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Doris Silverman began this scientific meeting by speaking of her decision to present clinical case material to emphasize the significance of affect regulation and its role in the psychoanalytic process. She spoke briefly of her own growth as a clinician, traveling a path that started with classical Freudian analysis, which soon incorporated Bowlby's and Ainsworth's understanding of attachment theory and research. Currently she sees herself as a “relationist,” embracing the integrative attempts of contemporary theoreticians and clinicians who accentuate the dyadic nature of the analytic relationship.
Silverman continued by asserting that the concept of “attachment” deserves its own motivational status in psychoanalytic theory. In particular, she stressed the importance of affect regulation—nonverbal, unconscious, automatic process that occurs continually between the infant and its primary caregiver. Affect regulation serves as a homeostatic function that plays a central role in organizing psychic life. Silverman explained that the infant and caregiver are involved in a mutual signaling process, with the caregiver's responsiveness as a crucial element in the development of the infant's capacity to label and contain his/her own feelings, as well as to comprehend the emotional responses of another.
The signals and negotiations between caregiver and infant constitute a mutual regulating system. Gradually, this interactive feedback system becomes internalized by the infant, who then develops the capacity for self-regulation in which mental models/schemas/internal representations are formed. This system provides the growing child with a series of templates that are relied upon to organize and interpret inner, as well as interpersonal, experiences. Silverman offered examples of when this process can be “enhancing,” resulting in the child's capacity to modulate his/her own labile states, thus providing a desired sense of mastery and control. She then explained how mutual regul