[Importance of affects for diagnosis, prognosis and therapy]

The significance of the term affect, its development und change within the framework of psychoanalytic theory are described and the perspective and the results of recent empirical research into affects are briefly considered. Then the importance of affects within the process of diagnosis and therapy is examined. It is especially the signal function of affects which serves as an important guideline in the attempt to understand connections of personal experience which have become fragmentary and disrupted, to restore those connections and make them conscious to the patient. Both the affective experience of the patient and that of the therapist are involved in this process. It is also pointed out which phenomenological distinctions are to be made between patients with preoedipal and oedipal disorders in the way they perceive and express affects; from these distinctions the significance of affects for differential-diagnosis can be deduced. Here the signal function of affects is also of central importance. Wherever this function is not fully developed, deficits in differentiation of affects and emotional inundation can be observed. The two different kinds of disorders require different therapeutic techniques when dealing with affects; these are described and illustrated by case vignettes.