ABSTRACT
“Heightened affective moments” of the treatment afford opportunities for right brain interactive affect regulation, the core of the attachment process. At the most fundamental level, the right brain attachment mechanism is expressed as interactive regulation of affective–autonomic arousal, and thereby the interpersonal regulation of biological synchronicity between and within organisms. In accord with a relational model of psychotherapy, right brain processes that are reciprocally activated on both sides of the therapeutic alliance lie at the core of the psychotherapeutic change process. Regulation theory’s relational perspective allows for a deeper understanding of the critical intersubjective brain/mind/body mechanisms that operate at implicit levels of the therapeutic alliance, beneath the exchanges of language and explicit cognitions. The growth-facilitating relational environment of a deeper therapeutic exploration of the relational–emotional unconscious mind can induce plasticity in both the cortical and subcortical systems of the patient’s right brain.
