Relational Trauma and the Developing Right Brain
نویسنده
چکیده
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. As a result of 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.
منابع مشابه
Relational Trauma and the Developing Right Brain: The Neurobiology of Broken Attachment Bonds Allan N. Schore Ph.D. UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine To Be Published in Relational Trauma in Infancy
متن کامل
Relational trauma and the developing right brain: an interface of psychoanalytic self psychology and neuroscience.
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. As a result of a common...
متن کاملDysregulation of the right brain: a fundamental mechanism of traumatic attachment and the psychopathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder.
OBJECTIVE This review integrates recent advances in attachment theory, affective neuroscience, developmental stress research, and infant psychiatry in order to delineate the developmental precursors of posttraumatic stress disorder. METHOD Existing attachment, stress physiology, trauma, and neuroscience literatures were collected using Index Medicus/Medline and Psychological Abstracts. This c...
متن کاملThe right brain is dominant in psychotherapy.
This article discusses how recent studies of the right brain, which is dominant for the implicit, nonverbal, intuitive, holistic processing of emotional information and social interactions, can elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the relational foundations of psychotherapy. Utilizing the interpersonal neurobiological perspective of regulation theory, I describe the fundamenta...
متن کاملCarotid artery thrombosis and cerebral infarction after multiple traumas
Carotid artery thrombosis and concomitant brain infarction after blunt trauma are rare conditions. We report a 34-year-old woman with multiple traumas due to pedestrian car accident. At the time of initial visiting, she was somnolent and her Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score was 14. Initial vital signs (V/S) and brain computed tomography (CT) scan were normal. One day after admission to the emerge...
متن کامل