My understanding of traditional psychodynamics and our common idea of how we function might be simply visualized with the above picture. The blue area of the brain I think of as the conscious brain. Simply put this is the area we have immediate access to. It is the area that processes information and makes a decision. It is certainly understandable that we would think that everything took place here. After all is it not the case that we received information through the senses, process it and make a decision?
But now note the colored areas in the back of the brain. As we have introduced; these are our AFFECTS. Without these we could make none of our conscious decisions. Without understanding this we leave out a crucial part of the equation. Say we are talking with our mate or with a therapist. We both access only the blue area of the brain. We both believe that the blue area is the only thing that informs us that we need only access the hidden corners of that blue area in order to understand ourselves .
Now imagine that we see a dinosaur. We note that our heart begins to beat faster. We
are conscious of this and we run.
The point of the theory is that we routinely ignore important input. Normally we will
think that it is simply natural to run. We consciously "see" the dinosaur. We consciously
process the information and decide to run. But do we? Why does our heart beat faster?
Why does more blood rush to our body so we can run?
Yes we have had "explanations" such as "flight or flight" but what Affect Theory offers is a more refined and important explanation. What it says is that we see the dinosaur. That this seeing is primarily physical. That whether we see, hear, are spoken to or are hit by a truck it is primarily a physical experience.
We physically 'see' the dinosaur. The brain 'feels' the dinosaur, processes it physically. Fear is triggered physically which sends instructions to the rest of the body. it is only at this point that we are beginning to 'think' about it and become aware of all that is going on.
All this is quite simultaneous, but not quite, and that is the important thing. Everything is sequential no matter how rapidly it takes place. There is an order to our body moving through space and time. The body is primarily physical .
So we see the vision. We have been taught the dinosaurs are dangerous and to be feared
as we have been read too and seen movies. But of course any given person could respond in any number of affective ways.
In this case we see the animal and we recall memory. That memory is attached to fear. Fear is a
physical organ. The area in our brain of fear produces energy. The energy is transferred to
the muscles in our face and sent to the vascular system. We look scared, our heart pumps
faster. It is really ONLY THEN that we consciously become aware of what is going on.
It is as if our egos are so important, that survival is so difficult that the only way we have managed so far is that we have come to think of ourselves as separate from the body. We detach, we protect ourselves form the world by retreating to the brain. In so doing we retreat form our own body.
We physically 'see' the dinosaur. The brain 'feels' the dinosaur, processes it physically. Fear is triggered physically which sends instructions to the rest of the body. it is only at this point that we are beginning to 'think' about it and become aware of all that is going on and then and only then do we 'do' something.
Another way to look at it is to say that we always look out onto the world. We have always looked at "other". That being the case we have developed all or our apparatus to look out. Why would we have a need to look into ourselves? We took and take our body and our mind as a given. Looking in is us. Why should we look at us? At the way our mind and body are put together? Through most of history all our energy was needed simply to stay alive. The body and mind connection or disconnection is only apparent after thousands and thousands of years and after developing a complex society where stimuli start to cause many interpsychic and interpersonal problems. We are thrown back on ourselves and have to exam ourselves.
So it is then for all the nine affects. Something in the environment hits our brain, our body, whether that be a thought, the spoken word, something that touches the body, something we see. In each and every case,if it becomes conscious it had to go through the brain. It had to be processed by the affects.
Major Reference: SHAME AND PRIDE: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self, DonaldL. Nathanson.
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