Pleasure Beyond the Pleasure Principle (The Role of Affect in Motivation, Develo)

Affects, or feelings, are crucial motivators and organizers in our psychological lives. Yet affect and the full range of emotional expressions have been relatively neglected by psychoanalysis since Freud's earliest formulations. This volume, the first in a three-part series addressing the centrality of affect, focuses on pleasure, which Freud believed to be a fundamental quality of affect. Here, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists integrate new understandings from the neurosciences, clinical research and practice, and observational studies of the development of infants and nonhuman mammals, and scholars in the humanities report on the philosophic and aesthetic implications. Discussing such topics as joy and satisfaction in infancy, pleasure and sexuality, pleasure and hatred, psychobiologic and psychopharmocologic perspectives on pleasure and anhedonia, they provide a comprehensive examination of the development, neurobiology, behavioural manifestations and meanings of pleasure and affect.