The representation of affects (and their consequences for our understanding of what we call psychical)

It is customary for everyone starting to write on affects from a broad perspective to recall that there is no present satisfactory theory of affects, and to say that all the same the census of the theories is by the present time more or less around a hundred. Such a field of research is so full of possible confusions that it is important to examine carefully definitions and basic assumptions. For instance, one can compare the different statements of Laplanche and Pontalis, Fine and Moore, and Rycroft, written in approximately the same year,1 which show significant differences of perspective.