The role of affects in the process of change in psychotherapy

Questioning the place of the notion of change in psychoanalytic theory and therapy, this essay tries to compare it with its homologue in change-focused theories, a comparison that shows an inverse relation between theoretical richness and an atheoretical stance oriented explicitly toward change. It is suggested that the concept of affect provides notions of flowing that are needed in structurally biased psychoanalytic theory, and that from a therapeutic point of view, an emotional relationship between the therapeutic partners endows interpretations with mutative power. Two dimensions of affects in therapy are discussed: emotional accompaniment and emotional restructuring. It is further suggested that the double-edgedness of affects accounts for the emotions "grasping" the "nucleus of change" both from the inside and from the outside, and that the process of change uses the function of emotions as motives to change something in their function as indicators and signifiers of situations.