Allan Schore

• UCLA

This study investigated inter-right brain synchrony between therapist and client in Sandplay therapy, using hyperscanning technique based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS is a non-intrusive method that measures changes in oxyhemoglobin the cerebral blood. A total of seven therapist-client pairs-i.e., 14 participants-wore fNIR...

This article overviews my recent acceptance of a Lifetime Achievement Award from Sapienza University of Rome, in which I discussed three decades of my work on the right brain in development, psychopathogenesis, and psychotherapy. In the following, I offer current brain laterality and hemispheric asymmetry research indicating that right brain emotio...

Second Edition enriched with a Foreword written by Jakub Przybyła Frenis Zero publishing house, 2021, ISBN 978-88-97479-30-7 Presentation: The second edition of the book is foreworded by Jakub Przybyła who criticizes the idea of integrating neurobiology and psychotherapy based mainly on the study of psychoanalysis and neuropsychoanalysis. The autho...

In 1975, Colwyn Trevarthen first presented his groundbreaking explorations into the early origins of human intersubjectivity. His influential model dictates that, during intimate and playful spontaneous face-to-face protoconversations, the emotions of both the 2–3-month-old infant and mother are nonverbally communicated, perceived, mutually regulat...

Examining degrees of stability in attachment throughout early childhood is important for understanding developmental pathways and for informing intervention. Updating and building upon all prior meta-analyses, this study aimed to determine levels of stability in all forms of attachment classifications across early childhood. Attachment stability wa...

Part 1: Theoretical Models of Right Brain Therapeutic Action. The first part of this article on the central role of the right brain in group psychotherapy offers evidence-based theoretical models of therapeutic action cocreated by the group members and the group leader. It describes how recent advances in interpersonal neurobiology and neuropsychoa...

Examining degrees of stability in attachment throughout early childhood is important for understanding developmental pathways and for informing intervention. Updating and building upon all prior meta-analyses, this study aimed to determine levels of stability in all forms of attachment classifications across early childhood. Attachment stability wa...

Background: In lieu of consciously appraising the threat via cortical sensory processing, a subcortical ‘innate alarm system’ originating in the superior colliculus (SC) may activate innate defensive responses when threat is imminent. Individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) demonstrate supra- and subliminal threat detection, together...

Why are boys at risk? To address this question, I use the perspective of regulation theory to offer a model of the deeper psychoneurobiological mechanisms that underlie the vulnerability of the developing male. The central thesis of this work dictates that significant gender differences are seen between male and female social and emotional function...

Background Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with hyperarousal and active fight or flight defensive responses. By contrast, the dissociative subtype of PTSD, characterized by depersonalization and derealization symptoms, is frequently accompanied by additional passive or submissive defensive responses associated with autonomic blun...

Existing survey measures of childhood trauma history generally fail to take into account the relational-socioecological environment in which childhood maltreatment occurs. Variables such as the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, the emotional availability of caregivers, witnessing the abuse of others, and the respondent's own thou...

Ce travail s'est effectué dans le cadre d'un échange avec un psychologue du service au sujet de sa thèse en cours de recherche sur le développement des relations prototypiques chez les enfants avec TSA. D'où des ajouts en gris qui sont des commentaires personnels en lien avec son travail de recherche. On voit dans les modèles contemporains du self...

Reviews the book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain by Richard J. Davidson and Sharon Begley (see record 2014-00125-008 ). It is striking that nowhere in the book does Davidson refer to the intense decades-long standing controversy between the valence and the right-hemisphere hypotheses (which is never mentioned in the text). As both a scientist and...

During the past two decades an explosion of interdisciplinary research, especially in developmental neuroscience, has transformed and deepened our understanding of how the seminal social emotional events of infancy indelibly impact, for better or worse, all later stages of human development. In this article I briefly summarise my contributions in r...

Our earliest attachment relationships have long-lasting effects on the structure our emotional brain, our relationships with ourselves and others, and our psychological well-being. Good enough early nurturing fosters the neural networks (located in the right hemisphere of the brain) which enable us to regulate our emotions healthily. We grow up tru...

There is now a strong if not urgent call in both the attachment and autism literatures for updated, research informed, clinically relevant interventions that can more effectively assess the mother infant dyad during early periods of brain plasticity. In this contribution I describe my work in regulation theory, an overarching interpersonal neurobio...

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...

This article offers an essay on the influence of advances in developmental neuroscience and neuropsychoanalysis for our understanding of the interpersonal neurobiological change mechanisms embedded in the mother–infant and client–therapist relationship. Regulation theory and affect regulation therapy are reviewed, along with attachment, affect regu...

EDITOR’S NOTE With this book the psychoanalytic publishing house “Frenis Zero” inaugurates the collection “Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience”. The very title wants to emphasize an area of research that the journal, initiated for publication on the internet, wanted to cover since its foundation: that of the dialogue of contemporary psychoanalysis wit...

From the interpersonal neurological perspective of regulation theory, the discussant uses the essential questions raised by the author as a springboard to explore and elaborate upon the larger problem of assessments and interventions in the first year, a critical period for attachment transactions and the brain growth spurt. Describing regulation t...

Current psychometric measures of childhood trauma history generally fail to assess the relational-socioecological context within which childhood maltreatment occurs, including the relationship of abusers to abused persons, the emotional availability of caregivers, and the respondent's own thoughts, feelings, and actions in response to maltreatment....

The field of cognitive psychology is in a state of empirical abundance, and experts now know more about mammalian brain function than ever before. In contrast, psychological problems such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression are on the rise, as are medical conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and autoimmune disorders. Why, in this era of unpre...

This chapter makes suggestions for research, policy, and professional ethical stances regarding early life experience. Specifically, rather than assuming the nonclinical participants are normal, research should establish a baseline for evolved human functioning based on how well a person's experiences match ancestral conditions in early life. Resea...

In this chapter, we offer a review of recent research on mother–infant right brain-to-right brain visual, auditory, and tactile attachment communications and on current developmental neuroscientific studies of the interpersonal neurobiological mechanisms that facilitate or inhibit the experience-dependent maturation of the infant’s developing right...

The field of cognitive psychology is in a state of empirical abundance, and experts now know more about mammalian brain function than ever before. In contrast, psychological problems such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression are on the rise, as are medical conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and autoimmune disorders. Why, in this era of unpre...

Humans, like all mammals, require extensive nurturing after birth in order to facilitate essential psychobiological attachment and other developmental processes. Animal, human psychological, psychiatric, neurobiological, and anthropological research provides converging evidence for the importance and quality of early life conditions for optimal bra...

Disturbances in self-referential processing (SRP) are increasingly recognized in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In healthy adults, SRP tasks engage the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) brain regions that have shown altered function in PTSD. We hypothesized that individuals with PTSD would differ from cont...

In this far-reaching interview, Allan Schore, renowned scientist, clinical psychologist, and clinical neuropsychologist, considers the place of neuroscience in facilitating developmental knowledge and better decision making in family law matters. He details current science on the neurology of attachment formation, the function of early caregiving r...

In this contribution I expand my continuing work on the centrality of right brain structures and unconscious processes from the neuropsychoanalytic perspective of regulation theory, an overarching model of the development, psychopathogenesis, and treatment of the implicit self. In an introduction I highlight the essential role of not only implicit...

Professor Allan Schore's distinguished career as a pioneer theoretician ?scientist of the brain? surprisingly began with the publication of his first volume, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. The Neurobiology of Emotional Development (1994), after having published only one paper. The rest, as they say, is history. In this conversation r...

To test the hypothesis that borderline personality disorder is a manifestation of a particularly right hemispheric disturbance, involving deficient higher order inhibition, and to consider the therapeutic implications of the findings. A cohort of 17 medication free borderline patients were compared with 17 age and sex matched controls by means of a...

Imaging studies of pain processing in primary psychiatric disorders are just emerging. This study explored the neural correlates of stress-induced analgesia in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the traumatic script-driven imagery symptom provocation paradigm to examin...

Attachment theory, originally proposed by Bowlby (1969), has experienced a powerful resurgence over the last decade, not only in the mental health field but also in the ­biological sciences. Originating in an amalgam of psychoanalysis and behavioral biology­, attachment theory is deceptively simple on the surface. It posits that the real relationsh...

Although the authors in this part have offered important individual contributions to a deeper understanding of the essential role of early life trauma on brain organization and later psychobiological functioning, they also present a remarkable overlap and a common interdisciplinary perspective. In the following overview, I will emphasize what I see...

Central Role of Arousal Regulation in Maternal–Infant InteractionsInterpersonal Neurobiology of Mother–Infant Face-to-Face CommunicationsExperience-Dependent Maturation of Right Brain Control SystemsReferences and further reading

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 e...

The current paradigm shift in psychoanalysis and related sciences is generating more powerful models of psychopathogenesis and treatment. Toward that end, in Awakening the Dreamer Philip Bromberg masterfully integrates psychoanalytic, developmental, trauma, and neurobiological data to explore the bottom-line defense of dissociation. In this review...

Ethology's renewed interest in developmental context coincides with recent insights from neurobiology and psychology on early attachment. Attachment and social learning are understood as fundamental mechanisms in development that shape core processes responsible for informing behaviour throughout a lifetime. Each field uniquely contributes to the c...

Over the past decade attachment theory has undergone an intense expansion of both its original scientific foundations as well as its applications to clinical work. Bowlby’s original description occurred during a period of behaviorism and an emphasis on the strange situation and secure base behaviors, which then gave way to a dominance of cognition...

In October 2004 it was my pleasure to present at a cutting-edge conference entitled The Interplay of Implicit and Explicit Processes in Psychoanalysis. In addition to offering an address (“The Essential Role of the Right Brain in the Implicit Self: Development, Psychopathogenesis, and Psychotherapy”), I also provided a commentary to Steven Knoblauc...

Editor's Note: This article is a departure from our usual review in that it discusses new frontiers in the correlation of brain, mind, and emotions in developing children as well as areas of collaboration between pediatrics and sister disciplines. Dr Schore has adapted a substantial amount of technical information to the viewpoint of the pediatrici...

Lewis describes the developmental core of dynamic systems theory. I offer recent data from developmental neuroscience on the sequential experience-dependent maturation of components of the limbic system over the stages of infancy. Increasing interconnectivity within the vertically integrated limbic system allows for more complex appraisals of emoti...

Social trauma: early disruption of attachment can affect the physiology, behaviour and culture of animals and humans over generations.

In 1971, Heinz Kohut, trained in neurology and then psychoanalysis, published The Analysis of the Self, a detailed exposition of the central role of the self in human existence. This classic volume of both twentieth century psychoanalysis and psychology was more than a collection of various clinical observations—rather it represented an overarching...

The interactive creation of an attachment bond of affective communication between the psychobiologically attuned primary caregiver and the infant is central to human emotional development. These emotional transactions directly influence the experience-dependent maturation of the infant's early developing right hemisphere, which is in a growth spurt...

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. Existing attachment, stress physiology, trauma, and neuroscience literatures were collected using Index Medicus/Medline and Psy...

Recent findings relating to projective identification (Klein, 1946) derived from clinical psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, and developmental neuroscience are presented to investigate the underlying mechanism of the process of communication from the unconscious of one person to the unconscious of another. An integrative model is proposed wh...

Over the last ten years the basic knowledge of brain structure and function has vastly ex- panded, and its incorporation into the developmental sciences is now allowing for more complex and heuristic models of human infancy. In a continuation of this effort, in this two-part work I integrate current interdisciplinary data from attachment studies on...

A primary interest of the field of infant mental health is in the early conditions that place infants at riskfor less than optimal development. The fundamental problem of what constitutes normal and abnormal development is now a focus of developmental psychology, infant psychiatry, and devel- opmental neuroscience. In the second part of this sequen...

Over the last ten years the basic knowledge of brain structure and function has vastly expanded, and its incorporation into the developmental sciences is now allowing for more complex and heuristic models of human infancy. In a continuation of this effort, in this two-part work I integrate current interdisciplinary data from attachment studies on d...

In the last twenty to thirty years, a new way to understand complex systems has emerged in the natural sciences - an approach often called non-linear dynamics, dynamical systems theory, or chaos theory. This perspective has allowed scientists to trace the emergence of order from disorder and complex, higher-order forms from interactions among lower...

It has been three decades since John Bowlby first presented an over-arching model of early human development in his groundbreaking volume, Attachment. In the present paper I refer back to Bowlby's original charting of the attachment landscape in order to suggest that current research and clinical models need to return to the integration of the psyc...

One of the most commonly reported emotions in people seeking psychotherapy is shame, and this emotion has become the subject of intense research and theory over the last 20 years. In Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, and Culture, Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews, together with some of the most eminent figures in the field, examine the...

The concepts of self-organization, state changes, and energy flow are central to dynamic systems theory. In this work 1 suggest that to apply these general principles to the study of normal and abnormal development, these constructs must be specifically defined in reference to current knowledge of brain development. Toward that end, I present an ov...

In his 1895 "Project for a Scientific Psychology" Freud attempted to construct a model of the human mind in terms of its underlying neurobiological mechanisms. In this endeavor "to furnish a psychology which shall be a natural science," Freud introduced the concepts that to this day serve as the theoretical foundation and scaffolding of psychoanaly...

The maturation of corticolimbic systems that neurobiologically mediate essential affective and social regulatory functions is experience dependent. During the first and second years of life, the infant's affective experiences, especially those embedded in the relationship with the primary caregiver, elicit patterns of psychobiological alterations t...

Over the past two decades I have integrated ongoing scientific studies and clinical data in order to construct regulation theory, a neuropsychoanalytic model of the development, psychopathogenesis, and treatment of the implicit self. Towards that end, in 2001 I edited an issue of the Infant Mental Health Journal, and in it I offered an article, 'T...

Comments on M. Solms and E. Nersessian's (see record 2000-02440-001) target article on Freud's theory of affect and its possible neuroanatomical, physiological, and chemical correlates, and J. Panksepp's (see record 2000-02440-002) commentary on that article. Utilizing an interdisciplinary perspective, A. N. Schore offers some ideas about affect...

I am again delighted to serve as editor of a series of short articles for the Psychologist Psychoanalyst. The goal of the series, which first appeared as a number of essays on advances in neuroscience and attachment theory in the 2000 and 2001 issues, is to provide a medium for the rapid integration of very recent interdisciplinary data, research,...