ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists of various relational schools feel at home with affect regulation theory, for its description of what the 'relational brain' needs for growth and health validates what they have always believed if mostly on the strength of interpersonal intuition and clinical experience. Allan Schore's impassioned argument for 'right-brain psychotherapy' that the brain-science penny dropped for the author Patricia. Shame strikes when my presence has failed them and they can no longer feel our connection. These moments of misunderstanding or misattunement between us can quickly become disorienting spirals of shame. Neurobiological affect regulation theory supports my proposal that shame is fundamentally an interpersonal event, an experience of self-disintegration in relation to a dysregulating other. Their chronic shame makes more sense when it's understood to begin with this kind of misrecognition, which could also be called relational trauma. The right brain is the home of the capacities damaged by early relational trauma.
