Relational Trauma and the Developing Right Brain: An Interface of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and Neuroscience
| Journal: |
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences |
| Manuscript ID: |
annals-1421-004 |
| Volume Title: |
Psychology of the Self |
| Date Submitted by the Author: |
30-Dec-2007 |
| Complete List of Authors: |
Schore, Allan; UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences |
| Keywords: |
neuropsychoanalysis, right brain, trauma, dissociation, unconscious, attachment |
RELATIONAL TRAUMA AND THE DEVELOPING RIGHT BRAIN: AN INTERFACE OF PSYCHOANALYTIC
SELF PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE
ABBREVIATED RUNNING TITLE: SCHORE: SELF PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE
FOR PUBLICATION IN THE ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
VOLUME, PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SELF
ALLAN N. SCHORE
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, USA
Address for correspondence: Allan N. Schore, 9817 Sylvia Avenue, Northridge, CA 91324. Voice: 818-886-4368; fax: 818-349-4404.
ABSTRACT: Psychoanalysis, the science of unconscious processes, has recently undergone a significant transformation. Self psychology, derived from the work of Heinz Kohut represents perhaps the most important revision of Freud’s theory, as it has shifted its basic core concepts from an intrapsychic to a relational unconscious, and from a cognitive ego to an emotion processing self. Due to a common interest in the essential rapid bodily-based affective processes that lie beneath conscious awareness, a productive dialogue is now occurring between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Here I apply this interdisciplinary perspective to a deeper understanding of the nonconscious brain/mind/body mechanisms that lie at the core of self psychology. I offer a neuropsychoanalytic conception of the development and structuralization of the self, focusing on the experience-dependent maturation of the emotion processing right brain in infancy. I then articulate an interdisciplinary model of attachment trauma and pathological dissociation, an early forming defense against overwhelming affect that is a cardinal feature of self psychopathologies. I end with some thoughts on the mechanism of the psychotherapeutic change process, and suggest that self psychology is in essence a psychology of the unique functions of the right brain, and that a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and neuroscience is now at hand.
KEYWORDS: neuropsychoanalysis; right brain; trauma; dissociation; unconscious, attachment