Affectivity

William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905): Young girl defends herself against Eros

Affectivity is a term from psychiatry and psychology . It was first used by Eugen Bleuler and describes the totality of the emotional and emotional life . It therefore includes affects , emotions , moods and instinctuality . In colloquial language, affectivity is also understood as being able to respond to feelings .

In Bleuler, the term affectivity is related to the term ambivalence and thus marks the contrast between rational judgment and affective evaluation (see the difference between the older terms mental illness and mental illness ). Affectivity is not only a matter of gradual and quantitative remarkable or strong mental experiences and reactions, as they occur in so-called affect acts , but also those that are caused and conditioned by slight amounts of mental energy.

Bleuler differentiates from affectivity between sensory and other body sensations. Bleuler also differentiated such feelings from affectivity, which is an inner perception z. B. of certainty or probability or appear as unclear thoughts or realizations.

The connection of feelings with thoughts can also be described as an emotional idea . Unpleasant and unsettling connections of this kind are also referred to as complexes , which usually arise from conflicted previous situations. They usually prevent a return to a familiar emotional starting position. The character of a person is determined almost solely by affectivity, who specifically describes this "initial situation" and thus also the mechanisms of defense with which this initial situation is restored. For example, slightly changing but euphoric feelings made the sanguine , persistent and deep feelings the phlegmatic . The moral character is determined by affective connections with concepts of good and evil.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Uwe Henrik Peters : Lexicon of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Medical Psychology . Elsevier, 2007, ISBN 978-3-437-15061-6 , pp. 679 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Eugen Bleuler (1916): Textbook of Psychiatry . New edition Springer 1983, ISBN 3-540-11833-0 . (a) Re. “Affective ambivalence”: page 74; (b) Re. “Complexes”: page 67; (c) Re. “Character”: page 68
3. ^ Eugen Bleuler (1906): affectivity, suggestibility, paranoia . Pages 6, 13 f.
4. ^ Rudolf Degkwitz et al. (Ed.): Mentally ill . Introduction to Psychiatry for Clinical Study. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-541-09911-9 ; Column indicated below with ~: - Page 104 ~ 2