Affect is emotional, strong experiences that arise when it is impossible to find a way out of critical, dangerous situations, associated with pronounced organic and motor manifestations. Translated from Latin, affect means passion, emotional excitement. This condition can lead to inhibition of other mental processes, as well as the implementation of appropriate behavioral reactions.
In a state of passion, strong emotional excitement narrows consciousness and limits the will. After experiencing unrest, special affective complexes arise that are triggered without awareness of the reasons that caused the reaction.
Causes of affect
The most important cause of affect is circumstances that threaten a person’s existence (indirect or direct threat to life). The reason may also be a conflict, a contradiction between a strong desire, attraction, desire for something and the inability to objectively satisfy the impulse. It is impossible for the person himself to comprehend this situation. Conflict can also be expressed in increased demands that are placed on a person at that particular moment.
An affective reaction can be provoked by the actions of others that affect a person’s self-esteem and thereby traumatize his personality. The presence of a conflict situation is mandatory, but not sufficient for the emergence of an affective situation. Of great importance are the stable individual psychological characteristics of the individual, as well as the temporary state of the subject who finds himself in a conflict situation. For one person, circumstances will cause a violation of a harmonious system of behavior, but for another not.
Possible reasons
Regular exposure to traumatic factors can lead to a state of passion
- The emergence of an extreme situation that threatens the life of an individual or his loved ones.
- Prolonged stay in an emotionally charged conflict situation.
- Being at a dead end is a situation where a person knows that he must act, but feels absolutely helpless.
- Exposure to a sudden foreign stimulus.
- Constant repetition of traumatic events.
- Actions that influence a person’s self-esteem.
- The presence of increased emotionality and excitability can lead to affect even with minimal exposure to negative triggers.
The risk group includes the following categories of people:
- individuals with a weak nervous system;
- individuals with low resistance to stimuli;
- people with mild excitability, hypersensitivity;
- persons with unstable, highly inflated self-esteem;
- individuals who react sharply to criticism from others;
- childhood and adolescence are predisposing to the onset of affect, since the psyche may still be unstable. In old age, there is also a decrease in resistance to the effects of emotional triggers.
Signs
Signs include external manifestations in the behavior of the person accused of a crime (motor activity, appearance, peculiarities of speech, facial expressions), as well as sensations experienced by the accused. These sensations are often expressed in the words: “I vaguely remember what happened to me,” “it was as if something had broken inside me,” “I felt like I was in a dream.”
Later, in the works of criminal law, sudden emotional disturbance began to be identified with the psychological concept of affect, which is characterized by the following characteristics: explosive nature, suddenness of occurrence, deep and specifically psychological changes that persist within the limits of sanity.
Affect refers to a sensual, emotionally excited state experienced by an individual throughout his life. There are different signs by which emotions, feelings, and affective reactions are distinguished. The modern use of the concept of affect, denoting emotional excitement, has three conceptual levels:
1) clinical manifestations of feelings associated with a spectrum of experiences of pleasure or displeasure;
2) associated neurobiological phenomena, which include secretory, hormonal, autonomic or somatic manifestations;
3) the third level is associated with psychic energy, instinctive drives and their discharge, signal affects without discharge of drives.
Etiology and pathogenesis
Research into the etiology and pathogenesis of pathological affect has been reduced to clarifying the issue of its dependence on the soil on which it arises.
S.S. Korsakov believed that pathological affect occurs more often in psychopathic individuals, but it can develop under certain circumstances in persons without a psychopathic constitution.
V.P. Serbsky wrote that pathological affect cannot arise in a completely healthy person.
It should be assumed that reduced brain resistance to stress, which contributes to the emergence of pathological affect, occurs more often in individuals with certain deviations from the norm (psychopathy, traumatic brain damage, etc.). However, under the influence of a number of factors (exhaustion after illness, pregnancy, fatigue, insomnia, malnutrition, etc.), a state of reduced brain resistance can occur in normal people.
During the short-term period of pathological affect, it is not possible to conduct pathophysiological, biochemical and other studies.
Affect in psychology
The emotional sphere of a person represents special mental processes, as well as states that reflect the individual’s experiences in different situations. Emotions are the subject’s reaction to the current stimulus, as well as to the result of actions. Emotions throughout life influence the human psyche, penetrating all mental processes.
Affect in psychology is strong as well as short-term emotions (experiences) that occur after certain stimuli. State of affect and emotion are different from each other. Emotions are perceived by a person as an integral part of himself - “I”, and affect is a state that appears against the will of a person. Affect occurs in unexpected stressful situations and is characterized by a narrowing of consciousness, the extreme degree of which is a pathological affective reaction.
Mental excitement performs an important adaptive function, preparing a person for an appropriate reaction to internal and external events, and is marked by a high severity of emotional experiences, leading to the mobilization of a person’s psychological as well as physical resources. One of the signs is partial memory loss, which is not observed in every reaction. In some cases, the individual does not remember the events that preceded the affective reaction, as well as the events that occurred during emotional disturbance.
Psychological affect is marked by arousal of mental activity, which reduces control over behavior. This circumstance leads to a crime and entails legal consequences. Persons in a state of mental agitation are limited in their ability to understand their actions. Psychological affect has a significant impact on a person, while disorganizing the psyche, affecting its higher mental functions.
Mechanisms of affect
There are several mechanisms for the emergence of affects. In the first case, the onset of affect is preceded by a fairly long period of accumulation of negative emotional experiences (a series of insults and humiliations of the stepson by the stepfather; bullying of a young soldier in conditions of hazing, etc.).
In this case, a long-term state of internal emotional tension is characteristic, and sometimes a minor additional negative impact (another insult) can be a trigger for the development and implementation of an affective state.
Situations are possible when the affective mechanism is formed under the influence of a one-time event that is extremely significant for the subject (a husband suddenly returning from a business trip finds his wife in bed with his friend).
An intermediate mechanism is also possible, when the repeated negative impact of the stimulus was delayed in time (from several minutes to several years): the person suddenly meets his former offender, who resumes the previous bullying of the subject.
The moment of affective release comes unexpectedly, suddenly for the accused himself, beyond his volitional control. A partial narrowing of consciousness occurs - the field of perception is limited, attention is concentrated entirely on the subject of violence. As a result, the first suitable object that comes to attention may become the weapon of crime, and the possibility of choice is limited. Consciousness is filled with blind rage, anger, resentment, and the appearance changes accordingly - facial features are distorted, its color changes, the pupils of the eyes dilate. The accused reacts poorly to external influences and may not pay attention to his wounds or the sight of blood. Behavior acquires features of inflexibility, becomes simplified, complex motor skills that require control of consciousness are lost, actions are stereotyped, motor automatisms dominate - in the forensic picture of a crime there may be a multiplicity of blows and wounds, their uniformity, crowding and obvious redundancy. At the same time, voluntariness and conscious control of actions decreases, but their energy increases, movements acquire sharpness, swiftness, continuity, and greater strength.
The duration of such a state can vary from several seconds to several minutes, after which a sharp and rapid decline in emotional arousal occurs, a state of devastation and extreme fatigue increases, and a gradual awareness of what has been done occurs, often accompanied by a feeling of remorse, confusion, and pity for the victim. Often, the accused themselves try to help the victim, report the incident to the police, or less often, they run away from the scene without trying to hide traces of the crime. In the future, forgetting of individual episodes of the crime is often discovered.
Types of affect
There are two types of emotional disturbance: physiological and pathological.
Physiological affect is a discharge uncontrolled by consciousness that appears in an affectogenic situation during emotional stress, but does not go beyond the boundaries of the norm. Physiological affect is a non-painful emotional state that represents a rapid and short-term explosive reaction without a psychotic change in mental activity.
Pathological affect is a psychogenic painful state that occurs in mentally healthy people. Psychiatrists perceive such anxiety as an acute reaction to traumatic factors. Developmental height has disturbances similar to the twilight state. The affective reaction is characterized by severity, brightness, and a three-phase course (preparatory, explosion, final phase). A tendency to pathological conditions indicates an imbalance in the processes of inhibition and excitation in the central nervous system. Pathological affect is characterized by emotional manifestations, often in the form of aggression.
In psychology, they also distinguish the affect of inadequacy, which is understood as a persistent negative experience provoked by the inability to achieve success in any activity. Often, the affects of inadequacy appear in young children when voluntary regulation of behavior has not been formed. Any difficulty that causes the child’s needs to be unmet, as well as any conflict provokes the emergence of emotional disturbance. With improper upbringing, the tendency to affective behavior is reinforced. Children under unfavorable upbringing conditions exhibit suspicion, constant resentment, a tendency to aggressive reactions and negativism, and irritability. The duration of this state of inadequacy provokes the formation and consolidation of negative character traits.
Phases and functions of affect.
Considering pathological affect, we can distinguish three phases in its development: the preparatory phase, the explosion phase and the final phase.
Preparatory phase . Consciousness is preserved. Emotional tension appears and the ability to reflect is impaired. Mental activity becomes one-sided due to the sole desire to fulfill one’s intention.
Explosion phase . From a biological point of view, this process reflects a loss of self-control. This phase is characterized by a chaotic change of ideas. Consciousness is disturbed: the clarity of the field of consciousness is lost, its threshold decreases. Aggressive actions take place - attacks, destruction, fighting. In some cases, instead of aggressive actions, behavior becomes passive and is expressed in confusion, aimless fussiness, and lack of understanding of the situation.
Final phase.
The final phase is characterized by depletion of mental and physiological strength, expressed in indifference, indifference to others, and a tendency to sleep.
Two functions of affect :
1. Possessing the property of a dominant, affect inhibits mental processes unrelated to it and imposes on the individual a method of “emergency” resolution of the situation (numbness, flight, aggression), which developed in the process of biological evolution.
2. The regulatory function of affect consists in the formation of affective traces that make themselves felt when confronted with individual elements of the situation that gave rise to the affect and warning of the possibility of its repetition.
Affect in criminal law
Signs of affect in criminal law are a loss of flexibility in thinking, a decrease in the quality of thought processes, leading to awareness of the immediate goals of one’s actions. A person's attention is focused on the source of irritation. For this reason, due to emotional stress, an individual loses the opportunity to choose a model of behavior, which provokes a sharp decrease in control over his actions. Such affective behavior violates the expediency, purposefulness, and sequence of actions.
Forensic psychiatry, as well as forensic psychology, relates the state of affect to the limiting ability of an individual to realize the actual nature, as well as the social danger of his act and the inability to control it.
Psychological affect has minimal freedom. A crime committed in a state of passion is considered by the court to be a mitigating circumstance if certain conditions are met.
The concepts of affect in criminal law and in psychology do not coincide. In psychology, there is no specificity of negative stimuli that provoke a state of affective reaction. There is a clear position in the Criminal Code that speaks about the circumstances that can cause this condition: bullying, violence, insult from the victim or a long-term psychologically traumatic situation, immoral and illegal actions of the victim.
In psychology, affect and strong emotional disturbance are not considered identical, and criminal law equates these concepts.
Affect, as a strong short-term emotional disturbance, forms in a person very quickly. This condition occurs suddenly for others and the person himself. Evidence of the presence of emotional excitement is the suddenness of its occurrence, which is an organic property. Strong emotional disturbance can be caused by the actions of the victim and requires establishing a connection between the affective reaction and the act of the victim. This condition must occur suddenly. The suddenness of its appearance is closely related to the emergence of the motive. The appearance of sudden, strong emotional disturbance is preceded by the following situations: bullying, violence, grave insult, immoral and illegal actions. In this case, the affective reaction occurs under the influence of a one-time event, as well as one that is significant for the culprit himself.
Characteristics of affect.
Intensity (strength)
Affects can vary in strength, ranging from the weakest and consciously controlled, to pathological, completely excluding the possibility of conscious control.
Valence
Like all emotional processes, affects reflect a subjective assessment and significance of something. Just as evaluation can be positive or negative, so affects can be positive or negative. In view of its biological function (quick organization of the subject’s behavior), affects are not ambivalent.
Sthenicity
Depending on the effect on activity
, affects are divided into
sthenic
(from ancient Greek σθένος - strength) and
asthenic
(from ancient Greek ἀσθένεια - powerlessness).
Stenic affects encourage active activity, mobilize a person’s strength (anger, delight, etc.).
Asthenic affects relax or paralyze strength (powerlessness, horror, etc.).
Physiological and pathological
A distinction is made (especially in forensic psychiatry) between physiological and pathological affect. The first, unlike the second, is not accompanied by a loss of self-control, and is not a basis for declaring a person insane. The second is a violation of the normal functioning of the psyche and may indicate the need for medical intervention. Historically, the definition of “physiological” was introduced to emphasize the difference between a simple, normal affect and a pathological one, to show that its physiological basis is formed by neurodynamic processes that are natural for a healthy person, but the causes of the physiological phenomena observed during affect are of a psychological nature. In modern psychological literature, the concept of “affect” is used without any additional definitions.
Content
Affects of even the same valence can differ in content. For example: anger, delight, fear, others.
One of the most important and significant characteristics of affect is its influence on a person’s ability to fully understand the meaning of their actions and manage them. This is explained by the fact that with affect there is a narrowing of consciousness, its concentration on affectively significant experiences. The same can be said about the nature of actions committed in a state of passion.
State of affect and its examples
Affective reactions have a negative impact on human activity and reduce the level of organization. In such a state, a person commits unreasonable actions. Extremely strong excitement is replaced by inhibition and, as a result, ends in fatigue, loss of strength, and stupor. Impaired consciousness leads to partial or complete amnesia. Despite the suddenness, emotional excitement has its own stages of development. At the beginning of an affective state, it is possible to stop mental emotional disturbance, but at the final stages, losing control, a person cannot stop on his own.
To delay the affective state, enormous volitional efforts are required to restrain oneself. In some cases, the affect of rage manifests itself in strong movements, violently and with shouts, in a furious facial expression. In other cases, examples of affective reactions include despair, confusion, and delight. In practice, there are cases when physically weak people, experiencing strong emotional disturbance, commit actions that they are incapable of in a calm environment.
Examples of a state of affect: a spouse unexpectedly returned from a business trip and personally discovered the fact of adultery; a frail man beats up several professional boxers in a state of affective reaction, or knocks down an oak door with one blow, or inflicts many mortal wounds; The drunken husband commits constant scandals, fights, and brawls due to alcohol consumption.
Affective disorders. Affect disorder
Criteria for affective disorder:
- autochthonous appearance of emotions (i.e., not associated with external causes, somatic, endocrine pathology and other physiological disorders);
- lack of emotional reactions to personally significant situations and objects;
- disproportion between the intensity and duration of emotional reactions and the reasons that cause them;
- discrepancy between the quality of the emotional reaction and the reason that causes it;
- disorders of adaptation and behavior due to emotion;
- the unusual nature of emotional experiences, different from what was previously characteristic of a healthy individual;
- the appearance of emotional reactions in response to virtual, unreal, meaningless stimuli.
These criteria do not have absolute meaning; they are quite relative, so that an individual’s emotional reactions can be assessed ambiguously.
In fact, situations very often arise when it is quite difficult and even impossible to distinguish between normal and pathological emotions without further observation of the individual.
Affect disorders
The above criteria for affect are not differentiated clinically, although various and numerous deviations have been indicated. In forensic psychiatry, pathological and physiological variants of affect are distinguished, as well as physiological affect on a pathological basis.
| | Affective disorders respond best to comprehensive treatment in a psychiatric clinic |
The preparatory phase is characterized by the interpretation of psychogeny, the appearance and increase of emotional tension. Acute psychogenia can reduce the duration of the phase to several seconds. A long-term psychotraumatic situation extends the preparatory phase for months, years: the patient during this period for some reason delays in adequately responding to the challenge, and his “spinelessness” can significantly aggravate the situation. The permissive reason (“the last straw”) may be quite ordinary, banal, but it is in connection with it that dire consequences occur. In the preparatory phase, an individual may simply not know, not see a decent way out of the situation; If a psychologist or an experienced psychotherapist had happened, the tragedy might not have happened. Consciousness in this phase is not clouded, but its narrowing is observed in the form of an increasing concentration of attention on the traumatic situation.
Pathological affect is an acute, short-term painful state of a psychogenic nature that occurs in a practically healthy individual (Shostakovich, 1997). Pathological affect occurs in three phases.
The explosion phase occurs suddenly, completely unexpectedly both for the individual himself and for those around him. The main thing that characterizes it is an affective twilight stupefaction. This is a psychophysiological process, and not just the dynamics of involuntary attention. During this period, there may be various affective disorders (anger, despair, confusion, other manifestations hidden under the main affect), phenomena of sensory hypo- and hyperesthesia, illusions, perception deceptions, unstable delusional ideas, disturbances in the body diagram and other manifestations of self-perception disorders. Typically acute psychomotor agitation, which has no connection with the patient’s conscious self, but seems to flow from the depths of his unconscious.
Agitation can be chaotic, aimless, or appear to be completely orderly with aggression directed towards a specific goal. Actions are performed “with the cruelty of an automaton or machine” (Korsakov, 1901). Sometimes they are carried out according to the type of motor iterations: for example, an already lifeless victim continues to be inflicted with countless wounds, blows or shots. It is aggression that reigns supreme; it does not switch over to oneself; suicidal acts, apparently, do not happen. States of pathological affect with rage and auto-aggression probably do not occur at all, or they cannot be identified. Patients are disoriented in place, time, circumstances; It cannot be ruled out that autopsychic orientation is disrupted. Patients can vocalize loudly, pronounce individual words clearly, repeating them, but usually speech becomes incoherent.
Apparently, they either do not pay attention to the speech of others or do not understand it. Non-verbal speech, on the contrary, is animated, it is like instinctive speech, and it can be quite understandable (a grimace of rage, baring of teeth, narrowing of the eye slits or, on the contrary, their widening, an unwavering gaze at the object of anger, etc.). The intellect suffers deeply - the individual performs certain actions without understanding the real situation, without realizing their consequences. The nature of the actions - their special cruelty, the totality of the destruction produced - do not correspond to or even contradict the personal qualities of the individual. There are, for example, patients who are unconfident, defenseless, and devoid of any aggressive tendencies. Violent and extremely aggressive individuals usually commit offenses outside of a state of pathological affect.
The final phase begins as quickly and lightningly as the second. Severe exhaustion, prostration, sleep or somnolence occur. Psychomotor retardation sometimes reaches the level of stupor. This phase lasts within tens of minutes. Upon restoration of clarity of consciousness and activity, extensive congrade amnesia for impressions, experiences and actions of the second phase of affect is revealed. Amnesia can be delayed, and usually after minutes, tens of minutes everything is completely forgotten. Individual memories of the final and, to a greater extent, preparatory phase may be retained. An individual often treats something done in a state of pathological affect as if it had nothing to do with him; he does not appropriate or personalize other people’s stories about what happened.
Cases of pathological affect that occur in connection with protracted mental trauma differ from those described in several significant features. This is a long latent or preparatory stage, development for an apparently insignificant reason, of which there were plenty before, awareness and personification of what was done upon exiting the affect, the polarity of experiences and actions in the affect of the personal qualities of the individual, as well as the fact that immediately or a little later can develop acute depressive reaction to the incident with suicidal actions. Such patients do not try to hide anything or lie; they willingly cooperate with investigative authorities and forensic doctors. Previously, E. Kretschmer designated such variants of pathological affect as short-circuit reactions. Persons who fall into states of such affect are designated in modern literature “as overly self-controlled aggressors.” The exclusion of short-circuit reactions as a special variant of pathological affect is associated, we believe, with ignoring important significant distinctive features between them.
Physiological affect on a pathological basis (Serbsky, 1912) is a transitional form between physiological and pathological affects. The pathological basis of such affect most often appears to be psychopathy, alcohol dependence, possibly other forms of chemical and non-chemical dependence, PTSD. V.P. Serbsky believes that the degree of impairment of consciousness is insignificant.
Typically there is a discrepancy between the strength of the affect and the real significance of the cause that caused it. The affect can be intense to such an extent that it becomes, as it were, the main cause of a serious offense. A common example of such affect are frequent cases of alcoholic (other) intoxication, when at some point the patient’s self-control turns off, the affects of anger come to the fore, hostility, jealousy, a feeling of revenge, a tendency to destructive actions, brutal fights, etc. arise. In another observation with O.A., 39 years old (“schizotypal personality disorder”), after a quarrel with her husband, the patient and her daughter locked themselves in the room with the thought of killing her and herself.
When asked to open the door, she responded with a threat to kill her daughter and herself. Then, she said, she “blacked out.” The relatives, having entered the room, hardly tore the diseased knife out of their hands. “They said that at that time I was crying and laughing.” Then she “felt hands, a knife, and began to come to her senses.” She says that she seriously intended to kill herself and her daughter, but “something inside prevented me from doing it.” Due to the high frequency of such things, questions of sanity are raised very rarely. Here, however, very difficult situations can arise, so that the usual forms of their assessment can give rise to reasonable doubts in the forensic psychiatrist. The possibility that a pathological or physiological affect may arise on an alienated part of one’s self is never excluded.
Physiological affect is a state of very pronounced affect without clear signs of a twilight state of consciousness. Usually, different, including significant, degrees of affective narrowing of consciousness regarding external as well as internal impressions are noted. Physiological affect also occurs in three stages, although it is quite difficult to clearly distinguish between them. Clinically obvious signs of narrowing of consciousness are believed to be observed only in the second phase of affect. The painful episode does not end with pronounced prostration, sleep and somnolence; amnesia is partial. In a state of physiological affect, patients can commit illegal actions - affectdelict. Illustration (Shostakovich, 1997):
K., 42 years old, specialized secondary education (accountant). By nature, vulnerable, touchy, impressionable. At the age of 17 she suffered a spinal fracture. She separated from her first husband because of his drunkenness. The second husband drinks heavily, is jealous, and beats her. Has a 7 year old son from him. During the next conflict, she killed him.
She reports that in recent years she has lived in constant fear, “experienced panic and horror.” I didn’t want to live, I didn’t see any other way out of the situation than to commit suicide. On the day of the offense, the husband came home drunk and immediately began to scold her, beat her, and hit her in the body. She tried to hide in the bathroom, but he pulled her out and began to choke her in the kitchen. She says that she experienced “terrible fear” and thought that he would kill her. She notes that she saw everything as if in a fog, only she saw his eyes clearly. She remembers how she ran away from the room, hid, and thought that he wouldn’t chase her. She doesn’t remember how she beat him with a knife, where she took it and how such an idea came to her. He doesn’t remember how long it took to kill his husband and how it all happened. When I came to my senses, I felt weak, tired, and my hands were shaking. Entering the kitchen, I saw my dead husband and realized that it was she who killed him.
She called an ambulance and the police. Psychological research has established that the subject is impressionable, vulnerable, prone to “accumulating negatively colored experiences” and avoiding conflicts; It is difficult to find constructive ways out of conflicts (which ones are not specified), and has a type of intraputative response to difficult situations for oneself (for example, suicidal tendencies). Psychologists do not mention the presence of signs of increased aggressiveness. A comprehensive examination found her to be healthy. The conclusion of the expert commission indicated that the subject was in a state of physiological affect. That's probably what happened. But this case does not contain evidence that there are no states transitional between indisputable cases of pathological affect and the much more frequent states of physiological affect.
This situation, not without serious comparisons, could be regarded as a short circuit reaction. Psychiatry is poorly suited to Euclidean paradigms, based on the priority of visual behavioral impressions, which ignore the fact that internal psychological factors can radically change the sensations, perceptions, interpretations, emotional reactions and behavior of a person, including the researcher himself.
There are a number of painful affects that are not classified as pathological solely because they do not entail violence, although sometimes they are capable of this. Let's name some of them.
Confusion (“affect of bewilderment”, according to S.S. Korsakov). It is manifested by an absolute lack of understanding of the current situation, which is explained by the disintegration of the intellect and the inability to synthesize different impressions, as well as to search for the same or similar ones in memory. This bewilderment is usually combined with fear, anxiety, a feeling of complete helplessness and the patient’s unsuccessful attempts to understand what is happening by seeking help from those present.
Disturbances in orientation in place, situation, time, environment, and sometimes in oneself are typical. Contact with the outside world, the consciousness of which is often preserved, is one-sided: patients usually ask peculiar questions, without addressing anyone in particular, but do not react to the answers, do not take them into account, perhaps not always understanding their meaning. Fear and anxiety are typical, and the mood is mostly depressed. There may be motor agitation with fussiness and akinesia. Hypermetamorphosis is observed, and occasional productive disorders occur (perceptual deceptions, delusions, episodes of confused consciousness, symptoms of mental automatism).
Patients ask one question after another like: “What kind of room is this? Where are you taking me? Why are you wearing a white coat? Why are you writing? Who are these people? Where am I? What does all of this mean?" Or: “I don’t understand whether I’m alive or dead? Where am I? Is anybody here? I think the coffin is here. Am I conscious or unconscious? They don’t give me mirrors, I don’t know if I have a face or not? Am I a man or not?.. It seems like I’m a man. Am I in this world or no longer? What's the matter? They cut, burn, electrify. The scenery changes all the time. Are you relatives, a doctor or someone from prison? Have I really done something? Where am I going now? In the first case, confusion concerns more external impressions; attention constantly moves from one object to another. In the second case, the patient is more concerned about what is happening to himself, in his behavior. At the same time, violations of self-perception are revealed, up to the loss of one’s identity and autometamorphosis, the feeling of reincarnation into another being; delusional ideas of influence, staging. The condition of the patients in both cases approaches amentia, and their thinking approaches fragmentation.
Let us recall that with the actual fragmentation of thinking, there is no confusion and elementary orientation is most often not disturbed; patients seem to understand what is happening, sometimes they behave quite orderly and do not react to their lack of understanding of the essence of what is happening, as well as to the lack of coherence of thinking. Confusion is often encountered during the acute onset of schizophrenia (Kerbikov, 1949). Brief episodes of confusion (“stupidity”) are very common when a patient first appears at the doctor’s office. Entering the office, the patient seems lost, looks around, does not understand where to sit, or asks about it, even though the only chair for conversation has been prepared for him. Confusion is an ominous sign, especially often in schizophrenia, when the patient’s role is not accepted immediately or not at all due, probably, to depersonalization.
Panic fear - spontaneously occurring and short-term states of “terror” with confusion, motor agitation with the desire to run somewhere, make frequent calls to the ambulance, pronounced autonomic disorders (high rises in blood pressure, difficulty breathing, frequent urination, vomiting, profuse sweating) and many others). Fear or a feeling of madness, loss of self-control, phenomena of mental anesthesia, and painful physical sensations, such as senestopathy, often occur. Attacks of fear occur spontaneously and completely suddenly, sometimes patients sense their approach.
They can arise for random provoking reasons, and then patients also “wind up themselves” with ideas about an impending catastrophe, mistaking fantasies for something that has already happened or for something that will certainly happen. At first, the attacks are sporadic and not so often repeated. Then they can become more frequent and occur several times a day, lengthening to several tens of minutes (usually patients begin to immediately take something sedative, especially tranquilizers, alprozalam), call an ambulance (up to 6-10 times a day). Usually there remains an obsessive fear of recurrence of attacks and anxious anticipation of them. Patients try to avoid visiting places with which they associated the occurrence of attacks, they are afraid to be alone with themselves at home or on the street, some cannot stand riding in public transport, do not risk using the elevator, etc. As a rule, they do not part with their medications. Gradually, patients seem to get used to the attacks, realizing that they are not fatal and can be stopped without much difficulty. There are patients who indicate a seasonal pattern of attacks.
Illustrations: “In the evening after work, a thought suddenly came to me: what if one of the customers cast a spell on me. Fear immediately arose, animal fear, to the point of horror. It seemed like I was going crazy and would do something crazy. I rushed around the house, completely confused, didn’t know what to do... I visited my grandmother, she treated me with prayers. Suddenly it seemed to me that she had missed some necessary word in the prayer. It got worse than ever before. I feel my heart pounding, blood pressure rising, lack of air, dizzy, pain in the pit of my stomach, everything floats around, sways, seems unreal, everything is mixed up in my head like madness. And fear, wild, indescribable fear to the point of horror. I couldn’t sit still, I jumped off and ran to the other grandmother. Suddenly it becomes eerie, everything floats, it’s unreal, it seems that I’m going crazy, I don’t recognize myself, as if it’s not me anymore.”
Some authors try to distinguish panic disorder into attributive, i.e., psychogenically caused attacks, alexithymic - “without the experience of fear”, hypertypic - without the experience of fear before and after the attack, “existential crises” - with fear of a bodily catastrophe, accepting, it seems, taking into account less significant or even dubious signs.
The terms “panic disorder” or “ panic attack” are not entirely accurate, since in a painful state there is not an objective, conscious fear, but unaccountable anxiety, autopsychic confusion and many other disorders, among which an acute violation of self-perception (depersonalization, derealization, tendency to accept imaginary reality, phenomena of mental anesthesia). With that said, a more accurate term would be “acute anxiety attack with depersonalization.”
Moreover, a significant, if not the overwhelming majority of patients subsequently develop distinct anxious depression with symptoms of pathology of self-perception. Neurologists previously identified “diencephalic attacks” with very similar symptoms, although with an emphasis on somatovegetative and neuroendocrine disorders. Panic itself is a symptom of an acute reaction to a sudden and severe psychologically traumatic situation, often fraught with disaster for many people. Such panic is accompanied by confusion, psychomotor agitation, or stupor. There have been cases of mass panic. There are no cases of widespread "panic disorder", although individual patients can induce each other, usually exacerbating the severity of the disorder.
Ecstasy is a state of extreme, expressed to the point of frenzy, or, less commonly, another emotion. Here is a description of a typical ecstatic state at the beginning of an epileptic seizure (sometimes a focal emotional attack): (It is) “an extraordinary inner light ..., delight ..., the highest calm, full of clear, harmonious joy and hope, full of reason and final reason, (which) turns out to be the highest degree of harmony, beauty, gives a hitherto unheard of and unexpected feeling of completeness, proportion, reconciliation, enthusiastic prayerful merging with the highest synthesis of life, self-awareness and ... self-awareness in the highest degree immediate, (which) in itself was worth all life” (F. M. Dostoevsky).
Orgiastic states are ecstasy that occurs during ritual actions, for example, the ritual of shamans, the dancing of dervishes. Other participants in sacred ceremonies usually also fall into ritual ecstasy if they have fully identified themselves with other members of the group. This type of ecstasy is characterized by possession by a spirit, good or evil. In the first case, members of the ritual group experience a feeling of supreme, endless happiness, jubilation, admiration, power that does not occur in ordinary life, with a feeling of loss or dissolution of their Self, as well as a change in identity.
In the second case, violent rage, rage, senseless and chaotic aggression predominate. The consciousness of the Self also disappears, all feelings and actions have their source in some internal demonic principle. Some sacred rites encourage unrestricted sexual relations, so that the rite ends in a mad orgy. A number of sects have a practice of mass immersion of their adherents into ecstasy, during which awareness of their Self is also lost and self-identification with a charismatic leader occurs. The memory of the experience of ecstasy is preserved, although perhaps not fully. Memory for what is happening around is not retained. In satanic sects, ecstasy is experienced as self-identification with Satan; adherents are possessed by anger, rage, and bloodthirstiness.
Mystical ecstasy is achieved through special exercises that make it possible to experience a feeling of merging with God or another higher power. It is in such states that “insights” arise, “revelations”, “signs from above” are perceived, followed by belief in them as some higher, absolute, indisputable truth.
Meditative ecstasy is “waking dreams,” an uncontrollable flow of dreams in which one experiences a feeling of belonging with transcendental entities, with the essence of something else, inaccessible through ordinary knowledge of the world.
Prayerful ecstasy is a state of delight, bliss, a feeling of merging with God or his Divine will, a feeling of unity with him, merging with him. It is observed among deeply religious people, but is more typical, apparently, of fanatical believers who have no doubt that their faith is the only true and unshakable one. All other religious movements of the spirit are “from the evil one.”
Manic ecstasy is a feeling of inexpressible admiration and delight, observed in some manic patients somewhere at the height of the painful state. This is a special type of mania, involving an altered state of consciousness and a persistent focus on ideas of sublime content; in typical cases of mania, hypervariability of attention and personality regression are usually observed.
Hypnotic ecstasy is an ecstatic state usually instilled during a state of deep hypnotic sleep. Not all patients experience such an extraordinary feeling as ecstasy in hypnosis. There must probably be some kind of internal predisposition to this. Oneiric ecstasy is observed in a state of manic-ecstatic oneiroid, when dreams and other painful phenomena are produced with the content of “heavenly,” extraterrestrial, cosmic, otherworldly existence, generated by higher, previously unknown forces of love and infinite goodness. These are, as it were, the spiritual quests of patients carried out in a painful state.
Ecstatic dreams are a special type of dreams in which unusually bright, colorful, enchanting images are captured with experiences of extraordinary happiness, amazing beauty that has absorbed the ordinary world and presented it as a kind of vague prototype of reality. Patients talk about an inexplicable feeling of delight, admiration for a different, extremely attractive and only acceptable image of the universe that has become open, tangible and real. Mixed with all this is the feeling of reincarnation as “the queen of the world, a deity, an angelic creature, a messenger of Heaven in the sinful material world.”
It is difficult to explain such metamorphoses without knowing the human essence that rushes upward. Coming out of psychosis, some patients remain confident that they have seen with their own eyes the real world, and not some surrogate in which people are doomed to exist. Sometimes such dreams retain the force of reality for a long time, and patients stop themselves from trying to discredit this dream - “reality”.
There are very few, if not almost non-existent, reports of ecstatic episodes from religious patients. Nevertheless, G.V. Morozov and N.V. Shumsky (1998) talk about the frequency of states of ecstasy when pseudohallucinatory memories arise.
In a state of ecstasy, stupor, incomprehensible, as if symbolic psychomotor agitation, disconnection from reality, desomatization phenomena, disturbances in the sense of time are usually observed (the latter “lengthens” or stops altogether; F.M. Dostoevsky reports that once Mohammed “examined” all the details of a vast Muslim paradise. The long journey of the prophet did not last long, according to earthly time, one moment, during which not a drop spilled from the overturned cup of wine).
Memory for subjective experiences during a period of ecstasy is often preserved to the smallest detail (apparently, this is imprinted in memory as in selective hypermnesia, as something of exceptionally great personal significance). Memories of what is happening around are incomplete, inaccurate, distorted, and many are not retained in memory. The duration of ecstatic episodes ranges from a few seconds to a number of hours. Patients treat ecstatic experiences as the greatest value of their lives.
Amazement is an extreme degree of surprise with stopping the flow of thoughts, freezing in one position, a frozen expression on the face on which surprise froze, and at the same time falling silent. It occurs, as mentioned, when something very unusual, incredible, and directly contradicts the individual's absolute confidence in what should happen.
Enrage is an extreme degree of excitement with loss of self-control, most often occurring during frustration and manifesting itself in the form of impotent anger (Ilyin, 2002).
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Varieties of affect
- Physiological affect
is an affect caused by a single (one-time) psychotraumatic impact of the victim’s behavior. - Cumulative affect
is an affect caused by a long-term traumatic situation associated with the behavior of the victim. - Pathological affect
is affect caused by illness. - Interrupted affect
is an emotional state interrupted by external influence, unfolding according to certain psychological mechanisms and reaching affective depth. In such situations, we can talk about the interruption not of the pre-affective phase and the immediate moment of the affective explosion, but of the post-affective period.
Physiology of affect
The onset of affect is accompanied by changes in autonomic reactions (changes in pulse and respiration, spasm of peripheral blood vessels, protrusion of sweat, etc.), pronounced changes in the voluntary motor sphere (inhibition, excitation or overexcitation, impaired coordination of movements). The principle of operation of a lie detector, which records many physiological indicators of the body, is based on this effect.
Strong affect usually disrupts the normal course of higher mental processes - perception and thinking, sometimes causing a narrowing of consciousness or clouding [ source not specified 79 days
].
Boundaries of the concept
Experts distinguish between the concept of “ affect”
” and the concepts of “
feeling
”, “
emotion
”, “
mood
” and “
experience
”.
From feelings
,
moods
and
emotions
, affects are distinguished primarily by intensity and short duration, and also by the fact that they always arise in response to an
already existing
situation [1].
Under the worries
understand only the subjective mental side of emotional processes, which does not include physiological components.
