Thoughts and Questions about Backed-up Affects

I am wondering whether much development has taken place in respect of Tonkins's concept of backed-up affect (also called pseudo-affect). Inasmuch as this is the kind of inauthentic affect Tomkins believed was typical of a great deal of adult affective expression (as compared to the expressions of infants and children), an understanding of backed-up affect could also help explain why theories of emotion based on only adult observations mislead. Backed-up affect has other fascinating possibilities as an explanatory concept. For example, there is some attention these days given to the subjects of alexithymia and normopathy, conditions wherein verbal expressions or tolerance for conscious affective experience appears to be severely restricted. (After studying Affect Theory, however, it begins to seem to me at times as though the rest of the psychological sciences themselves are dominated by alexithymic and normopathic theories blinding us to affect!) I have several ideas about backed-up affect that make me curious.

1) If it is plausible that when authentic affect is inhibited (especially, according to Tomkins, the vocal expression thereof) it contributes detrimentally to one's somatic health (as Tomkins suggests and as some alexithymia theorists have suggested, too, in asserting that limited conscious expression/experience of authentic affect may be a causal influence in the development of psychosomatic illnesses), then what comments or suggestions could be made about optimal levels of affective expression and optimal means of building empathic walls in socializing the control of affective expression?

2) More important still, to me, is the question of being able to determine whether my own or another's affective expression is authentic or pseudo-affect. If one is expressing what appears to be a strong affective reaction and is actually inhibiting a direct expression of an authentic version of that or some other affect, we are in a bit of a pickle if we have no way of knowing which is what. Guidelines for making distinctions between pseudo- and authentic affect would be helpful, however incomplete and vague such guidelines may need to be. Perhaps someone may suggest a Tomkins source wherein he goes into more detail than I found from a chapter by him dealing briefly with this topic in the 1978 Nebraska Symposium on Motivation.

3) I am wondering, too, if anyone has any ideas on whether pseudo-affect would necessarily entail the affect of shame, for if pseudo-affect represents the outcome of some socialized (or other, say, biological) impediment to authentic affect, then if the impediment works against interest-excitement or enjoyment-joy, it seems to me it would indeed entail shame as a component. Moreover, is it not possible that backed-up affect also entails a shame component even in the case of impediments to negative affects--insofar as the inhibited expression/experience of the negative affects necessarily also impedes their being diminished if they cannot be first expressed? I have the uneasy suspicion I may be stretching things too far here in associating shame with impediments to initiating expressions of negative affects.. Shame occurs with impediments to positive affects, I know. Can anyone help me figure out what I'm thinking here or if I've fallen off the theoretical track?

4) It seems to me, too, that one could speak of backed-up shame. If I recall correctly, shame is actually an affect auxiliary and not precisely an affect. Perhaps it is mistaken to then refer to "backed-up shame" if it is not actually an affect since Tomkins says affects, not affect auxiliaries, are backed-up. But continuing on while risking error in badly comprehending Tomkins, I begin to think that if the authentic expression/experience of shame is impeded, we get backed-up, pseudo-shame--and perhaps pseudo-shame is what the four corners of Don Nathanson's compass of shame either are or contain as a necessary component.

5) Tonkins notes that the distinction between pseudo-anger and authentic anger is very important and tricky. And is it not partly pseudo-anger (as an expression of backed-up shame?) that is found in the attack-other mode on the compass of shame?

6) My curiosity is having trouble getting me to imagine backed-up disgust or dissmell. Since these, too, are not exactly affects, perhaps their being backed-up is also not on theoretical target either.

I believe the topic of pseudo-affects is no doubt very important, at least as important as authentic affects. Has much been written about it? Would anyone care to respond or clarify or express similar questions? I would, of course, very much welcome and appreciate any further discussion and/or references for further reading on this fascinating topic.

• One Guideline by Jim Duffy, 10/27/97