What is Negative Affectivity?

La Grenouillère, Painting by Claude Monet, 1869

Negative affectivity refers to a broad and strong tendency to experience a range of distressing emotional states, including anxiety, sadness, irritability, shame, and anger. From a psychodynamic perspective, these emotional experiences can be seen as expressions of a patient’s internal world rather than simply symptoms to be reduced. They can demonstrate prolonged patterns influenced by early relationships, unconscious conflicts plus the way in which the mind has learned to manage overwhelming feelings. Psychodynamic psychotherapy looks to understand their origins, functions, histories, and symbolic meanings instead of only viewing negative emotions as pathological in themselves.

Patients with elevated negative affectivity may experience their emotions as intense, ongoing, persistent, or difficult to regulate where they feel easily overwhelmed or find themselves reacting strongly to interpersonal situations. These patterns are usually accompanied by a heightened sensitivity to perceived rejection, criticism, miscommunications, or loss. In many cases, these emotional tendencies are linked to early attachment experiences, where a patient may not have had consistent opportunities to safely process and integrate difficult feelings. As a result, emotions can remain unprocessed and can resurface in adult life in ways that feel confusing or disproportionate.

In psychodynamic work, negative affectivity is understood in relation to defence mechanisms and unconscious processes, where a patient may use defences such as repression or projection to manage painful affects, sometimes at the cost of emotional clarity or relationships. Sometimes these emotions may break through these defences in ways that feel intrusive or uncontained. The therapeutic process involves helping the patient become more aware of these patterns, including how certain emotional responses may be linked to past experiences rather than only to present circumstances.

View of San Simeone Piccolo, Painting by Jane Vivian, 19th Century

The therapeutic relationship plays a strong role in addressing negative affectivity, where patients are able to examine their emotional experiences with curiosity rather than avoidance. Furthermore, feelings that may have once been overwhelming can be gradually named, understood, processed, and integrated. The therapist’s attunement allows the patient to experience emotions in a new relational context, which can lead to a greater capacity for emotional regulation and self-reflection. Over time, this process can reduce the intensity and rigidity of negative emotional patterns.

Therefore, working through negative affectivity in psychodynamic psychotherapy is about transforming the patient’s relationship to their emotional world and not only about eliminating distress. As patients develop insight into the origins and meanings of their feelings, they can often experience a greater sense of themselves where emotions become less threatening and more informative.