hey. yeah, the articles turned out to be longer than i had supposed! in his book he is quite clear when he is going to be talking about neurobiological processes and when he is going to be talking about psychodynamic / developmental psychology processes. he does this so that people can avoid the neurobiology and still follow things along. he doesn't do this so much in these articles so i found parts of them incomprehensible though there is the odd thing that resonates. i think he talks more about the psychodynamic / developmental psychology processes in the book. he doesn't talk about trauma in the book particularly, though. and he doesn't really talk about dissociation (or disorganised attachment) in the book either. a lot of the neurobiology is well over my head... i think i get the general gist of sympathetic / parasympathetic arousal and neural pathways between limbic and orbitofrontal areas i don't really get the gist of dopamine and serotonin pathways or the more finegrained anatomical detail etc.

i'm glad you got something out of it.

i've been rethinking the 'shame' interpretation on the basis of these articles... i'm not sure what i think right now...

i mentioned to one of my supervisors today that i was getting interested in modern psychodynamic theory and its relationship to cognitive psychology. he looked less than thrilled. lol. still... he looked less than thrilled when i suggested the broad topic i'm doing now ;-)

trouble is that this will have to go down on the 'one day' list as i have about 4 different things i'm working on now with associated deadlines...

a few worries i have with Schore:

- he is dealing with western people. i'm not sure how these findings relate to other cultures where people are raised more communally. e.g., maori culture where infants do not have attachment relationships to their mother. it might be the case that they develop attachment relationships to other people in the community... or it might be possible that more than one person can be attached to...

- if he mentions 'critical period' one more time i have an urge to SCREAM AT HIM. he says he talks about critical period because he MEANS critical period (in the sense that if you don't have the relevant input before the critical time then one simply can't process the relevant information) but then he says he doesn't really mean critical period, or he means critical period in some new special sense where input after the critical period (i.e., in therapy) can teach one to process the relevant information.

basically... he doesn't properly acknowledge neural plasticity until his section on treatment. i think that this is because he is torn between seeing insecure attachments as a major health problem (hence we should intervene early) and between seeing adults as benefiting from psychotherapy (hence neural plasticity makes a bit of a mockery of the notion of a critical period with respect to attachment relationships).

hrm.

in the book he says that ALL psychopathology is a problem with right hemisphere / affective functioning... that is a very bold claim.

on the upside... it is some neurobiological (and psychodynamic) support for my novel theory of delusions (where delusions are a problem with affective processing and hence they are not irrational beliefs (they are true expressions of emotional experience and then as attention becomes focused on the experience - like what can happen with intense pain - the appearance / reality distinction becomes lost).