ABSTRACT
Motivations can emerge in the most diverse gradations of intensity, correlated to the affects and the force which accompanies them. As far as the affects are concerned, they had been considered early on, because of psychoanalysis, primarily in terms of pleasure and displeasure, which were seen to be the sum of all affects. Yet Silvan Tomkins, in his extensive research of affects, which was initially highly influenced by Darwin, was able to differentiate a great number of innate, qualitatively diverse affects. These so-called categorical affects also express themselves physiologically; mainly in the form of mimicking certain movements of the muscles and certain patterns of reaction of the autonomic nervous system, like changes in the rate of pulse or the velocity of breathing or electrical resistance of the skin, etc. (Köhler, 1990, p. 37).
