Affect logic: an integrative model of the psyche and its relations to schizophrenia

The integrative concept of 'affect logic' is based on a hypothesis concerning the laws of interaction between emotion and cognition. 'Affects' are defined as global psychophysiological states which determine the prevailing functional 'logic', i.e. the specific ways in which cognitive elements are selected and linked together. This leads to an integrative psycho-socio-biological evolutionary model of schizophrenia, in which a specific affective-cognitive vulnerability is built up in a first phase, through escalating interactions between unfavourable genetic-biological and psychosocial influences. In a second phase, the mental system is decompensated by psychosocial or biological stressors which induce psychosis. The great variability in long-term course (third phase) is conditioned by the complex interplay of many biological and psychosocial variables. The organising functions of affects are evident in schizophrenic core phenomena such as ambivalence, incoherence, and emotional flattening. This proposed model has numerous practical and theoretical implications.