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Daniel Hill makes clear in the preface that one of his main aims in writing this book is to integrate the fragmented field of models about human mental,
emotional and interpersonal development that have emerged in recent years. At present, each of these models offers a different perspective on neurobiological, developmental, relational and attachment issues, and Daniel Hill aims for nothing less than to bring them together into a coherent whole in affect regulation theory and its integration with mentalization theory. At the core of this is the view that affect regulation is the mechanism whereby biological, autonomic, neurological levels of arousal profoundly influence the extent and quality of the infant's attention to and interaction with his or her caregivers; and that the patterns of affect regulation laid down in infancy become persistent psychosocial and emotional patterns through that person's life.
Hill summarizes the evidence that shows that there is an optimal range of affective arousal, a ‘window of tolerance’, that underpins the capacity for flexible adaptive responses to our physical and social environment and also to our own bodily states. He gives a detailed description of the components of affect, its division into primary affect, which he argues is fundamental and the non-verbal representation of the state of the body, and categorical affects which are what we recognize as discrete emotions. Together these alert us to the meaning of both inner and outer stimuli, they tell us what matters and in what way; and through implicit forms of communication they tell us what matters to other people as well. This forms the basis of primary intersubjectivity, with the primary affect-regulating system being fundamental.
Although the book draws extensively on Allan Schore's model of affect regulation in both developmental and clinical contexts, Hill introduces some innovative perspectives of his own. For example, he argues that habitual patterns of arousal deter