Understanding Affectivity: Emotions, Feelings, and Passions in Psychology

Understanding Affectivity

Affectivity is a set of emotions, feelings, and passions that individuals experience internally in response to thoughts, events, or during their lifetime.

Characteristics of Affectivity

• They are natural, subjective, and often difficult to communicate fully. All individuals experience affectivity, which is expressed verbally and through gestures.
• Affectivity oscillates between opposing poles, such as joy and sorrow, attraction and rejection, pleasure and displeasure.

Its external manifestations are evident in an individual's demeanor. For example, if love is the dominant affect in a subject's life at a specific moment, it reflects joy, optimism, and enthusiasm for change. If that love is unrequited, it shows decline, pessimism, and melancholy.

Almost all successes provoke a profound affective response in humans, usually leaving lasting psychological imprints. This explains why positive affects endure in memory and are difficult to forget. In contrast, frustrations often lead to their origins being relegated to the unconscious.

Defining Emotion

Emotion is derived from the Latin emovere, meaning 'to shake' or 'to move out'. It designates an affective state characterized by accompanying bodily alterations. For example, shame makes one blush, and distrust makes one frown.

Emotion is distinguished from feeling because the former involves a short and intense reaction, while the latter is characterized by lasting longer. Unlike emotion, feeling is not accompanied by pronounced bodily changes.

It is very difficult to provide a universally accepted definition of feeling; some authors even state that it cannot be defined. The term 'tendency of affection' refers to objects or people in the external world, encompassing reactions ranging from pleasure to displeasure.

The Nature of Passions

Passions differ from emotions and feelings by their greater intensity and their dependence on the will to respect them. They are affective tendencies experienced intensely, to the extent that the individual feels dragged along by them, even if they try to impede their effects. Thus, they have a high intensity that cannot be rationally controlled. When a subject undergoes a passion, they lose part of their individual liberty. For example, love or hatred, when unmeasured, can become passions. In serious cases, uncontrolled passions can cause major behavioral disturbances.

Affectivity Disorders

Emotional Indifference

Occurs when there are weak emotional responses to stimuli. In extreme cases, the subject is unable to react emotionally to terrible acts or situations charged with affectivity. Individuals suffering from this condition appear distant and devoid of feelings, showing no external emotional reactions to pleasant events, painful circumstances, or the people around them. They generally display attitudes of scorn and social rejection. Some psychiatrists have suggested that emotional indifference can lead to sadistic sexual behaviors.

Affective Dependency

Occurs when a person experiences an uncontrollable craving to be wanted and loved. It differs from normal affection in that it reaches a paroxysm, exceeding legitimate and natural desire. Feeling insecure, individuals suffer anxiety and unreasonable fear crises due to the fear of losing the affection of those around them. Jealousy or an obsessive hoarding of affection from all partners are typical reactions of individuals in this affective state. This can reach pathological levels if it goes beyond rational control.

Manic-Depressive Disorders

Characterized by cyclic alternation between phases of hyperactivity and depressive periods. Individuals suffering from this affective state transition between opposing states in short periods of time.

Emotional Dyscontrol

Characterized by a disproportionate emotional response between the subject and the stimulus causing it. It can manifest in two forms: either an intense, reactive response to trivial stimuli, or, conversely, a lack of response to significant events. In the first case, one might see uncontrollable crying or joy crises. The second case would be similar to emotional indifference.