ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a model of emotional development arising from understanding regression as a cyclical back and forth process between regressive and progressive states. The chapter bridges some of the current psychoanalytic thinking with Ormont's approach to group therapy. It explains these attributes: regression is an intrapsychic and relational phenomenon. The psychotherapy relationship provides opportunities to explore regression and relational imprints, experiencing the earlier experienced self/object painful interactions as they are manifested in the present therapeutic relationship. Current relationships provide the context for accessing and reworking internal object relations. Contemporary neuropsychoanalytic, attachment, trauma, and relational self-state theorists discuss a concept of an embedded interpersonal imprint that is out of awareness, and can only be surfaced in primitive modes of interacting in intimate relationships. Contemporary neuropsychoanalytic, attachment, trauma, and relational self-state theorists discuss a concept of an embedded interpersonal imprint that is out of awareness, and can only be surfaced in primitive modes of interacting in intimate relationships.
