as Le Discours vivant in 1973
by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris
First published in English in 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 1999 Andre Green
Translation © Alan Sheridan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Green, Andre
[Discours vivant. English]
The living discourse: the psychoanalytic conception of affect/Andre Green
p. cm.—(New library of psychoanalysis; 38)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-11525-6 (hbk).—ISBN 0-415-11524-8 (pbk.)
1. Affect (Psychology) 2. Psychoanalysis. I. Tide. II. Series
BF175.G7313 1999
152.4–dc21
99–11522
CIP
ISBN 0-203-36005-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-37261-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-11525-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-11524-8 (pbk)
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it: that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die…
That strain again! It had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets;
Stealing and giving odour…Enough! No more!
’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute…so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical
(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night or What you Will: I: i, 1–15)
Contents
Preface to the English-language edition xi
Preface to the French edition (1973) xiv
Introduction 1
The boundaries of the study 1
Terminology and semantics 4
Questions of method 8
Part I Affect in the psychoanalytic literature 10
1 Affect in Freud’s work 11
Evolution of the conception of the affect 11
Evolution of the conception of anxiety (1893–1932) 59
Conclusion 70
2 An overall view of the psychoanalytic literature since 72
Freud
Analytic bibliography of the principal English-language 72
works on affect
Theoretical positions on the affect in France 94
Part II Clinical practice in psychoanalysis: structures and processes 103
3 Affect in clinical structures 104
Affect in neurotic structures 105
Affect in psychotic structures 113
Between neurosis and psychosis 124
Conclusion 134
ix
4 Affect, the psychoanalytic process and the Oedipus 136
complex
Affect and the raw materials of analytic work 136
Schematic typologies of discourse 140
The Oedipus complex and the ordering of discourse 148
Part III Theoretical study: affect, language and discourse; negative 156
hallucination
5 Affect and the two topographical models 157
The paradoxical situation of affect in Freudian theory 157
(quantity and quality)
First topography: affect and the unconscious (language and 164
discourse)
Second topography: affect and the id (the affective economy) 183
Second topography: affect and the superego (renunciation, 194
idealization and affective extinction
Second topography: affect and the ego (negative 198
hallucination)
6 Draft for a theoretical model: the process 204
Affect, history, structure 204
A hypothetical theoretical model: the process. Locus of the 214
affect
The economic and the symbolic: force and meaning 227
Postface 229
Psychoanalytic speech 229
Affect and instinctual impulses 231
Status of the primal phantasy 235
Repression and the phantasies 237
Language for Freud 241
A few thoughts on modern linguistics: the heterogeneity of 244
the psychoanalytic signifier
The linkage of discourse 248
Negative hallucination 252