The concept of affect-logic

Affect-logic is an innovative theory on ubiquitous interactions between feeling and thinking, or affectivity and logic which are overtly or covertly present in all mental activities. The concept was firstly introduced in 1982 and steadily developed since, according to the ongoing scientific progress. It represents a theoretically and practically useful synthesis of current neurobiological, psychological, psychoanalytical, socio-dynamical and evolutionary notions, revisited under the perspective of a general systems theory. Originally focused on psychiatric problems only, its basic assumptions proved eventually to be of general value. Consequently, the concept gradually developed into an interdisciplinary meta-theory with implications in all fields where affective-cognitive interactions are of importance, especially in psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, pedagogy, advertising, politics, micro- and macro-sociological dynamics.

Definitions

In affect-logic, the terms of affect, cognition and logic are broadly but sharply defined and clearly delimitated on the base of the common denominators between different scientific approaches, among which interdisciplinary useful consensual definitions are still lacking.

The notion of affect (which for certain authors includes all kinds of emotion-like phenomena, while others restrict it to a particular type of subjective experience) is understood as a broad "umbrella-notion" which covers all kinds of emotion-like phenomena variably called emotions, feelings, affects or moods. An affect in this sense is a situation-specific psycho-somatic state of variable duration, intensity, quality and degree of consciousness, characterized by specific expressive, subjective, physical and neuro-biologic features, and by a specific pattern of goal-directed energy consumption.

Basic affects like interest, fear, rage, joy or sadness are rooted in survival-relevant evolution-selected behaviours like environment exploration, avoidance of danger, defence against enemies, food-intake, socialisation, collaboration and bonding, sexuality, readjustment after significant losses. They are mostly innate, but culturally modulated. Pleasant relaxation, calmness or indifference, too, are typical affects in the defined sense. Seen that way, one is always in a certain affective state, and affective-cognitive interactions are omnipresent.

Cognition, too, is understood in a broad sense which includes different functions such as perception, attention, memory and combinatory thought. Cognition in this sense is defined as the capacity of distinguishing and further elaborating sensory differences (e.g. the capacity of distinguishing between black and white, warm and cold, harmless and dangerous etc., and of establishing relations between these differences and differences of differences). This definition is closely related to general cybernetics and information theory, especially to the notion of a "bit" (= the smallest perceived difference). Cognition, too, is a basic property of living organisms which appears very early in evolution.

The equally broadly understood term of logic includes not only the formal (Aristotelian) logic, but also the so-called everyday logic and different types of affect-dependent logic (see below). Logic in this sense is the way how cognitive elements are connected and combined in comprehensive thought, in order to form, e.g. a specific theory, "world view", "mentality" or ideology.

Integrated feeling-thinking-behaving programs - the essential "building stones" of the psyche

Simultaneously experienced emotions, cognitions and behaviours are functionally linked and conjointly memorised. Such links are reinforced by repetition and can further be modulated by experience.. Functionally linked emotions, cognitions and behaviours store past experiences which are reactivated in similar situations. They thus function as comprehensive "programs" for future emotional, cognitive and motor behaviour (abbreviated: ECB-programs). Comprehensive ECB-programs can also be reactivated by some partial elements (e.g. by a particular feeling or perception). Certain ECB-programs are innate (e.g. certain fear-reactions), but mostly they are acquired through experience. Integrated ECB- programs of variable degrees of complexity are the essential "building stones" of the psyche.

Circular interactions between emotion and cognition

Emotion and cognition are continually interacting in all mental activities: Specific cognitions trigger specific emotions, and specific emotions modulate and change the related cognitive functions.

Affect-logic focuses particularly on the - so far largely neglected - so-called operator-effects that basic affects such as fear, rage, joy or sadness continually exert on cognition (an operator is variable which influences another variable).The prevailing affective state actually influences the energy, speed, form and content of thought and perception. It also modifies the focus and hierarchy of attention, the mobilisation and storage of selected cognitions ("state-dependent memory"), and the way how affect-selected cognitions are combined in comprehensive thought and logic in the above defined broad sense.

Cognitive elements with similar affective connotations (e.g. all pleasant or unpleasant aspects of a person, of a town or of a country) are preferentially connected, while dissimilar elements are preferentially disconnected ("repressed"). Specific affects have, hence, an attractor-like (or glue-like) effect on specific cognitions.

The evolutionary function of the affects and their operator-effects on cognition is the situation-appropriated reduction of the complexity of the surrounding cognitive world, in the service of survival.

Different affect-dependent logics and everyday-logic

Comprehensive thought and logic are, hence, strongly dependent on the prevailing affective state. Different types of logic prevail in different affective states, e.g., a "logic of fear", a "logic of hate", a "logic of love", or, on the collective level, a "logic of war" or a "logic of peace".

Even the apparently unemotional everyday logic is conditioned by underlying operator-effects of formerly intense affects. Everyday logic is based on past experiences - e.g. an exciting first encounter, a scientific or artistic discovery, etc - which were initially related to strong conscious feelings that are, however, progressively weakend and automatized through repetition and habituation. Nevertheless, the initial affects continue to exert their operator effects on everyday thought and behaviour unconsciously: They condition not only all "semi-automatic" skills like car-driving, instrument playing etc, but also our habitual ways of thinking. All our apparently "self-evident" personality-specific, group-specific and culture-specific value systems, political or religious ideologies, and prejudices were once shaped by strong emotional experiences of fear or aggression, pleasure or disgust etc. When such "self-evidences" are suddenly violated, their underlying emotional components reappear immediately.

The role of affects in rational thought and logic

Contrary to common beliefs, rational thought and formal logic, too, are modulated by underlying affect-related operators: Both seeking pleasure and avoiding displeasure plays a significant, albeit generally overlooked role in the construction and stabilisation of formal logic and rational thought, because all logical conflicts, contradictions and paradoxes are unpleasant and, therefore, emotion-energetically uneconomic, whilst contradiction-free solutions are pleasant, relaxing and economic ("easy going"). As in everyday-logic, strong initial pleasure is gradually dampened, when a new discovery becomes routine. It continues, however, to covertly influence rational thought and logic through the operator-effects of positive feelings: Pleasant solutions are systematically favoured, unpleasant ones avoided. Moreover, common positive feelings link similarly "coloured" cognitive elements in order to form a comprehensive scientific theory in exactly the same way as emotionally similar cognitive elements are preferentially connected in a general "mentality" or "everyday logic".

The energizing effects of emotions

These operator effects of emotions on cognition are related to another important aspect of emotions which continues to be astonishingly neglected, namely their bio-energetic dimension. Different emotions are characterized by different patterns of goal-directed energy consumption with mostly stimulating and mobilizing, but sometimes (e.g. in freezing or depression) also inhibiting effects on thought and behaviour. Charging a mental or social system with specific emotions corresponds to a directed input of energy. Emotional energies stirred up, e.g., by economic, political, psychological, social or religious conflicts and contradictions, are the very "motor" behind all mental or social dynamics.

Compared to the usual only qualitative definitions, the bio-energetic understanding of emotions has the advantage of being exactly quantifiable. It explains the powerful energizing effects of emotions on individual and collective thought and behaviour both in everyday life and in exceptional situations like mass-panic, enthusiasm, rage, horror, mourning, etc.. It also leads to a deeper understanding of sudden global modifications (so-called bifurcations) in the habitual ways of thinking and behaving of individuals, groups or whole nations: Such "bifurcations" occur inevitably, when increasing emotional tensions in a mental or social system reach a critical level, where the accumulated emotional energies can no longer be contained by the habitual modes or "channels" of thought and behaviour. The consequence is a sudden shift of the general pattern of functioning into a new global "regime" - e.g. from a "logic of peace" to a "logic of war", from a "logic of love" to a "logic of hate", or from a normal to a psychotic logic.

Similar affect-energetic mechanisms are, e.g., at work at the sudden outbreak of violence, of war or revolution. They also play a crucial role in creative processes like the discovery of new solutions in art or science, and in humour. In all these cases, increasing emotional tensions function as the critical so-called control parameter which determines the moment of bifurcating. Simultaneously, formerly marginal cognitive elements (e.g. a formerly marginal or "crazy" idea) can suddenly turn into a new so-called order-parameter, or centre of crystallisation, around which the new patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving - e.g. a new system of value, of political, religious or scientific convictions, or a pathologic delusional system - emerge by self-organisation.

The fractal structure of affective-cognitive interactions, and collective affect-logic

The theory of affect-logic postulates, furthermore, that affective-cognitive interactions are basically similar on different levels of complexity, that is, that they show a so-called fractal structure.

"Fractal structure" is a property of a great number of natural and cultural phenomena which are intensely studied by dynamical systems theory (formerly called chaos-theory) - e.g. cloud or crystal formation, convection dynamics, mountain or coast erosion, formation of an arterial tree and many other biological, demographic and economic growth-processes. Fractal structures are generated by similar dynamics on different levels of functioning. The result is a characteristic so-called self-similarity (or "scale-independence") of basic structural patterns on different levels of complexity.

The described interactions and operator effects between emotions and cognition show, indeed, a largely similar basic structure on the individual, interpersonal, inter-group and even inter-national level. Prevailing affects such as, e.g., fear or anger selectively mobilise or inhibit emotion-specific attention, memory, combinatory thought and logic in similar ways individually and collectively. Intra-individual self-similarities over time furnish, e.g., the basis for projective personality tests which explore the fact that a small fragment of mental activity may contain significant information on life-long personality traits. Psycho-analytic transference reactions, artistic style and personality formation, too, are typically self-similar on lower and higher levels of complexity. The notion of fractality permits a methodologically correct and theoretically economic transfer of small-scale (e.g. individual or interpersonal) observations on large-scale (e.g. inter-group or international) processes, and-vice versa.

Practical and theoretical implications

Affect-logic postulates, in summary, that overt or covert affective energies play a far greater role in our common ways of thinking and behaving than generally admitted. This insight has numerous practical and theoretical implications: Appropriately acknowledging the thought-modulating role of omnipresent underlying emotions leads to a new understanding of interpersonal, micro-social and macro-social processes, to new techniques for influencing thought and behaviour through emotion-centred (rather than cognition-centred) methods, and to new therapeutic approaches of mental and social disorders. It also changes our understanding of "rationality".

The implications of affect-logic are particularly important for the technique of communication on all levels, from interpersonal to international. Information without an emotional impact carries no energy and will not be noticed (remember, however, that calmness and relaxation are also "affects" in the sense of affect-logic). Successful information often depends more on the emotional "colour" of a message than on its cognitive content. Information which meets ones own current emotional state is preferentially noticed and accepted ("attracted"), while discordant information is preferentially excluded. The exchange of information is further favoured by a similar, and hindered by a dissimilar emotional "wave-length" between the partners of communication. Skilful speakers, salesmen, politicians, negotiators, psychotherapists, performers etc. adapt their verbal and non-verbal language to the emotional state of their public, respectively try to create a shared emotional wave-length, before delivering their message.

A particularly interesting psychotherapeutic application of affect-logic is the therapeutic community "Soteria Berne", where patients suffering from acute schizophrenia are treated by a special therapeutic approach and milieu entirely focused on the overall aim of inducing a sustained emotional relaxation. Other psychiatric applications are related to general psychopathologic and psychosomatic problems, violence-prevention, crisis intervention, and body-centred psychotherapies (for more information, see Ciompi 1988, 1997, 1998, 2000b; Ciompi et al. 2001, 2004).

In sociology, the concept has successfully been used for the analysis of extremist ideologies, especially national-socialism (Endert, 2006). A critique of the system-theoretical concepts of Niklas Luhmann which is based on affect-logic postulates essentially, that micro-social and macro-social dynamics can only be adequately understood by taking into account the operator-effects of collective emotions on collective thought and behaviour, and the fractality of emotion-cognition interactions (Ciompi 2004). Other applications are focused on problems of pedagogy, creativity, phenomenology of consciousness, and philosophy (Ciompi 2000, 2003a and c, Nunold 2004). For robotics, too, where the evolutionary functions of emotions get increasing attention, the theory of affect-logic has interesting implications (see Ciompi & Baatz 2008).

Publications

Most basic writings on affect-logic were originally published in German. A number of publications are also available in English, Italian and Japanese.

In the internet, there are about 6'700 adds on affect-logic (summer 2008)

Books in English

Luc Ciompi
THE PSYCHE AND SCHIZOPHRENIA.
The Bond between Affect and Logic
ISBN-10: 0674719905
ISBN-13: 978-0674719903
Harvard University Press, Cambridge/Mass. (USA) and London (GB), 1988

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Book contributions and scientific articles in English

• Ciompi, L.: Affects as central organising and integrating factors. A new psychosocial/biological model of the psyche. Brit. J. Psychiat. 159: 97-105, 1991
• Ciompi, L.: Affect logic: an integrative model of the psyche and its relations to schizophrenia. Brit. J. Psychiatry 164:51-55, 1994
• Wimmer, M., Ciompi L.: Evolutionary aspects of affective-cognitive interactions in the light of Ciompi's concept of "affect-logic", Evolution and Cognition 2:37-58, 1996
• Ciompi, L.: The concept of affect logic. An integrative psycho-socio-biological approach to understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. Psychiatry 60: 158-170, 1997
• Ciompi, L.: Is schizophrenia an affective disease? The hypothesis of affect-logic and its implications for psychopathology. In: Flack W.F., Laird J.D.(eds.) Emotions in psychopathology: Theory and research. Oxford University Press, New York Oxford pp. 283-297, 1998
• Ciompi L.: An affect-centered model of the psyche and its consequences for a new understanding of nonlinear psychodynamics. In Tschacher, W., Dauwalder, J.P. (eds): Dynamics, synergetics, autonomous agents. Nonlinear system approach to cognitive psychology and cognitive science. World Scientific, Singapure-New Jersey-London-Hong Kong, 1999, pp.123-131
• Ciompi, L.: Reflections on the role of emotions in consciousness and subjectivity, from the perspective of affect logic. Consciousness and Emotion 4:181-196, 2003
• Ciompi, L. Hoffmann, H. Soteria Berne. An innovative milieutherapeutic approach to acute schizophrenia based on the concept of affect-logic. World Psychiatry 3:140-146, 2004
• Ciompi, L., Baatz, M. Do mental and social processes have a fractal structure? The hypothesis of affect- logic. In Losa, G., Merlini D., Nonnenmacher T.F., Weibel E (ed) Fractals in biology and medicine, Vol IV Birkhäuser Press, Basel, p. 107-119, 2005
• Ciompi, L., Panksepp, J.: Energetic effects of emotions on cognitions - complementary psychobiological and psychosocial findings. Consciousness and Emotion, 23-55, 2005
• Ciompi, L., Baatz, M.:, The energetic dimension of emotions - an evolution-based computer simulation with far-reaching implications. Theoretical Biology 3: 42-50, 2008. Abstract

Books, book contributions and scientific articles in German

see German version of the Website

Books in Italian

Ciompi, L.: Logica affettiva. Una ricerca sulla schizofrenia. Feltrinelli, Milano, 1994

Ciompi, L.: I fondamenti emozionali del pensiero. CIC Edizioni internazionali, Roma, 2001

Books in Japanese