Although all the above words have definitions, those definitions do not agree in the professional lexicon. So, in order to not be confused about 'real meaning' let's have a look at the 'blurred lines' and reach an agreement as set down within affectology.

First, I want to offer the text (in part) of a blog post, below, by Dr. Jeremy Dean. You can read this to see that the wider professional community is in a state of confusion over word usage, but please do so with some reservation. If you want to go straight to the definitive nomenclature that applies to our work and this site, start below at "The Affectology Perspective."

Blurred Definitions of Affect and Emotion
Blurry and confusing definitions are the stock-in-trade of psychologists, just as they are of many other scientists. I have been guilty of using the words ‘affect’ and ’emotion’ rather loosely. I’m not the only one. Similar to many other areas of psychology, emotion researchers are far from decided and united on where to draw the lines.

Panksepp (2000) offers the following delineation:
  • Emotion is the umbrella term for all of the behavioural, expressive, cognitive  and physiological changes that occur.
  • Affect is the conscious experience of an emotion.
  • Emotional affect is the unconscious component of emotion.
  • Non-emotional affect is rather a vague term that just includes everything that isn’t an emotional affect, e.g. nausea and pain. [I don’t agree with Panksepp here, how can pain be considered non ‘action-promoting’?]
Emotional affect, then, is what Panksepp dismissively refers to as “…’spooky’ mental issues…” (Panksepp, 2000:50) and what LeDoux calls the proper and necessary subject of emotion research.

The well-known neurologist and emotion researcher Antonio Damasio has suggested the following taxonomy:
  • A state of emotion can be started and executed unconsciously.
  • A state of feeling is unconscious.
  • A state of feeling made conscious which is the emotion and feeling made conscious (I think!)
  • Affect, then, is the conscious experience of emotion.
Different purposes require different definitions and Panksepp and Damasio have different purposes for their definitions. That said, there are considerable differences. For example, Panksepp thinks affect is both conscious and unconscious, Damasio thinks it is only conscious (or nonconscious as he writes). Panksepp thinks emotion is an umbrella term for everything, Damasio thinks it describes only unconscious aspects. And, as each of them is grappling with these vague concepts, just like the rest of us, they are both correct, for their own purposes. And incorrect, perhaps, for others' purposes.

To take a third example, perhaps more typical, Davidson (2003) appears to use the words ‘affect’ and ’emotion’ interchangeably.

Given the state of confusion over meaning, I’m forced to reserve judgement over the ‘correct’ definition of affect and emotion. I’d like to go along with the dictionary definition of ‘affect’ as a “Feeling or emotion, especially as manifested by facial expression or body language”  but, clearly for psychologists and those in related fields, the word’s technical usage has yet to settle down.
Time now to sort out this confusion brought about by 'emotion researchers.'
The Affectology Perspective
Because all variants of clinical affectology - Clinical Affectology, Af-x, ECR - rely somewhat on preparatory information that aids in us having a clearer picture of how the mind operates (before we can reframe or 'reboot' old encodings) and what 'territory' of mind we are bringing into focus, we have to settle on specific definitions.

As you can see from the above article, if we were to simply continue using words that are not clearly defined here, much misinterpretation is likely to occur. While we respect the varied views of 'emotion researchers' and their right to interpret words in whatever manner suits them and their work, it is essential for us to 'tighten' this issue so that we know what we're talking about in their use. To that end, we must adopt specific definitions that suit the affectology view-point. These may or may not be similar to the definitions of the 'researchers'.

Because 'science' and 'emotion researchers' have left us with a fuzzy box of words that seem to vaguely point in directions that are less than satisfactory, we must tidy that up and present a short vocabulary explicit to our needs.

In all things pertinent to our affectology view, please interpret the following words as being ...

Emotion: we favor the viewpoint that emotion, although enjoying a popular characterization as an umbrella term embracing all the words under examination here, really describes the symptom - the result - of more subtle unconscious core agents. So, emotion is a consciously recognized set of markers (somatic and psyche) that are the result of affect.
From an affectology stand-point, emotion refers mostly to recognizable moods and conscious feelings and reactions like anger, depression, anxiety, sadness, stress, and the like.
  • Affect: 'a class name given to human feelings that may not be able to be verbalized' is one useful definition found in a psychology dictionary. In affectology, we claim it to be 'useful' since the specific territory of our work is described as being 'preverbal' and 'unconscious'. So you can see above, some assume that affect is consciously registered. Panksepp seems to separate 'affect' and 'emotional affect', defining the first as consciously registered, and the latter as unconscious and unable to be cognitively recognized or verbalized.
Since the use of 'emotional affect' is not common, in affectology, we will remain with 'affect' as describing those preverbal feeling continuations that are unconscious and still exist as state-dependent reactions. So, in affectology, 'affect' is unconscious.

Feeling/s: while the affectologist is clear that the word 'feelings' is an ambiguous and wide-spectrum descriptor - used commonly to describe consciously registered emotion or mood - its use is uncommon in the affectology lexicon. To confuse matters even further, 'feeling' can be commonly used to describe somatic experience, as in "I'm feeling cold." This is not an overly useful definition in our case, as it lies well outside the focus pertinent to affectology. So, 'feelings' is not a commonly used word in affectology.

Core: In affectology, we use the word 'core' to refer to the inner unconscious matrix - the central feeling aspect of self that cannot be verbalized - that has been established before word use (preverbal) and carried over (perseverated) into adulthood. It is hidden (from the conscious mind), silent (exists in the form in which it was initially learned) and is an initiator of many of our characteristics as people and the way in which we react to the world around us, particularly in emotional (symptomatic) ways.
In practical (clinical) affectology we may refer to that 'inner affect self' as being the Emotional Core or Affect Core.