I've been reading about Silvan Tomkins and his affect script psychology. This article is a good synopsis. I thought others might find it interesting.
Affect Theory
You can also read more at The Tomkins Institute
Original Post
Hi STRM,
I just finished reading the article. I liked it. I think the models it presents for understanding our experiences of positive and negative affects seem potentially very valuable. I found myself considering some of my own bouts of depression in new ways, based on the ideas presented in the article. For instance, when I was growing up, most anything I really liked was considered suspect by my parents, so the positive affect of "interest-excitement" was constantly being interrupted. Nowadays I have a harder time getting excited about new things. Interesting implications there.
On a different note, I thought some of the societal observations he made in this paragraph were very thought provoking:
"There are two problems most likely to trigger interference with a system in which entertainments and personal
satisfaction are linked to the intensity of the affective experiences involved: Firstly, the biological nature
of the affect system must eventually act as a brake on the steadily increasing density of whatever stimuli are
manufactured. Too much of anything becomes unpleasant, not just because the audience protests that “we’ve
seen this before,” but because there is only a slim border between intense positive affect and negative affect.
Secondly, there is an increasing likelihood that public disgust for increasingly violent entertainments will rise
to the extent that our culture will follow the path of previous generations and build into our social systems the
kind of structures and safeguards that will initially enrage the entertainment industry but actually save it from
far worse attacks. No society can survive constant and unchecked increase in affective amplification. We don’t
tolerate it from children over the age of three, and I fully expect that within a few years of this writing our
society will have withdrawn its support of the unmodulated expression of affect and sexuality now in vogue.
We’ll do it quite badly, because change of this sort only occurs as the result of scripts based in anger, disgust,
and dissmell, and the subsequent retreat from social and political control will place us right back where we
are today."
I wonder if those predictions will turn out to be accurate? Personally, I already find much of modern entertainment media to be "too much" for me, affect wise. I wonder if the rest of society really will follow suit in this regard in a few years, lol.
I just finished reading the article. I liked it. I think the models it presents for understanding our experiences of positive and negative affects seem potentially very valuable. I found myself considering some of my own bouts of depression in new ways, based on the ideas presented in the article. For instance, when I was growing up, most anything I really liked was considered suspect by my parents, so the positive affect of "interest-excitement" was constantly being interrupted. Nowadays I have a harder time getting excited about new things. Interesting implications there.
On a different note, I thought some of the societal observations he made in this paragraph were very thought provoking:
"There are two problems most likely to trigger interference with a system in which entertainments and personal
satisfaction are linked to the intensity of the affective experiences involved: Firstly, the biological nature
of the affect system must eventually act as a brake on the steadily increasing density of whatever stimuli are
manufactured. Too much of anything becomes unpleasant, not just because the audience protests that “we’ve
seen this before,” but because there is only a slim border between intense positive affect and negative affect.
Secondly, there is an increasing likelihood that public disgust for increasingly violent entertainments will rise
to the extent that our culture will follow the path of previous generations and build into our social systems the
kind of structures and safeguards that will initially enrage the entertainment industry but actually save it from
far worse attacks. No society can survive constant and unchecked increase in affective amplification. We don’t
tolerate it from children over the age of three, and I fully expect that within a few years of this writing our
society will have withdrawn its support of the unmodulated expression of affect and sexuality now in vogue.
We’ll do it quite badly, because change of this sort only occurs as the result of scripts based in anger, disgust,
and dissmell, and the subsequent retreat from social and political control will place us right back where we
are today."
I wonder if those predictions will turn out to be accurate? Personally, I already find much of modern entertainment media to be "too much" for me, affect wise. I wonder if the rest of society really will follow suit in this regard in a few years, lol.