ABSTRACT
A. Freud struggled with the problem of affect all his life, especially in the period from Studies on Hysteria to Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. This chapter discusses the four ‘moments’ in time from his work: The Interpretation of Dreams; ‘Papers on Metapsychology’; The Ego and the Id; and Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The ‘studies on hysteria’ are centred on the theory of blocked affect. Freud imagines a permanent dialogue between affect and representation, one mobilizing the other and vice versa, according to the circumstances. The theoretical problem of affect is conceived from the angle of mastery of the potential excess. Many theoretical difficulties could have been removed if Freud had allowed that there were several modes of being in the unconscious, for representations and for affects. After the rearrangement of the second topographical model, Freud returned in 1923 to the irritating problem of unconscious affect.
