The Transmission of Affect by Teresa Brennan

The Transmission of Affect by Teresa Brennan

The idea that one can soak up someone else's depression or anxiety or sense the tension in a room is familiar. Indeed, phrases that capture this notion abound in the popular vernacular: "negative energy," "dumping," "you could cut the tension with a knife." The Transmission of Affect deals with the belief that the emotions and energies of one person or group can be absorbed by or can enter directly into another.The ability to borrow or share states of mind, once historically and culturally assumed, is now pathologized, as Teresa Brennan shows in relation to affective transfer in psychiatric clinics and the prevalence of psychogenic illness in contemporary life. To neglect the mechanism by which affect is transmitted, the author claims, has serious consequences for science and medical research.Brennan's theory of affect is based on constant communication between individuals and their physical and social environments. Her important book details the relationships among affect, energy, and "new maladies of the soul," including attention deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, codependency, and fibromyalgia.

Brennan challenges what she views as a uniquely Western myth, that individuals are discrete and self-contained, with affect driven primarily from endogenous sourcesInstead, she argues, humans absorb emotions that originate from others and that influence their very physiology and experience. This argument challenges the boundaries that are often assumed to exist between the self and the environment, between subject and object.

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The late Teresa Brennan was Schmidt Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Florida Atlantic University. Her books include Exhausting Modernity: Ground for a New Modernity and The Interpretation of the Flesh: Freud and Femininity.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780801488627
ISBN 10	0801488621
Titel	The Transmission of Affect
Autor	Teresa Brennan
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Cornell University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2004-01-22
Seitenanzahl	248
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.