An Introduction to the Work of Allan Schore by Alison Ball
This paper was a talk given by Alison in Melbourne in March 2000 to an A.A.S.P Professional Development Meeting. This was based on Alison’s first reading of Allan Schore’s 1994 book titled “Affect Regulation and the Origins of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development.” Though in the previous couple of years Timothea Goddard and Marianne Kennedy had introduced the ideas of Schore to the A.A.S.P community, Alison was herself struggling to understand this momentous work. She had also attended a seminar in Melbourne late in 1999 at which Allan expounded on his theories. Only about 30 people were present as his ideas were very new at the time. He had been brought to Australia by Dr.Paul Valent and a group of Psychiatrists who had discovered his work and its value in working with trauma.
Introduction:
This paper attempts only to give the most minimal introduction to the work of Allan Schore. His work and his book are extremely complex and my understanding of his ideas is very limited. I can only hope to enthuse you and excite you enough to study it in detail yourself. The riches of the exploration are well worthwhile. Allan Schore is a Neuro-Psychologist. He is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine. At least as he comes over in this book, Schore seems not to be essentially a Psychotherapist or a Clinician. He is though, a consummate academic whose work in this field began with an eight year stint of rigorous search through and synthesis of different but related fields of knowledge.
Schore brings together and integrates fields of study as broad as neuro-endocrinology and neuro-chemistry at one end and psychoanalysis and infant psychiatry at the other. By doing so he has produced a dynamic theory of infant development and in particular, a theory of the development of the emotional brain and the emotional self. He demonstrates all that Freud had predicted when he said in his 1914 paper “On Narcissism” that we “must recollect that all our provisional ideas will presumably someday be based on an organic sub-structure”. (p.79) Freud digressed from that study himself but Schore validates and gives well documented evidence for many of the ideas which Wilhelm Reich and Gerda Boyesen heralded in their work and gives us the scientific rationale to underpin our understanding of the body/ mind/ brain/ emotional connection.
Key Concepts
There are several key concepts that are essential to Schore, some of which seem self- evident to us as Somatic Psychotherapists but are greatly enhanced when underpinned with the goldmine of evidence synthesised by Schore.
- The concept of the brain as a self-organizing system that occurs in relationship with another brain so that the very nature of development is interactive.
- The Limbic System of the brain is involved in the capacity to adapt to a rapidly changing emotional/ social environment and disorders in this system are probably involved in all psychiatric and related problems.
- Genetic inheritance encodes an unvarying sequence of development but this is only partially expressed at birth. It continues to be activated at very high rates during infancy and develops in discrete stages that are time linked.
- The developing brain is therefore experience sensitive and the processes above are significantly influenced by factors in the child’s first relationship- the one with the mother. The infant’s overt behaviour and its internal states are directly controlled by the mother/ (earliest carer).
- Affect is what is actually transacted with in the mother-infant dyad and this is essentially non-verbal.
- The concept of regulation of affect is essential to any thinking about emotional development, The infant is at first almost wholly dependent on the mother-carer to regulate its emotional states but a primary developmental task of the first 18 months or so is the movement toward self-regulation. There are specific brain structures that support self-regulatory functions.
Stages of Emotional Development
Schore’s work in this book passes fairly quickly over what happens in utero and the first two months of life as it relates to the development of the emotional brain. There is some frustration with this for us as Somatic Psychotherapists as he does say that in the first two months the tactile dimension predominates with olfactory and gustatory representations of the mother. He has interesting thoughts about the left sided cradling of babies.
Perhaps partly because considerable research has been done in the area, Schore’s major contributions are centred on how the emotional self develops from the age of two months. The critical interaction upon which he focuses attention is the gaze of the mother. The mother’s face is the primary source of visual stimulation. In this period which extends until about 9 to 12 months of age, the prime tasks for the mother (carer) in the interactive environment are (i) comforting the when negative emotions become overwhelming; (ii) heightening the positive emotions and (iii) allowing recovery time. The infant experiences the feeling staters of the mother or self-object in Kohut’s terms “as if they were his own”. That is “the output of the mother equals the input of the baby”.
The major development task for the emotional self of the infant at this time is to develop increasing tolerance for high arousal states of emotion. The positive emotions stressed by Schore are the continuums of interest/ excitement; contentment/ enjoyment and joy/ elation. The more the mother is attuned to the infant, maximises the positive and minimises the negative then the stronger the attachment. The mother attunes, heightens arousal then allows the baby to recover quietly. These interactions form the building blocks of empathy as the mother micro-regulates the baby’s emotional states. During this stage it is critical for emotional development that he infant be “the gleam in someone’s eye”.
The optimal mother of the first 9 months or so is primarily a nurturer in contrast to the optimal mother of the next phase who is primarily a socialiser. This next critical phase which Schore and others term the “Practising Phase” is brought in with the onset of upright locomotion and extends to about 18 months. The infant literally has a different view of the world and he/ she can move away from the mother and can begin to independently explore the world. Vision is the primary mode of “keeping an eye on mother” and mother’s facial expressions regulate the infant’s behaviour. “Sparkling eyed pleasure” in discovery and early mastery experiences are amplified under the watchful eye of an approving caregiver. The omnipotence and grandiosity of the narcissistic state is at its height.
Inevitably however, by about 15 to 16 months the nature of reunion exchanges with the mother alters. The infant is able to do things and find things that are not met by the mother with delight and joy. In this late practising phase the mirroring object is not so cooperative, (Schore p 202) The infant is shocked to find that he/ she is increasingly subject to instructions and directions and looks and voices of annoyance and disapproval. It is at this point that Schore asserts that the essential affect that mediates this process is shame. The infant experiences shame as he/ she finds his/ her behaviour or explorations are not met with pleasure. It is however, crucial for healthy emotional development that shame is not turned to humiliation, contempt or disgust. Mother (care giver) must be able to keep shaming experiences minimal and to be able to reassure the infant and repair the disruptions in the relationship. There is a growing interplay between attachment and shame. Over this time omnipotence is gradually contained and somewhat deflated. It is crucial for social/ emotional development to convey to the child that he is terribly important but no more important than others.
At about 18 months of age the infant moves into a different critical phase, titled by Schore as “Rapprochment”. The attachment ties to the mother are loosening “affective transactions with the mother become ambivalent and tinged with negative affect.” (Schore P. 238) The father becomes much more important for the child and he/she shifts from primary dyadic to triadic object relations. This co-incides with the onset o0f speech.
Conclusion
All these changes are correlated
by Schore in great detail and scholarship with changes in specific areas of the
brain and brain development. He gives evidence of chemical and hormonal changes
in the brain and for various systems within the brain coming on line or being
dominant at different stages. He shows that the right brain is dominant in the
first year or so and on this evidence he suggests that “the child first
imprints the developing right hemisphere to affective interchanges with the
mother, thereby constructing non-verbal working models.
This is followed in later infancy by the imprinting of his or her left
hemisphere to affective transactions with the father, thus initiating the
construction of verbal internal working models.” (Schore P. 238)
Finally I would like to finish with a couple fo thoughts of Schore that are as relevant for the therapist/ client dyad as they are for the mother/infant dyad. One is about the ever present issue of clients who fear being or do feel or do become overwhelmend by feelings, emotion or psychic pain. One of our major tasks as therapists is to find ways to enable them to cope with these feelings that they have been unable to self-regulate. The other point is about interactive repair in the relationship. Our clients need us to be well attuned to them but when we inevitably mis-attune we must help them to learn how to cope with that mis-attunement as coping with mis-attunement is the key to resilience in both infant and adults.