After denying that “drives” (Triebe, consistently and erroneously translated as “instincts” in the Standard Edition) themselves can be unconscious—solely the ideational representations constitutive of the aims and objects of drives, and not their sources and pressures,12 can be condemned to this psychical state13—it sounds as though Freud pronounces the exact same verdict as regards affective things. He declares: “We should expect the answer to the question about unconscious feelings, emotions and affects [Empfindungen, Gefühlen, Affekten] to be just as easily given. It is surely of the essence of an emotion that we should be aware of it, i.e. that it should become known to consciousness. Thus the possibility of the attribute of unconsciousness would be completely excluded as far as emotions, feelings and affects [Gefühle, Empfindungen, Affekte] are concerned.”14 Already at this point, only those struck with a remarkable exegetical tone deafness could fail to detect the audible manner in which Freud is beginning to paint this position—that affective life is intrinsically conscious insofar as feelings, as feelings, must be felt (i.e., consciously experienced)—as specious. This line of reasoning initially might seem intuitively obvious, especially given that the conventions of natural languages, vulgar common sense, and long-held, deeply entrenched philosophical views all speak with one voice in favor of it. However, Freud continues: “But in psycho-analytic practice we are accustomed to speak of unconscious love, hate, anger, etc., and find it impossible to avoid even the strange conjunction, ‘unconscious consciousness of guilt’ [unbewußtes Schuld-bewußtsein], or a paradoxical ‘unconscious anxiety.’”15 Oddly enough, in Freud’s other texts, only guilt and anxiety are referred to as candidates for the theoretically uncertain status of being unconscious affects. And yet, in this paper on the metapsychology of the unconscious, other affects (“love, hate, anger, etc.”) receive mention in this vein. If one grants that guilt and anxiety can be unconscious, then it stands to reason that any and every affective hue could be so too.
Soon after in the text, Freud says something that, from the perspective of this particular project, is very interesting: “it may happen that an affective or emotional impulse is perceived but misconstrued” (Es kann zunächst vorkommen, daß eine Affekt- oder Gefühlsregung wahrgenommen, aber verkannt wird).16 In essence, this is an articulation of nothing other than the concept of misfelt feelings (i.e., affective or emotional phenomena that are “perceived but misconstrued”) I’m proposing here. (Despite the general thrust of his take on affects in psychoanalytic metapsychology, Lacan, in the seventeenth seminar of 1969–1970, suggests something similar,17 as does the ex-Lacanian analyst André Green in his book Le discours vivant, published in 1973.)18 The sentence that follows reads: “Owing to the repression of its proper representative [eigentlichen Repräsentanz] it has been forced to become connected with another idea [anderen Vorstellung], and is now regarded by consciousness as the manifestation [Äußerung] of that idea.”19 At this juncture, a tacit contrast arguably becomes visible between two “manifestations” (or one could translate this as “expressions”) of the “same” affect: this affect’s expression in “true connection” with its “proper representative [eigentlichen Repräsentanz]” versus this affect’s expression, after the vicissitude of being detached and displaced from its real corresponding ideational representation, in “false connection” with “another idea [anderen Vorstellung]” that is a substitutive representational stand-in. (As will be seen in the next chapter, Lacan draws ample attention to these two German terms, Repräsentanz and Vorstellung, in Freud’s texts.) What this project, at this point, adds to the Freudian metapsychology of affects is the supplementary claim (or, at a minimum, the addition of a greater emphasis to the effect) that a “single” affect will feel qualitatively different depending on the ideational representations with which it’s connected. Such ideational mediation, always operative in the forms of representational matrices inextricably interwoven with the affective lives of speaking beings, plays a significant part in generating the very feel of feeling. Consequently, in those previously discussed cases prompting Freud hesitantly to resort to the phrase “unconscious sense of guilt,” it now could be maintained that the feelings constitutive of guilt feel like guilt as such and per se when they enjoy a “true connection” with their “proper representative [eigentlichen Repräsentanz],” whereas these “identical” feelings don’t feel like guilt when decoupled from their (unconscious) ideational ur-origin and forced into “false connections” with other ideas (Vorstellungen). In the latter instance, guilt could be deemed to be unconscious not as an oxymoronic unfelt feeling, but instead as a feeling that is, as all feelings in human subjects potentially can be, misfelt (to repeat Freud’s phrasing, “perceived but misconstrued”)—and this insofar as the feel of this feeling is inflected by misleading associative displacements along the strands of the psyche’s webs of ideational contents. In fact, Freud says as much approximately a page later, toward the end of this section of “The Unconscious,” proposing that “the development of affect can … proceed from this conscious substitute [bewußten Ersatz], and the nature of that substitute determines the qualitative character of the affect.”20 (The “conscious substitute [bewußten Ersatz]” is related to the earlier-invoked “other idea [anderen Vorstellung].”)
And yet, no sooner does Freud open up these possibilities for coherently conceptualizing unconscious affects than he quickly shuts down these promising metapsychological avenues, promptly reverting to a theory according to which an unconscious affect is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms. He stipulates at length:
If we restore the true connection [richtigen Zusammenhang], we call the original affective impulse an “unconscious” one. Yet its affect was never unconscious; all that had happened was that its idea [Vorstellung] had undergone repression. In general, the use of the terms “unconscious affect” [unbewußter Affekt] and “unconscious emotion” [unbewußtes Gefühl] has reference to the vicissitudes undergone, in consequence of repression, by the quantitative factor in the instinctual impulse. We know that three such vicissitudes are possible: either the affect remains, wholly or in part, as it is; or it is transformed into a qualitatively different quota of affect [einen qualitativ anderen Affektbetrag], above all into anxiety; or it is suppressed [unterdrückt], i.e. it is prevented from developing at all.… We know, too, that to suppress the development of affect is the true aim of repression and that its work is incomplete if this aim is not achieved. In every instance where repression has succeeded in inhibiting the development of affects, we term those affects (which we restore when we undo the work of repression) “unconscious.” Thus it cannot be denied that the use of the term in question is consistent; but in comparison with unconscious ideas there is the important difference that unconscious ideas continue to exist after repression as actual structures [reale Bildung] in the system Ucs., whereas all that corresponds in that system to unconscious affects is a potential beginning which is prevented from developing.21
There is much to be unpacked in this passage, an unpacking that will occupy me in the next several paragraphs. Beginning with relatively simple, broad brushstrokes, the story Freud tells here is that what he really means by the phrase “unconscious affect” is a virtual potential-to-feel, rather than an actually felt feeling somehow not registered at the level of conscious awareness (something implicitly dismissed as self-contradictory). This virtual potential-to-feel, as not-yet-felt feeling cut off and strangulated (i.e., “suppressed” [unterdrückt]) by repression, is tied to certain “real formations” (reale Bildung) of repressed ideational representations (Vorstellungen) in the unconscious (what Lacan later calls “formations of the unconscious,” as per the title of his fifth seminar of 1957–1958). The labor of analysis, in lifting the burdensome, heavy curtain of repression, allows these not-yet-felt affective potentials within the unconscious to become felt affective actualities in consciousness (a sort of variant on what is involved in the old idea of catharsis). Analytic ther
apy fleshes out emotional dead zones where appropriate feelings were previously lacking, in addition to filling in suspicious mnemic, conceptual, and symbolic-linguistic blanks within analysands’ narratives. Moreover, Freud stresses that only ideas (Vorstellungen) truly can be repressed in the strict sense. Hence, affects are unconscious only as ideationally encoded non- or preaffective potentials for perhaps eventually coming to feel certain affects in connection with specific repressed Vorstellungen once those representatives are rendered conscious thanks to the lifting of repression.
But, even in the passage examined in freestanding isolation, things aren’t so simple. Complications arise in relation to the senses in which to interpret and characterize the three psychical vicissitudes undergone by affective “quotas” as well as in relation to the distinction in this passage’s background between affects as quantitative or economic variables (i.e., “the quantitative factor”) and as qualitative or experiential phenomena. (As early as the Project for a Scientific Psychology [1895], the root source of so many enduring Freudian notions, Freud tries to formulate an explanatory quantitative reduction of the qualitative feel of affects.)22 The term affect carries with it, especially in Freudian metapsychology, dangerous risks of several theoretically problematic equivocations, including a sloppy mixing together of quantitative and qualitative dimensions of description. Laplanche and Pontalis, among others, are careful to highlight the difference, evident in the preceding quotation from “The Unconscious,” between the economic concept “quota of affect” (Affektbetrag) and affect (Affekt) as an experience with a given feeling-quality.23 One of Freud’s assumptions in 1915 on which his delineation of the three vicissitudes of affects rests is that there can be “quantitative” changes in libidinal, drive-level mechanisms or processes that fail to generate any corresponding conscious or felt qualities. (This assumption will be reexamined under the new illumination provided by the neurosciences, particularly Damasio’s research.) Simply put, to be affected quantitatively isn’t always, as one might presume, to be affected qualitatively. According to Freudian metapsychology, the phenomenology of affect (as Affekt) doesn’t necessarily match up in any one-to-one manner with the economy of affect (as Affektbetrag)—and this by virtue of repressions bearing upon the libidinal economy.
Freud’s three postrepression destinies of quotas of affect (Affektbetrag) lead to these quotas, as “the quantitative factor in the instinctual impulse,” being felt (i.e., “the affect remains, wholly or in part, as it is”), misfelt (i.e., “it is transformed into a qualitatively different quota of affect [einen qualitativ anderen Affektbetrag], above all into anxiety”), or unfelt (i.e., “it is suppressed [unterdrückt], i.e. it is prevented from developing at all”). Sticking to the example of guilt, the first scenario refers to cases in which someone feels guilt without really understanding why he/she feels this way (as with the apparently irrational, excessive guilt typical of certain neurotics). The second scenario, of special interest to me, seemingly describes instances in which an underlying sense of culpability registers itself as a disturbing agitation not self-consciously felt as guilt per se. (Incidentally, maybe the excitement of being affected without knowing why tends to be spontaneously self-interpreted, under the constraints of repression, as anxiety because of the somatic excitations accompanying a range of affective feeling-states, including guilt, sexual arousal, and so on: on the next page of this paper, Freud characterizes anxiety as “the affect … for which all ‘repressed’ affects are exchanged.”)24 The third scenario is best construed as suggesting that someone’s unconscious can harbor repressed memories or thoughts that, although charged with the potential power to give rise to guilty feelings if brought to light under the right circumstances, are prevented from actually stimulating a conscious sense of guilt (or any other palpable affective effect).
Additionally, a strange, troubling tension surfaces in the original German wording of the second of these three vicissitudes: Cutting against the grain of his metapsychological distinction between phenomenal Affekt and economic Affektbetrag, Freud imputes qualitative differences to different quantitative quotas of affect. Affects, as phenomena, can be qualitatively distinguished from one another by their distinctive feels. By contrast, how can quotas of affect, as pure economic quantities (not felt in themselves but only if and when they’re translated into consciously registered experiences), differ from each other qualitatively? A strange short circuit between levels of metapsychological discourse appears to be operative here.
But, Freud has a few more noteworthy remarks to make in “The Unconscious.” He continues: “Strictly speaking, then, and although no fault can be found with the linguistic usage, there are no unconscious affects as there are unconscious ideas. But there may very well be in the system Ucs. affective structures [Affektbildungen] which, like others, become conscious. The whole difference arises from the fact that ideas are cathexes [Besetzungen]—basically of memory-traces—whilst affects [Affekte] and emotions [Gefühle] correspond to processes of discharge, the final manifestations of which are perceived as feelings [Empfindungen].”25 Many readers of Freud, particularly those of a Lacanian bent, tend to ignore what immediately follows and qualifies Freud’s metapsychological statement claiming that “there are no unconscious affects”; significantly, Freud goes on to add “as there are unconscious ideas.” In the two subsequent sentences, he struggles to clarify in what fashion it’s indeed admissible to talk about affects being unconscious, albeit in a fashion other than that of designating the manner in which ideational representations subsist as unconscious. (In line with this Freudian addition, Green maintains that, for Freud, affects can be unconscious, although admittedly in modes different from unconscious representations.)26 So, how are these clarifications to be comprehended, assuming the invalidity of simply concluding, particularly in the wake of a close reading of Freud’s writing, that Freud categorically and without qualification rejects the very idea of unconscious affects?
The invocation of “affective structures” (Affektbildungen, which also could be translated as “affective formations,” as in “formations of the unconscious”) seemingly signals a falling-back upon the hypothesis according to which the phrase “unconscious affect” really refers not to affects as such (as experiential phenomena), but instead to constellations of repressed ideational representations with the potential, under the proper conditions, to give rise to certain affects within the sphere of conscious awareness. These repressed constellations within the unconscious are, strictly speaking, protoaffective rather than affective per se. In short, appealing to Affektbildungen would appear to enable Freud to square the notion of unconscious affect with his metapsychological postulate dictating that only ideas (Vorstellungen) can be truly unconscious in the precise technical sense. Read in this fashion, no serious threat looks to be posed by the passage quoted to the traditional Lacanian interpretation of Freud’s metapsychology of affect, repeatedly and insistently alleged by Lacan and his adherents to be articulated by Freud with a decisive finality in 1915.
But, the following final sentence of the quoted passage indeed does problematize, if read closely and carefully, Lacan’s persistent reliance upon “The Unconscious” to underwrite his generally sweeping denial of the existence of unconscious affects (a reliance that will be examined closely in the next chapter). With my putting aside for the time being the hidden nuances and subtleties contained in the term cathexis (Besetzung)—this term risks appearing simple and straightforward due to its ubiquity and familiarity in psychoanalytic discourse—it should be noticed that Freud resorts to using three separate but related words: Affekte (affects), Gefühle (emotions), and Empfindungen (feelings). Even if Freud himself, as an intentional authorial consciousness, isn’t fully aware of the implications sheltering here in his sentences, these implications literally are there, on this very textual surface itself. Moreover, in light of this tripartite distinction in “The Unconscious,” a retroactive payoff becomes visible in relation to the
regular underscoring of Freud’s German in the prior pages of this project (an underscoring that might have seemed, at least to some readers perhaps, to be pointless or even excessive in an irritatingly obsessional sort of scholarly style). Green likewise draws attention to this German terminological triad, although he doesn’t go on, as I do, to develop in detail its precise systematic ramifications for a Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis interfaced with neurobiology.27
Freud manifestly draws a distinction, in 1915, between, on the one hand, affects and emotions and, on the other hand, feelings. The former (i.e., Affekte and Gefühle) are said to designate “processes of discharge” (presumably discharges driven by ideational Affektbildungen with their economic Affektbeträge [quotas of affect]), processes of which only a partial portion are consciously registered—and this insofar as Freud clearly states, regarding affects and emotions, that solely their “final manifestations … are perceived as feelings [Empfindungen].” The two extreme poles of, on one end, Affektbildung and Affektbetrag and, on another end, Empfindung map onto Freud’s underlying metapsychological dichotomy between economic quantities (akin to structure) and experiential qualities (akin to energy) in a parallel, one-to-one correspondence. However, Affekte and Gefühle (or, what hereafter I will dub “Affekte-qua-Gefühle”) are left hanging in a strange metapsychological limbo, a conceptual liminal space, between these two poles. Affekt-qua-Gefühl is neither Affektbildung or Affektbetrag nor Empfindung, neither the structural or ideational potential for being consciously affected through feeling nor the phenomenal or sensational being consciously affected through feeling.
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