Affectivity, Suggestibility, Paranoia (Classic Reprint)

Affectivity, Suggestibility, and Paranoia explains how mood and feeling steer thinking and behavior. It shows how emotions can shape perception, attention, and even delusions.

This book presents a unified view of how affective states influence our minds from everyday thought to conditions like paranoia. It compares affectivity with suggestion, explaining their similar actions on mind and body, and examines how these forces can drive both normal and abnormal thinking. Through clinical observations and theoretical arguments, it lays out how emotions can shape our judgments, expectations, and the interpretation of experiences.

• See how affectivity directs attention and the flow of ideas.


• Learn how suggestion works in individuals and in groups, aligning actions and beliefs.


• Explore how paranoia and delusions may relate to emotional processes, without reducing them to mood alone.


• Understand debates about the origins of paranoid symptoms, including possible functional and biological explanations.

Ideal for readers curious about early psychoanalytic and psychiatric theory, students of psychology and medicine, and anyone interested in how feelings influence thinking and perception.