ABSTRACT
The concept of embodied affectivity rejects the idea that emotions are only mental phenomena, and that the world is bare of affective qualities. Emotions also emerge from situations, persons and objects with their expressive, attractive or repulsive qualities. The peculiar intentionality of emotions relates to what is particularly valuable and relevant for the subject. The feedback cycles of mutual incorporation are not achieved; instead, for children with autism, the others remain rather mysterious, detached objects whose behaviour is troublesome to predict. Strategies of explicit mentalizing and inferring from social cues are rather employed by high-functioning autistic individuals as a compensation for the lacking capacities of primary intersubjectivity. A severe disturbance of interaffectivity is also found in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, which, from a phenomenological point of view, may be regarded as fundamental disturbances of the embodied self, or as a disembodiment.
