Some key points in Westen's chapter 2 (those especially connected to remainder of book)

This chapter seeks to emphasize the key role of emotion/affect in both psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral approaches, so that emotion/affect can be used to integrate these approaches.

On the cognitive-behavioral side, Westen argues that what reinforces an operant behavior is not a stimulus (e.g., food pellet) but rather the emergence of a positive affect or the diminution of a negative affect. Neither does information motivate to the degree that affective states do; apparent cognitive motivations typically have affective components. In J. Rotter's approach, expectancies (of reinforcement) are important motivators, but Westen argues that these expectancies are largely of desired or undesired affective states and consequences.

On the psychodynamic side, Westen argues that the emphasis on "drives" is misplaced. Drive concepts are superfluous. Defense mechanisms arise in response to emotions, not drives; defenses in general are acquired automatic reactions that serve to eliminate a negative affect (e.g., anxiety) – thus saving one from acting on the negative affect. There are often, in humans, conflicting affectively-based motives in a situation, which lead to "compromise formation" – a reaction that serves two masters so to speak (as in the participant in the Milgram experiment who shocked the person while shaking his head in disagreement with the demand to do so). Compromise formations simultaneously answer to conflicting affects; they synthesize competing thoughts or behaviors.

Affect is feedback. Affect is a signal to the organism, which arises (Westen says) because of particular relations between set-goals and momentary conditions. Positive affect signals that a set-goal is being achieved, whereas negative affect signals that one is not. In response to the affect, the organism can engage in behavior, in coping (a conscious intrapsychic response), or defenses (an unconscious intrapsychic response) to ameliorate the situation. These responses are reinforced based on their results (whether they maintain positive affect or minimize negative affect). Westen's discussion admittedly emphasizes negative affects and their removal (and thus, negative reinforcement).

When (perceived) reality conflicts with a set-goal, the (cognized) real with the ideal, a cognitive-evaluative mismatch ensues. This discrepancy both produces an affect and a behavioral or mental response to it. Of course, standards (set-goals, ideals, e.g., ideas about what will make one happy) can be ambiguously formulated, and so can the interpretation of what reality is; this creates some latitude for distorting one's perception of reality so as to maintain positive affect or minimize negative affect (e.g., by denial, or repression, or projection, or even humor). Moreover, set-goals can be changed (e.g., in therapy, or in social change). And, one's self-efficacy beliefs (concerning one's competence to reach the set-goal) have important effects.

A wish is a cognitive-affective schema that arises in response to an affect, it involves an anticipation that affect will be improved when a set-goal is reached. When a wish is unfulfilled, it can do just what a cognitive-evaluative mismatch does. Thus, wishes are derivative (rather than, as for Freud, instinctual), though they often develop autonomy (i.e., "a life of their own"). Both wishes and cognitive-evaluative mismatches are types of cognitive-affective schemas (or "affect-laden schemas"), a schema being a pattern of thought into which one assimilates information and reconstructs previously stored information from memory.

Set-goals are arranged hierarchically. That is, one has both specific motives (e.g., finish school) and relatively generalized motives that combine several more specific motives (e.g., realize my ideal self) . The relative weighting among different motives may itself be a compromise-formation (e.g., how you work out conflicting desires for love, money, and freedom).

Affect, Westen demonstrates, is often unconscious – the person may not be explicitly aware of it. Indeed, an organism without unconscious affects would be at a selective disadvantage because its ability to respond rapidly or in complex situations would be limited.

---Notes compiled by G. Saucier, 2002