ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to show how the archetypal and developmental analytic traditions can be correlated theoretically through an examination of the recent literature on the implications of early intersubjective exchanges, especially those between the infant and its mother, and the neural and biochemical consequences of such exchanges. Traditionally, Jungian and psychoanalytic approaches to thinking about the self have been broadly conceived according to two separate, overarching perspectives. Allan Schore demonstrates that "these experiences trigger specific psychobiological patterns of hormones and neurotransmitters, and the resultant biochemical alterations of brain biochemistry influence the experience-dependent final maturation of the orbitofrontal cortex". The integration of neurobiological and psychological perspectives is essential to achieving a deeper understanding of adult affective and behavioural dysfunction, understood as the result of early failures in interactive and therefore archetypal regulation. Thus the current neurobiological and depth psychological understanding of development are linked with each other.
