Primacy of Affect

Manu Bazzano is an author, psychotherapist, Zen teacher and Butoh dancer. He is the founder of Affect Therapy. He is a visiting tutor at Cambridge University. His latest book is Difference and Multiplicity: Adventures in Philosophy and Psychotherapy.

"Very few contemporary writers in the world of psychotherapy have the foresight to imagine new ways of understanding the human condition, let alone bring these ideas to life in a collection as dynamic and accessible as these. Manu Bazzano is one of these few, and the ideas presented collated by him, and written here by an incredibly interesting selection of writers says a lot about just how important Affect Theory is to understanding our ways of being, and how necessary it is for all of to recognise the subtlety of the Affect which we all engage within, often without knowing it."Dwight Turner, activist, writer and public speaker on issues of race, difference and intersectionality in counselling and psychotherapy, UK"Within the emergent field created by this book, it is shown how affect in therapy transforms both client and therapist. With clarity and depth, the text illuminates how shared atmospheres, positionality, and embodiment shape the tangible, shifting, and potent exchanges that define a relational therapeutic practice born at the point of contact, extending beyond I–Thou."Parvy Palmou, Gestalt Therapist, Gender Affirmative Care & Founder of Athenian Gestalt, Greece"Richly woven, this is a book to read beyond what is expressed through words. It invites us to follow the signs that point to the felt senses unfolding as we read it, and to recognize the permanent flow/movement of meanings that we experience in everyday life and in therapy."Salvador Moreno-López, Humanistic-experiential psychotherapist and writer, Mexico"The Primacy of Affect edited by Manu Bazzano provides its readers with a thorough understanding and insight to the topic. The book introduces a multi-dimensional, new, and complex approach, such that draws from many fields of thought. It also remains attuned to the complex state of affairs of the human sciences discourse."Noam Israeli, Reader in Philosophy and Existential Therapist, Israel

• Introduction 1. What is Affect Therapy? 2. Shake it Off: Vicarious Trauma, Referred Pain and Othered People 3. Clients being beside themselves: Affect and ecstatic vulnerabilities in the therapy room 4. Adorno and Benjamin on Affect, Freedom and the 5. Making Love to Your Data: On Affect and Post-qualitative Research 6. Therapy beyond concepts: Direct experience and active forces in therapy 7. The affect of living in a dream world from a Nietzschean perspective 8. Taking Orders from the Night 9. Life as will to nothingness: Nihilism and affect in Nietzsche’s third essay of the Genealogy of Morals 10. Therapy, Outside 11. Life, Truth, and Exception in Badiou’s 12. The Unborn Rags of the Mind 13. “Have you ever found yourselves in sense?”: On Pathos and Affect 14. Encounter in Everyday Life as Affective Dialogue: Bridging the Individual and the Collective 15. Reality, but not as we know it 16. Affect in Person-Centred and Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy 17. On Affect-based Supervision