Affect Secondary

**Secondary affect** – (affectus secundus) a person’s mental response to the direct influence of external stimuli (lack of emotional reactions) in contrast to the primary immediate reflex. Thus, secondary affects are understood as those that relate to manifestations that actually exist outside and independently of the subject, that is, to objects of the external world. According to Cicero, secondary affects arise “in one from insult, in another from pain, in a third from dishonor inflicted on them.” Titus Livy reported secondary affects associated with rage. The medieval physician and alchemist Albert von Bolstedt (physician to Pope Alexander III) considered incense to be the cause of secondary affect. Another, Balthasar Kelsen, considered the primary “force” and the primary cause of the experience of compassion to be an action directed against the will of the subject. Thus, secondary affect is a mental reaction to environmental factors, which manifests itself in the form of subjective experience and is based on the process of reflecting the characteristics of the situation in which a person finds himself and the external world around him.

In modern psychology, secondary reactions are associated with situations of frustration and manifest themselves in a rapid transition from one state to another, as they are reflected in arousal. In contrast to primary excitation, in secondary excitation it is also marked by inhibition. Excitation and inhibition in this case have a double reaction to the initially created stimulus, and therefore proceed quickly. If the primary excitation persists for a longer period, then it is characterized by plasticity, resistance to external influences. In contrast, secondary inhibition proceeds less plastically. That is, if primary inhibition is stronger than secondary inhibition, the reaction remains unchanged, while secondary inhibition increases emotional tone.