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It's all about the right brain. Allan N. Schore, faculty member of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, aims to catapult the traditionally conservative field of psychoanalysis into radically new thinking from the field of neuroscience. Schore considers it established that a paradigm shift has occurred: Emotions are not regulated by cognitions; right-brain emotions “determine our experience of self more than thoughts do” (p. 221). The right brain's development regulates attunement to the emotions of others as well as the self's sense of security or anxiety. Western culture's emphasis on analytical thinking, devaluing intuition and play, compromises right-brain functions essential to survival (pp. 248-249). Neurobiology is destiny. The cognitive functioning of the left brain is a feature of the merely conscious mind. Schore deems the right brain's functioning equivalent to a neurological iteration of the unconscious mind.
Right-brain development begins during the third trimester of pregnancy and continues throughout the second year of life (when left-brain development is only just beginning). Everything hinges on the interaction between infant and caretaker (hereafter referred to as mother). The gaze between mother and child is left-eye coordinated (p. 62). The infant's right-brain functioning is activated by hearing the emotional quality of mother's voice, aka motherease, aka baby talk (p. 63). Coddling is left-sided (irrespective of handedness), unless mother is depressed or detached (pp. 64-65). Such crossover interactions are definitive for the first two years in shaping the child's right-brain emotional resonances for the rest of life. Mother need not be perfect in attuning to her child's emotions, for example, her infant's need for gaze, play, or rest, provided she is attuned to repairing inevitable disharmony. A mother's insisting on soothing, or refusing to soothe, will be equally problematic and, according to Schore, determines right-brain development, wh