Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development

During the past decade a diverse group of disciplines have simultaneously intensified their attention upon the scientific study of emotion. This proliferation of research on affective phenomena has been paralleled by an acceleration of investigations of early human structural and functional development. Developmental neuroscience is now delving into the ontogeny of brain systems that evolve to support the psychobiological underpinnings of socioemotional functioning. Studies of the infant brain demonstrate that its maturation is influenced by the environment and is experience-dependent. Developmental psychological research emphasizes that the infant's expanding socioaffective functions are critically influenced by the affect-transacting experiences it has with the primary caregiver. Concurrent developmental psychoanalytic research suggests that the mother's affect regulatory functions permanently shape the emerging self's capacity for self-organization. Studies of incipient relational processes and their effects on developing structure are thus an excellent paradigm for the deeper apprehension of the organization and dynamics of affective phenomena. This book brings together and presents the latest findings of socioemotional studies emerging from the developmental branches of various disciplines. It supplies psychological researchers and clinicians with relevant, up-to-date developmental neurobiological findings and insights, and exposes neuroscientists to recent developmental psychological and psychoanalytic studies of infants. The methodology of this theoretical research involves the integration of information that is being generated by the different fields that are studying the problem of socioaffective development--neurobiology, behavioral neurology, behavioral biology, sociobiology, social psychology, developmental psychology, developmental psychoanalysis, and infant psychiatry. A special emphasis is placed upon the application and incorporation of current developmental data from neurochemistry, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, and neuroendocrinology into the main body of developmental theory. More than just a review of several literatures, the studies cited in this work are used as a multidisciplinary source pool of experimental data, theoretical concepts, and clinical observations that form the base and scaffolding of an overarching heuristic model of socioemotional development that is grounded in contemporary neuroscience. This psychoneurobiological model is then used to generate a number of heuristic hypotheses regarding the proximal causes of a wide array of affect-related phenomena--from the motive force that drives human attachment to the proximal causes of psychiatric disturbances and psychosomatic disorders, and indeed to the origin of the self.

Table of Contents:
Contents: J.S. Grotstein, Foreword. Preface. Part I:Background and Overview. Introduction. General Principles of Growth of the Developing Brain. Recent Advances in the Multidisciplinary Study of Emotional Development. Structure-Function Relationships of the Orbitofrontal Cortex. Overview. Part II:Early Infancy. Visual Experiences and Socioemotional Development. The Practicing Period. The Psychobiology of Affective Reunions. Early Imprinting. Imprinting Neuroendocrinology. Socioaffective Influences on Orbitofrontal Morphological Development. The Emotionally Expressive Face. The Neurochemical Circuitry of Imprinted Interactive Representations. The Regulatory Function of Early Internal Working Models. Part III:Late Infancy. The Onset of Socialization Procedures and the Emergence of Shame. Late Orbitofrontal Development. Orbitofrontal Versus Dorsolateral Prefrontal Ontogeny. The Dyadic Origin of Internal Shame Regulation. Socialization and Experience-Dependent Parcellation. The Origins of Infantile Sexuality and Psychological Gender. The Onset of Dual Component Orbitofrontal Mature Structure and Adaptive Function. Part IV:Applications to Affect Regulatory Phenomena. A Psychoneurobiological Model of the Dual Circuit Processing of Socioemotional Information. Cross-Modal Transfer and Abstract Representations. The Development of Increasingly Complex Interactive Representations. Orbitofrontal Influences on the Autonomic Nervous System. The Regulation of Infantile Rage Reactions. Affect Regulation and Early Moral Development. The Emergence of Self-Regulation. Part V:Clinical Issues. The Neurobiology of Insecure Attachments. The Clinical Psychiatry of Affect Dysregulation. The Developmental Psychopathology of Personality Disorders. Vulnerability to Psychosomatic Disease. Psychotherapy of Developmental Disorders. Part VI:Integrations. Right Hemispheric Language and Self-Regulation. The Dialogical Self and the Emergence of Consciousness. Further Directions of Multidisciplinary Study. A Proposed Rapprochement Between Psychoanalysis and Neurobiology.

About the Author :
Allan N. Schore

Review :
"Allan Schore reveals himself as a polymath, the depth and breadth of whose reading, bringing together neurobiology, developmental neurochemistry, behavioral neurology, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, developmental psychoanalysis and infant psychiatry, is staggering. This is a superb work, an excellent source book for psychiatrists wishing to locate their work within the much broader study of the mind. It might also form the basis of what could be an enormously creative dialogue between neurobiology and psychoanalysis." —British Journal of Psychiatry "Allan Schore['s]...work is leading to an integrated evidence-based dynamic theory of human development that will engender a rapprochment between psychiatry and neural sciences." —American Journal of Psychiatry "Schore's...model explicates in exemplary detail the precise mechanisms by which the infant brain might internalize and structuralize the affect-regulating functions of the mother, in circumscribed neural tissues, at specifiable points in its epigenetic history....I unreservedly recommend this uniquely informative book to psychoanalytic readers." —Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association "In this extensively researched (over 2,300 references) and cogently argued text, Allen N. Schore provides a major contribution to the study of the relationship between the neurological processes and structures of the brain and the socioaffective and object representational phenomena that we generally associate with the mind. Schore's approach is an outstanding example of the genre of studies seeking to demonstrate neurological isomorphisms for the kind of mental or psychic states that have been postulated by psychoanalytic theory." —Psychoanalytic Quarterly "For those who read this book, the study of human development will be entirely transformed....Not only is this book destined to be an authoritative reference for those who work with infants and children, but it also promises to radically restructure many of our current paradigms of infant/child development and care....it is perhaps the first comprehensive source to emotional development. Its scholarship is indeed impressive. Its integration and conclusions are insightful." —Contemporary Education "Allan Schore's Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self is a brilliant, if not awesome, synthesis with supporting data from a spectrum of many disparate sources, including anatomic, developmental, neurochemical, and psychodynamic. He has developed a coherent and integrated neuropsychological model of the location, development, and mechanism of the self." —International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine "...this is a superb integrative work, an excellent source book and required reading for any psychiatrists wishing to locate their work within the much broader study of mind." —The British Journal of Psychiatry "In this remarkable and unique integrative contribution on socioaffective ontogeny, Dr. Schore has assembled an incredible array of data that spans virtually the length and breadth of modern science, including neurobiology, developmental neurochemistry, behavioral neurology, evolutionary biology, sociobiology, developmental psychology, developmental psychoanalysis, and infant psychiatry. His aim in this work is to construct an interdisciplinary model for the attainment of optimum integration from all these disciplines so that we see a more transcendent picture of the emerging human infant as a neurobiological-social-emotional self. I believe that he has achieved his aim and, in so doing, he has lifted our neurobiological 'hardware' into a unique costarring role with our mental (cognitive/affective) software and has highlighted how our neurons become key players in the formation of our personalities. We can almost now see brain and mind in a paradoxically discontinuously continuous Möbius strip connection....a pioneering work that holds considerable promise for everyone in the behavioral sciences. It fundamentally alters our traditional, fundamentalistic, cyclopean psychodynamic way of viewing infants and patients and dramatically informs a newer and much needed interdisciplinary perspective." —James S. Grotstein, M.D. University of California at Los Angeles Medical School, From the Foreword "Unlike most scientists, Dr. Schore takes his inspiration from the interfaces between disciplines. In this book, he makes a heroic effort to link the worlds of the cell, the brain, behavior, and inferred emotional states through their common participation in regulatory processes at work within the early relationship of the child and its parents. He offers both original ideas and an exceptionally broad survey of recent research in all these areas." —Myron A. Hofer College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University "...a remarkable feat of scholarship and a very important contribution to the neurobiology of emotional development. I like your pattern of reviewing and discussing the psychological and social side of development, followed usually by a chapter that looks at the neurobiology. This truly offers the integration that you were seeking, and I congratulate you for what you have done." —Richard S. Lazarus University of California, Berkeley "a superb book....I am sure to refer to it repeatedly and will continue to rely on the references." —Karl H. Pribram Radnor University "Psychoanalytic theory and brain maturation: the most detailed discussion of the early years and the emotional consequences of brain development is Allan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of Self."