This book argues that mental life is organized by and around affect. It proposes a clinical model for understanding how affect influences states of consciousness and self. It illustrates how, from moment to moment, affect determines the world we know, how we are disposed to being in it, and our capacity to function in it.
After introducing consciousness and self as features of mind that have posed daunting problems for philosophy, neurology, and psychoanalysis, subsequent chapters propose a model for understanding them at the clinical level. Initial chapters are devoted to the influence of affect on the structure and dynamics of normal waking consciousness and on the self’s capacity to act agentically, to relate intersubjectively, and to develop itself. Final chapters discuss disordered states of consciousness and impeded self‑functioning, due to affect dysregulation and what all this looks like in patients with preoccupied and avoidant attachment patterns.
Drawing on psychoanalysis, attachment theory, interpersonal and affective neurobiology, and traumatology, this book offers a fresh perspective on the importance of affect for psychoanalysts and psychodynamic psychotherapists.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. The Bottom of the Mind 2. States of Consciousness: Levels and Styles 3. The Core Self 4. Being Dysregulated: Disordered Consciousness and Disordered Self 5. Ken and Barbara: A Clinical Application of the Model
About the Author :
Daniel Hill is a psychoanalyst and educator. He is the author of Affect Regulation Theory: A Clinical Model and is on the faculties of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies and the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.
Review :
‘In this volume Daniel Hill guides us, gracefully and generously, along the complex path from raw stimulation of the mind to consciousness and the experience of self. Along the way he shows us the central organizing role of affect, and the ways in which affective dysregulation can lead to alarmingly disordered states of consciousness. The result is that Hill provides an accessible account of the workings of the mind, and at the same time a dynamic vision that will illuminate the clinical work of therapists at all levels of experience.’
Jay Greenberg, Ph.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute Recipient, 2015 Mary S. Sigourney Award for Outstanding Contribution to Psychoanalysis
‘In this extraordinary volume Dan Hill convincingly demonstrates that working directly with right brain implicit processes that evolve from the depths of the human mind directly impacts not only right brain subjective consciousness, but objective consciousness generated in the explicit left brain. Grounded in not only his considerable knowledge of recent brain laterality research, expert clinical skills, and ability to evocatively describe his own subjective and reflective awareness, he offers not only a succinct, comprehensive review of his earlier work on right-lateralized implicit functions, but also his ground breaking studies on the spontaneous duplex self that integrates bihemispheric implicit and explicit processes, as well as a clinical model of often overlooked moderate dissociative disorders.’
Allan Schore, author of Right Brain Psychotherapy
