Abstract
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 and an emphasis on attachment narratives and reflective capacities. We will argue that in line with Bowlby’s fundamental goal of the integration of psychological and biological models of human development, the current interest in affective bodily-based processes, interactive regulation, early experience-dependent brain maturation, stress, and nonconscious relational transactions has shifted attachment theory to a regulation theory. This emphasis on the right brain systems that underlie attachment and developmental change has in turn forged deeper connections with clinical models of psychotherapeutic change, all of which are consonant with psychoanalytic understandings. Modern attachment theory can thus be incorporated into the core of social work theory, research, and practice.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adler, H. M. (2002). The sociophysiology of caring in the doctor–patient relationship. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 17, 883–890.
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1969). Object relations, dependency and attachment: A theoretical review of the infant–mother relationship. Child Development, 40, 969–1025.
Allman, J. M., Watson, K. K., Tetreault, N. A., & Hakeem, A. Y. (2005). Intuition and autism: A possible role for Von Economo neurons. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 367–373.
Andrade, V. M. (2005). Affect and the therapeutic action in psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 86, 677–697.
Anthi, P. R. (1983). Reconstruction of preverbal experience. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 31, 33–58.
APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice (2006). Evidence-based practice in psychology. American Psychologist, 61, 271–285.
Applegate, J. S., & Shapiro, J. R. (2005). Neurobiology for clinical social work: Theory and practice. New York: WW Norton.
Beeman, M. (1998). Coarse semantic coding and discourse comprehension. In M. Beeman & C. Chiarello (Eds.), Right hemisphere language comprehension. Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bogolepova, I. N., & Malofeeva, L. I. (2001). Characteristics of the development of speech motor areas 44 and 45 in the left and right hemispheres of the human brain in early post-natal ontogenesis. Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, 31, 13–18.
Bornstein, R. F. (1999), Source amnesia, misattribution, and the power of unconscious perceptions and memories. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 16, 155–178.
Bourne, V. J., & Todd, B. K. (2004). When left means right: An explanation of the left cradling bias in terms of right hemisphere specializations. Developmental Science, 7, 19–24.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss. Vol. 1: Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.
Bromberg, P. M. (1991). On knowing one’s patient inside out: The aesthetics of unconscious communication. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1, 399–422.
Bucci, W. (1993). The development of emotional meaning in free association: A multiple code theory. In A. Wilson & J. E. Gedo (Eds.), Hierarchical concepts in psychoanalysis. New York: Guilford Press.
Bucci, W. (2002). The referential process, consciousness, and the sense of self. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 5, 766–793.
Buchheim, A., Erk, S., George, C., Kachele, H., Ruchsow, M., Spitzer, M., Kircher, T., & Walter, H. (2006). Measuring attachment representation in an fMRI environment: A pilot study. Psychopathology, 39, 144–152.
Bugental, J. F. (1987). The art of the psychotherapist. New York: W. W. Norton.
Chiron, C., Jambaque, I., Nabbout, R., Lounes, R., Syrota, A., & Dulac, O. (1997). The right brain hemisphere is dominant in human infants. Brain, 120, 1057–1065.
Cohen, M. X., & Shaver, P. R. (2004). Avoidant attachment and hemispheric lateralization of the processing of attachment- and emotion-related words. Cognition and Emotion, 18, 799–814.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error. New York: Grosset/Putnam.
Decety, J., & Chaminade, T. (2003). When the self represents the other: A new cognitive neuroscience view on psychological identification. Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 577–596.
Derryberry, D., & Tucker, D. M. (1994). Motivating the focus of attention. In P. M. Niedentahl & S. Kiyayama (Eds.), The heart’s eye: Emotional influences in perception and attention. San Diego: Academic Press.
Devinsky, O. (2000). Right cerebral hemispheric dominance for a sense of corporeal and emotional self. Epilepsy & Behavior, 1, 60–73.
Dorpat, T. L. (2001). Primary process communication. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 3, 448–463.
Feinberg, T. E., & Keenan, J. P. (2005). Where in the brain is the self? Consciousness and Cognition, 14, 661–678.
Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization and the development of the self. New York: Other Press.
Fonagy, P, & Target M. (2002). Early intervention, the development of self-regulation. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 22, 307–335.
Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (2005). Bridging the transmission gap: An end to an important mystery of attachment research? Attachment & Human Development, 7, 333–343.
Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology. Standard Edition, 1, 295–397. London: Hogarth Press, 1966.
Giovacchini, P. I. (1981). Object relations, deficiency states, and the acquisition of psychic structure. In S. Tutman, C. Kaye, & M. Zimmerman (Eds.), Object and self: A developmental approach (pp. 397–427). New York: International Universities Press.
Grabner, R. H., Fink, A., & Neubauer, A. C. (2007). Brain correlates of self-related originality of ideas: Evidence from event-related power and phase-locking changes in the EEG. Behavioral Neuroscience, 121, 224–230.
Greenson, R. (1978). Explorations in psychoanalysis. New York: International Universities Press.
Henry, J. P. (1993). Psychological and physiological responses to stress: The right hemisphere and the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis, an inquiry into problems of human bonding. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, 28, 369–387.
Jacobs, T. J. (1994). Nonverbal communications: Some reflections on their role in the psychoanalytic process and psychoanalytic education. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 42, 741–762.
Jung-Beeman, M. et al. (2004). Neural activity when people solve verbal problems with insight. PLoS Biology, 2, 500–510.
Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International University Press.
Le Grand, R., Mondloch, C., Maurer, D., & Brent, H. P. (2003). Expert face processing requires visual input to the right hemisphere during infancy. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 1108–1112.
Lyons-Ruth, K. (1999). The two-person unconscious: Intersubjective dialogue, enactive relational representation, and the emergence of new forms of relational organization. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 19, 576–617.
Lyons-Ruth, K. (2000). “I sense that you sense that I sense...”: Sander’s recognition process and the specificity of relational moves in the psychotherapeutic setting. Infant Mental Health Journal, 21, 85–98.
Mahler, M., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the human infant. New York: Basic Books.
Mandal, M. K., & Ambady, N. (2004). Laterality of facial expressions of emotion: Universal and culture-specific influences. Behavioral Neurology, 15, 23–34.
Marcus, D. M. (1997). On knowing what one knows. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 66, 219–241.
Mathew, M. (1998). The body as instrument. Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists, 35, 17–36.
Meares, R. (2005), The metaphor of play. Origin and breakdown of personal being, 3rd ed. London: Routledge. .
Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., & Pereg, D. (2003). Attachment theory and affect regulation: The dynamics, development, and cognitive consequences of attachment-related strategies. Motivation and Emotion, 27, 77–102. .
Miller, B. L., Seeley, W. W., Mychack, P., Rosen, H. J., Mena, I., & Boone, K. (2001). Neuroanatomy of the self. Evidence from patients with frontotemporal dementia. Neurology, 57, 817–821.
Mitchell, R. L. C., Elliott, R., Barry, M., Crittenden, A., & Woodruff, P. W. R. (2003). The neural response to emotional prosody, as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neuropsychologia, 41, 1410–1421.
Molnar-Szakacs, I., Uddin, L. Q., & Iacoboni, M. (2005). Right-hemisphere motor facilitation by self-descriptive personality-trait words. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21, 2000–2006.
Ohnishi, T., et al. (2004). The neural network for the mirror system and mentalizing in normally developed children: An fMRI study. NeuroReport, 15, 1483–1487.
Orlinsky, D. E., & Howard, K. I. (1986), Process and outcome in psychotherapy. In S. L. Garfield & A. E. Bergin (Eds.), Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Ovtscharoff, W. Jr., & Braun, K. (2001). Maternal separation and social isolation modulate the postnatal development of synaptic composition in the infralimbic cortex of octodon degus. Neuroscience, 104, 33–40.
Pipp, S., & Harmon, R. J. (1987). Attachment as regulation: A commentary. Child Development, 58, 648–652.
Prodan, C. I., Orbelo, D. M., Testa, J. A., & Ross, E. D. (2001). Hemispheric differences in recognizing upper and lower facial displays of emotion. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurology, 14, 206–212.
Sander, L. (1992). Letter to the editor. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 73, 582–584.
Scaer, R. (2005). The trauma spectrum: Hidden wounds and human resiliency. New York: W. W. Norton.
Schachner, D. A., Shaver, P. R., & Mikulincer, M. (2005). Patterns of nonverbal behavior and sensitivity in the context of attachment relationships. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29, 141–169.
Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self. Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schore, A. N. (1996). The experience-dependent maturation of a regulatory system in the orbital refrontal cortex and the origin of developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 8, 59–87.
Schore, A. N. (1997). A century after Freud’s Project: Is a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and neurobiology at hand? Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 45, 841–867.
Schore, A. N. (2000). Attachment and the regulation of the right brain. Attachment & Human Development, 2, 23–47.
Schore, A. N. (2001a). The effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22, 7–66.
Schore, A. N. (2001b). The Seventh Annual John Bowlby Memorial Lecture, Minds in the making: Attachment, the self-organizing brain, and developmentally-oriented psychoanalytic psychotherapy. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 17, 299–328.
Schore, A. N. (2002). Advances in neuropsychoanalysis, attachment theory, and trauma research: Implications for self psychology. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 22, 433–484.
Schore, A. N. (2003a). Affect dysregulation and disorders of the self. New York: W. W. Norton.
Schore, A. N. (2003b). Affect regulation and the repair of the self. New York: W. W. Norton.
Schore, A. N. (2005). Attachment, affect regulation, and the developing right brain: Linking developmental neuroscience to pediatrics. Pediatrics In Review, 26, 204–211.
Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Tomer, R., Berger, B. D., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2003). Characterization of empathy deficits following prefrontal brain damage: The role of the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 324–337.
Shaw, R. (2004). The embodied psychotherapist: An exploration of the therapists’ somatic phenomena within the therapeutic encounter. Psychotherapy Research, 14, 271–288.
Shuren, J. E., & Grafman, J. (2002). The neurology of reasoning. Archives of Neurology, 59, 916–919.
Simpson, G., Williams, J., & Segall, A. (2007). Social work education and clinical learning. Clinical Social Work Journal, 35, 3–14.
Stern, D. N., Bruschweiler-Stern, N., Harrison, A. M., Lyons-Ruth, K., Morgan, A. C., Nahum, J. P., Sander, L., & Tronick, E. Z. (1998). The process of therapeutic change involving implicit knowledge: Some implications of developmental observations for adult psychotherapy. Infant Mental Health Journal, 19, 300–308.
Sullivan, R. M., & Gratton, A. (2002). Prefrontal cortical regulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal function in the rat and implications for psychopathology: Side matters. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 27, 99–114.
Trevarthen, C. (1990). Growth and education of the hemispheres. In C. Trevarthen (Ed.), Brain circuits and functions of the mind (pp. 334–363). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Tucker, D. M. (1992). Developing emotions and cortical networks. In M. R. Gunnar & C. A. Nelson (Eds.), Minnesota symposium on child psychology. Vol. 24, Developmental behavioral neuroscience (pp. 75–128). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Tutte, J. C. (2004). The concept of psychical trauma: A bridge in interdisciplinary space. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85, 897–921.
van Lancker, D., & Cummings, J. L. (1999). Expletives: Neurolingusitic and neurobehavioral perspectives on swearing. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 83–104.
Watt, D. F. (2003). Psychotherapy in an age of neuroscience: Bridges to affective neuroscience. In J. Corrigall & H. Wilkinson (Eds.), Revolutionary connections. Psychotherapy and neuroscience (pp. 79–115). Karnac: London.
Whitehead, C. C. (2006). Neo-psychoanalysis: A paradigm for the 21st century. Journal of the Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, 34, 603–627.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schore, J.R., Schore, A.N. Modern Attachment Theory: The Central Role of Affect Regulation in Development and Treatment. Clin Soc Work J 36, 9–20 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-007-0111-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-007-0111-7