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

Allan N. Schore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1994 | ISBN-10: 0805834591 | ISBN-13: 978-0805834598 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

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

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

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 thosewho 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

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

...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

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.

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 superb book....I am sure to refer to it repeatedly and will continue to rely on the references.
—Karl H. Pribram
Radnor University

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

...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

Product Details

• Paperback: 700 pages
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1 edition (1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805834591
• ISBN-13: 978-0805834598
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #603,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Often Recommended June 8, 2001

By Robert Kall VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The mother influences the child's growth and development. That's pretty obvious. This book goes to the neurobiological underpinnings of this phenomenon, referring to several thousand studies, to show how the connection between mother and child actual influences the way the child's brain develops. It is a treasure trove of information on how the prefrontal cortex matures through interaction with the mother in the early stages of life.

As organizer of The Futurehealth Winter Brain Meeting, I have repeatedly recommended this book to colleagues who have an interest in frontal lobes, to attachment disorder, to the links between the brain and self control, violence in the schools, and even, in a recent on-line listserve discussion with a former president of APA, who suggested that first come values and then positive emotions. This books strongly suggests that first come positive emotions and experiences and these lead to establishment of a brain w hich is responsible and well regulated. This is no light read. But Schore is worth it. He's brilliant.

77 of 78 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptionally thorough, well written study December 31, 1999

By Michael Strassberg

Format:Hardcover

I found this book exceptionally engaging and fascinating. I have read much about the development of affective, cognitive, psycho-sexual, self and gender development, and wanted to learn more about the physiological and anatomical correlates to the observable behaviors in babies and children, and this book was 100% satisfying. The author painstakingly discusses Bowlby, Ainsworth, Spitz and other attachment theorists, providing the essential facts of affective and attachment development, and then in a very clear, understandable way, provides the neuroanatomic and neurochemical explanations of the observed phenomena. The book is intensively researched, and the ideas are developed in a sequential, logical and easy-to-follow manner. I recommend reading Robert Karen's book "Becoming Attached" first, to truly understand Schore's book.