ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the ideas of affect, self, object-relations, their numerosity or condition with respect to number, and the alternatives of internal-external. The definitions of affect, feeling and emotion are vague. Affect has sometimes been used specifically of the experience associated with desire, but more usually it is a generic term covering any emotional state or mood, whereas feeling has been more widely used to refer to any experience of the self and its body sensations. John Rickman had rather wider vistas in mind in his thinking on the subject of numerosity. In considering the nature of the human sciences, Rickman directed his attention naturally towards psychology. The functioning of a reality sense, or reality testing as it is often called in psychoanalysis, depends upon some crucial factors. Thinking that is realistic must be open to sensory impact, to feedback data mediated by the relevant exteroceptors.