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.
* Choice *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 | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780801488627 |
| ISBN 10 | 0801488621 |
| Title | The Transmission of Affect |
| Author | Teresa Brennan |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Cornell University Press |
| Year published | 2004-01-22 |
| Number of pages | 248 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |