Right Brain-to-Right Brain Psychotherapy: Recent Clinical and Scientific Advances

Abstract

ontogenetically and phylogenetically" (p. 21). Consonant with this conceptualization, in his wide ranging studies of the unique specializations of the dual brain hemispheres the neuropsychiatrist Iain now asserts that "The right hemisphere both grounds our experience of the world at the bottom end, so to speak, and makes sense of it, at the top end," that this hemisphere is more in touch with both affect and the body, and that "neurological evidence supports what is called the primacy of affect and the primacy of unconscious over conscious will" (p. 44).For the past three decades I have offered interdisciplinary research and clinical data demonstrating that the right brain is the psychobiological substrate of the human unconscious. This right-lateralized deep core of the subjective self evolves in the early mother-infant attachment relationship, and over the lifespan this dynamic system, at levels beneath conscious awareness, intersubjectively communicates with other right brains, that are tuned to receive these communications. This nonverbal communication system lies at the foundation of the evolutionary mechanism of attachment, expressed as the implicit (unconscious) interactive regulation of emotion, and thereby the regulation of biological synchronicity between and within organisms.Thus synchronized right brain-to-right brain affectively charged attachment dynamics act as a biopsychosocial mechanism by which humans are sociophysiologically connected to others in order to co-regulate their internal homeostatic states .Applying this developmental model of the mother-infant dyad to the clinical context I have described how the co-created psychotherapeutic relationship acts as a dynamic intersubjective context of rapid communications of emotional states within the evolving therapeutic alliance.These spontaneous right brain-to-right brain nonverbal communications of self-states take place in the present moment, a time frame of fractions of a second to 2 to 3 seconds. Importantly, this "relational unconscious" not only communicates with but also synchronizes and is expanded by another relational unconscious (Schore, 2019a, b; 2020a,b). This synchronized coupling of right brain patterns allows the therapeutic dyad to mutually share unconscious implicit communicative, emotional, and regulatory functions, thereby facilitating psychotherapeutic growth and development of the patient's right brain.In my two recent volumes Right Brain Psychotherapy and The Development of the Unconscious Mind I continue to expand my theoretical and clinical studies of regulation theory, a theory of the development, psychopathogenesis, and treatment of the subjective self. This