Affect consciousness
Affect consciousness refers to an individual's ability to consciously perceive, tolerate, reflect upon, and express affects. These four abilities are operationalized as degrees of awareness, tolerance, emotional expression, and conceptual expression of each of the following eleven affect categories:
The Affect Consciousness Interview , a semi-structured interview, is used to evaluate an individual's affect consciousness. The ACI evaluates the individual's awareness, tolerance, emotional expression, and conceptual expression of each of the affect categories are evaluated using a nine-point Affect Consciousness Scale, with the most current version containing eleven affect categories. The AC-construct and its psychotherapeutic implications were first proposed and described by Norwegian Psychology Professor Jon Monsen and his associates in the early 1980s. The construct has become increasingly popular and more widely researched in recent years.
Conceptual background
A number of authors and theoretical traditions inspired the development of the AC-construct, most notably Silvan Tomkins' Basic Affect Theory, Script Theoretical formulations and differential emotions theory. Modern self psychological formulations, specifically those advocated by Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood, Stolorow & Atwood, and Basch are also central, along with the writings of Stern, and the seminal studies by Emde and his associates on nonverbal affective communication with infants. Based on Tomkins' affect and script theory, the affect consciousness model posits that affect, along with pain, homeostatic life, support processes, and the cyclical drives, constitute the primary motivating forces in all human affairs. Of these motivational forces the affects are seen as the primary, and by far the most flexible..
Continuum
A person with a low level of affect consciousness is expected to be unable to make sense of both their own feelings and the emotions of others and to have difficulties attributing causes for their own and others' behaviors. A person with high AC is expected to make sense of both their and others' emotions.Solbakken et al. describes the variations in AC in three levels of conscious. "At low levels these scales indicate poor awareness and recognition of affects, a tendency for being overwhelmed by, unable to cope with and unable to decode meaningful information from affect activation, along with disavowal and shutdown of bodily expressive acts and inability to articulate and express semantic descriptions of affective experience. At intermediate levels affects are stably recognized and accepted, and both bodily expressive acts and semantic articulation of experience are generally acknowledged. Finally, high levels are characterized by capacity for focused and flexible awareness of nuances specific to different contexts and affect intensities, distinct openness to affective activation and its motivating and regulating functions, along with explicit reflection about the information inherent in the affect with its meanings and consequences for one's understanding of both self and others. At this level the nonverbal and conceptual expressions of affects are clear, nuanced, authentic and characterized by the experience of choice, responsibility and awareness of others' reactions to one's communications ".