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Full disclosure: I am not a neutral observer but rather a long standing proponent and contributor to Allan Schore's regulation theory. Indeed I believe that all schools of psychoanalysis must come to grips with the primacy of affect in mental life and the foundational role of the implicit unconscious in development, pathogenesis, and therapeutic action—basic tenets of Schore's regulation theory. Moreover, I believe that regulation theory provides the opportunity for a long overdue integration of the psychoanalytic schools of thought. With that off my chest, let me describe what this book has to offer.
It has been 30 years since the publication of Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Schore's (1994) seminal work. This is the latest of six books devoted to deepening and expanding basic ideas, developing new aspects of the theory, integrating it with adjacent fields, and keeping his readers updated on new findings in the neurosciences that support the two-person neurobiology (interpersonal neurobiology) that forms the basis of his work (Schore, 2003a, 2003b, 2012, 2019a, 2019b). For those readers not familiar with Schore's work, let me spend a moment summarizing some of his contributions and their implications for psychoanalysis.
Regulation theory comprises a complete clinical model including subtheories of body–mind, development, pathogenesis, and therapeutic action. It is an integration of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, attachment theory, traumatology, and affective neurobiology, with a profoundly developmental orientation. As noted, it posits the primacy of affect and argues that the regulation of affect is the core executive function of the organism necessary for all other systems to function optimally. It is a psychobiological theory that replaces drives with affect as the dynamic force in mental life, providing post-classical psychoanalytic models with a sorely needed, empirically supported, theory of embodiment and homeostatic motive. It has illuminated the