ABSTRACT
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, ‘The effects of early relational trauma on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health’. In this chapter I build on that work and provide very recent interdisciplinary developmental data that allow for a deeper understanding of the psychological and biological effects of early relational trauma. A particular focus will be on current studies of the early developing right brain, the biological substrate of the human unconscious and the site of the highest corticalsubcortical regulatory centers. This interpersonal neurobiological model explicates the mechanisms by which attachment trauma negatively impacts the developmental trajectory of the right brain/mind/body system over the course of the lifespan. Also discussed is the etiology of pathological dissociation, the bottom-line defense of all early-forming severe developmental psychopathologies. Pierre Janet (1889) defined pathological dissociation as a phobia of memories, expressed as excessive or inappropriate physical responses to thought or memories of ‘old traumas’. It is now clear that these ‘old traumas’ specifically refer not just to childhood traumas but also to relational trauma occurring in infancy, the critical period of attachment. This theoretical perspective has direct clinical applications for models of both treatment and prevention.
