Working Implicitly in Couples Therapy: Improving Right Hemisphere Affect-Regulating Capabilities

Abstract

Attachment theory, viewed through the lens of neurobiology, explains how infants learn, through unconscious, rapid, nonverbal interactions with caretaking adults, to successfully manage their own emotional energy. These neurological affect-regulating mechanisms formed in early childhood shape later-forming attachment relationships, including those of adult romantic dyads which depend, for intimacy and stability, on the same right-brain, nonverbal, modulating capacities. Psychoanalytic researchers have identified healing, implicit, unconscious psychobiological mechanisms, other than verbal insight, explanation, and interpretation, that can be learned remedially in couples therapy. This article examines an implicit, emotion-focused approach to couples work that brings unconscious affect center stage.

KEYWORDS:

• affective neuroscience
• affect regulation
• attachment
• couples therapy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank Allan Schore and Margaret Rossoff for their helpful comments.

Notes

An earlier version of the article was published in a 2010 edition of the Clinical Social Work Journal.

1. The case material presented here is a composite of several couples and disguised so as not to violate the confidentiality of any client.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francine Lapides

Francine Lapides, MFT, is a founding member of the Santa Cruz Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Society and writes and teaches in the area of attachment and psychoneurobiological theories and their applications to relational, psychodynamic psychotherapy. She has trained extensively with Daniel Siegel and is a member of Allan Schore’s Berkeley study group. She has taught workshops and conferences across the United States. She offers small, personal monthly study groups online and in her office in Felton, CA, for clinicians wishing to learn more about applying neuroscience findings to their practices. She has online courses at www.PsyBC.com and at https://www.psychsem.com.