Submitted:
04 August 2026
Posted:
05 August 2026
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Abstract
Trauma narratives often reveal a tension between affective coherence and bodily experiences that resist clear representation. This essay examines that tension through a comparative reading of Silvan Tomkins’ affect theory and Brian Massumi’s account of affect and intensity. It considers Tomkins’ emphasis on affective scripts, emotional organization, and coherence alongside Massumi’s focus on pre-linguistic intensity, bodily capacity, and the non-representational dimensions of affect. The analysis draws on selected trauma narratives, including Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, to explore how these theoretical perspectives illuminate trauma, memory, embodiment, and agency. The comparison shows that Tomkins’ framework is useful for tracing recurring affective patterns and their organization within narrative, while Massumi’s approach foregrounds bodily intensities that may exceed linguistic representation. The essay argues that placing these perspectives in dialogue can provide a more layered understanding of trauma narratives by attending to both affective coherence and bodily intensity.
Keywords:
affect theory
; trauma narratives
; Silvan Tomkins
; Brian Massumi
The Affective Dimension of Trauma Narrative
Linguistic or cognitive frameworks often recognize a pre-cognitive, unconscious intensity that goes beyond the dominant emotions like anger or sadness. This “affective turn” feels the vibes of bodies, objects and environments without expressive words (Ahern 2024). For instance, sudden changes in sentence flow or textual pervasiveness offers a specific emotional impact. In trauma narratives, affect theory can take the epicenter with its embodied escapade and agency. Interestingly, two conflicting theories reign in this expansive scholarly landscape. One, the psychological Tomkins model, with its nine basic effects, focuses on the biological response. The other, philosophical Massumi model, takes an impersonal view considering the energy between bodies and ideas (Ingraham 2023). Divergence between these theoretical models may analyze the trauma aftermath in a unique light.
The Fundamental Division in Affect Theory
Tomkins’ ancestry is aligned to biology and neuroscience. So, internal emotional responses are seen as hard-wired, pre-programmed and biological patterns (Truran 2021). Massumi’s lineage, drawing its inference from Monism and critical philosophy, analyses “affect” with power dynamics and system-based relations. So, individual feelings are somewhat ignored in this philosophical model. It indicates that Tomkins would identify Esther Greenwood’s intense shame and self-disgust, as the cause of “affective paralysis” in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. However, Massumi may beg to differ, stating the collective (gender rigidity, compulsory happiness) social affect of the 50s, as the keys behind Esther’s “capacity to act” and affective closure (Arslan 2024). The stark contrast between those theoretical models confirms “trauma”, a paradoxical, non-representable event. Contemporary critics already mention that trauma offers an impasse with stubborn resistance. The theoretical contrast further seconds that absence factor, indicating the helplessness of the linear narratives.
The Argumentative Epicenter: Ideo-Affective Scripts vs. Pre-Linguistic Intensity
The tension intensifies with the demand of judgement and narrative recovery. Although psychological at the core, Tomkins’ philosophy demands testimony as it organizes trauma with motivational coherence and genetic inheritance (value and culture). Therefore, the organizational path bends toward therapeutic recovery. On the contrary, Massumi’s intensity itself is a narrative. That indicates “affect” is not fully comprehensible by language and some degree of consciousness. Interestingly, literary analyses often consider text, an intense tool of intensity. So, the testimony vs. affective resistance remains in the ethical dimension. Tomkins’ organized experience asks for a compulsory injury to write the script considering trauma, a glitch or failure. So, it adds critical limitations because it misses the “interconnectedness vs separation” dimension of Monism.
Delving Deeper into Tomkins’ Heritage: Affective Landscape and Trauma Scripts
The mid-twentieth century and Freudian psychoanalytic models have heavily influenced Tomkins’ affect narrative. Emotion has become the main player behind motivation and experience with rich datasets from evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and neurophysiology. So, affect is the result of the uncensored biological part of the emotion. Tomkins’ affect hierarchy offers nine primary affects with different levels of intensity. Six negative, two positive and one neutral “affects” seem to confine emotional responses with mechanical mapping and classification. Although not deterministic, the socially adaptable nature of those “affects” is interpreted by the script theory. Scripts are experience-based motivational narratives. Their perceptual, motor organizations support in developing individual emotional patterns and social negotiation styles.
Literature expresses “trauma” as the mixture of heavy negative affects like distress, fear, shame, disgust and rage or one of these affects. Tomkins observed that “suppressed negative affects” are often released with self-destructive or sadomasochistic scripts with some excitement. In infancy, “psychological magnification” also develops a type of “dreamland” script where the individual applies a stimuli-response construct to his/her imagination. That is why childhood trauma often demonstrates an immature, whimsy narrative. In both cases, an “attempt to remake” is noted focusing on experience structuring and control. Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is an ideal example to discuss a diverse set of trauma-induced negative scripts.
For instance, “milking assault” and school teacher’s inhuman categorization make “shame-humiliation” the most dominant affect for Sethe (Bast 2011). Furthermore, the return of the slave-catchers induces an instant, overwhelming rate of terror (affect) and results in infantcide. Long-term suffering combined with the hauntings of the 124 Bluestone make the “distress-anguish” affect powerful. Extremely suppressed rage towards the system and injustice also catalyses the infanticide developing both self-destructive and sadomasochistic scripts. The key motivation behind the infanticide is to “save the child from slavery” (Selfridge 2018).
However, the grief and rage (against system) make “beloved” return as a “demanding lover” and Sethe’s submission to its parasitic demands develop another sadomasochistic script. Beloved becomes the pain point to re-enact the trauma and the Paul-Sethe intimacy. It also becomes a classic example of “compulsive repetition” where Sethe keeps reliving the trauma in her own terms. So, the “community exorcism” works like a reparative script and the “black women collective” transforms the (humiliation-fear induced) “destructive individual script” into (shared trauma-induced release) “collective constructive script”.
Similarly, the childhood “dreamland” script can be recognized in Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle”. For instance, the author’s childhood “burn trauma” is expressed as a “pretty event” highlighting fire’s color and motion with a magical vibe (Walls 2017). Here, the psychological magnification processes trauma with imagination to control a wild event. So, the sensory elements create a story of an observer, dismissing the fear of participation. The dreamy, detached tone develops the “affective defense” where fear-distress affect is transformed into interest-excitement affect to complete “self-protection” script.
Overall, trauma needs a compensatory script to release the negative affect(s). Considering the systemic factors, disrupted generational narratives, learned behavior and rigid core beliefs create the arena for the suppressed trauma. So, Tomkins lenses always try to detect integration and explicit meaning in trauma-induced hybrid, and complex scripts. However, that indicates healing as a re-script of the cognitive-affective connection.
Inside Massumi Model: Impersonal Force and Capacity Politics
The Massumi framework is mostly based on “substance Monism” or Spinoza’s concept where “affect” refers to “a change in bodily capacity”. Deleuze and Guattari further extended this theory and defined “affect” as an “intense, non-personal force” within the net of connections (Maxwell 2023). Contextually, (BwO) “Body-without-Organs” (sub) concept considers the body’s liberation from the traditional organizations and organ rigidity. BwO offers the potential of detachment and that is somewhat compatible with the formless chaos of traumatic events (Hur 2025).
Following Deleuze-Guattari leads, Massumi describes affect as an intensity which is not fully comprehensible with languages. This “non-conscious experience of intensity” joins intensity and affect together (Aktas 2025). Massumi model offers a radical separation between affect and emotion, confirming, “affect, a prepersonal, material force” and “emotion, a conscious, personal, linguistic, intensity-capturing tool”. So, emotion becomes an intensity-penetration point to interpret action-reaction circuit, function and meaning. That means affect is a state-changer and intensity is the power-changer.
In trauma studies, the focus is on Ontology to understand the functions of the technology the induce affects. As the plot and character development becomes secondary, the consequences become significant. That means ignoring Freud’s concept of a “psychical unconscious” and finding it within the body and tagging it “unknown”. The void of unknown is non-representable and perfectly fit with the shocking cognitive assimilation of trauma. However, this shift from traditional mind-body organization offers a major structural gap (Bloom 2025). The differentiation between affect-body and mind-cognition develops a “zero in the middle”. So, the celebration of resistance potential in BwO cannot provide adequate analytic testimony and reduces trauma to a “pointless gesture” (Bloom 2025).
In Massumi’s model, “Beloved” is no longer a character but a pre-personal affect for Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This unqualified, unassimilated energy becomes the non-representational face of the slavery-induced trauma that demonstrates the intensity of ordeal and demand. Beloved also seems the non-cognitive, “power of the past” that plays “bloc of sensation” on Sethe-Paul’s shared trauma and Denver’s fight response. The parasitic traits of Beloved is the classic “affective consumption” to reduce Sethe’s “capacity to act”. Instead of Tomkins’ script failure, trauma becomes a brutal intensity to permanently transform Sethe’s bodily capacity. From the tree-shaped scar to the infanticide the intensity moves from a “evermore mark” to extreme “becoming”. Sethe’s periodic detachments also confirm incapability to detect new survival stimuli. Therefore, the past becomes the force-field to develop the Bluestone house and exorcism as significant affect-fields.
The Massumi lens recognizes the somatic potential of the author with unqualified intensity in the burning event of “The Glass Castle”. Flipping the dreamlike script (Tomkins), the experience becomes an “instant, violent encounter” that goes beyond the cognitive interpretation. A sensory overload due to certain “change in the state” (somatic) reorganizes the brain and skin capacity for responses. So, the detached tone for the event description indicates the absence of a pre-acknowledge script. That is why the hospital environment and father’s rescue imprint themselves in a visceral memory with conflicting affects (anxiety, uncertainty and excitement).
Limitations, Conclusion and Future Scope
There is a methodical conflict between Tomkins and Massumi lenses for trauma studies with the affect theory. Tomkins offer a robust classification framework that clarifies generational dynamics and individual motivations. On the contrary, Massumi identifies the ontological components of traumatic events. Tomkins is about detection and coherence while Massumi is about core force and veracity. Both offer ethical concerns to some extent. Trauma is neither a mere glitch nor a “pointless gesture”. However, the limitations of both frameworks can suggest a hybrid conceptual model for affect theory. For instance, multilayered mapping to push the personality-centric core can analyze trauma as a result of complex relational interactions. The goal should be constructively analyzing the non-representational parts with historical wounds.
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