In 'The Anxious Generation', Jonathan Haidt examines the sudden decline in the mental health of adolescents starting in the early 2010s. He attributes this decline to the shift from a 'play-based childhood' to a 'phone-based childhood', highlighting mechanisms such as sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, and perfectionism that interfere with children’s social and neurological development. Haidt proposes four simple rules to address this issue: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more opportunities for independence, free play, and responsibility. The book offers a clear call to action for parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments to restore a more humane childhood and end the epidemic of mental illness among youth.
In this book, Damasio argues that emotions are essential to rational thinking and normal social behavior. He challenges René Descartes' mind-body dualism by presenting case studies, particularly the famous case of Phineas Gage, to demonstrate how brain damage can affect decision-making and personality. Damasio introduces the 'somatic marker hypothesis,' which posits that emotions guide behavior and decision-making, and that rationality requires emotional input. The book is divided into three parts, exploring case studies, explanations for the effects of brain injuries, and testing the somatic marker hypothesis[2][4][5].
Right Brain Psychotherapy by Allan Schore explores the adaptive functions of the emotional right brain and its role in psychotherapy. The book emphasizes the significance of right-brain-to-right-brain affective communication between therapist and client, highlighting how this interaction can foster enhanced emotional regulation and healing. Schore integrates neuroscientific research with clinical practice, demonstrating how the right brain dominates in psychotherapy through its facilitation of holistic relational affiliation and emotional processing. The book is essential for understanding one-person and two-person psychology relationships and offers a neurobiologically-informed model of psychodynamic psychotherapy and neuropsychoanalysis[1][3][5].
This book, first published in 1994, presents a biopsychosocial model of emotional development, emphasizing the role of the right brain in social, emotional, and survival functions from infancy through later stages of life. It integrates vast amounts of knowledge from neurobiology, developmental neurochemistry, behavioral neurology, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, and psychoanalysis to provide a detailed characterization of the early developing brain and its impact on human development. The work has been hailed as groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting, offering a scientifically testable and clinically relevant model of the human unconscious mind.
In this book, Allan Schore delves into the adaptive functions of the emotional right brain, describing affect and affect regulation within and between minds and brains. He reviews 30 years of discoveries in psychology and neuroscience to support his theoretical model of attachment, emphasizing the neurobiological substrate of self-regulation. The book addresses clinical and developmental questions related to vulnerability, trauma, sex differences, intimacy, and autism, highlighting the centrality of the right brain in the development of the self and loving relationships.
In this episode, my guest is Dr. Allan Schore, Ph.D., a faculty member in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, a longtime clinical psychotherapist, and a multi-book author. We discuss how early child-parent interactions shape brain circuitry, impacting our ability to form attachments, manage emotions, and navigate conflict and stress. We cover how the development of right-brain circuitry related to emotional processing and the unconscious mind regulates physiological responses, influencing adult friendships and romantic relationships. We also explore how improving your ability to listen to the emotional tone—rather than just the meaning—of words is a vital skill for fostering better relationships with yourself and others, and how it plays a role in reshaping brain circuitry.
Additionally, we explain how circuits in the right brain hemisphere drive creativity and intuition and discuss activities to access the unconscious mind. This episode delves into how the unconscious mind regulates emotions—both your own and others’—and shapes our sense of self. By the end, you’ll have new knowledge and tools to build more secure, meaningful, and impactful connections of all kinds: professional, romantic, familial, friendships, and beyond.
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Timestamps
00:00:00 Dr. Allan Schore
00:02:37 Sponsors: David & Eight Sleep
00:05:49 Thoughts & Unconscious Mind
00:07:36 Right vs Left Brain, Child Development, Attachment
00:13:19 Attachment Styles & Development, Emotions & Physiology
00:18:12 Intuition, Arousal, Emotional Regulation & Attachment
00:23:13 Psychobiological Attunement, Repair; Insecure & Anxious Attachment
00:28:33 Attachment Styles, Regulation Theory; Therapy
00:34:20 Sponsor: AG1
00:35:51 “Surrender,” Therapy, Patient Synchronization
00:39:46 Synchrony, Empathy, Therapy & Developing Autoregulation
00:45:07 Mother vs Father, Child Development; Single Caretakers
00:50:51 MDMA, Right Brain; Fetal Development
00:55:58 Sponsor: Function
00:57:46 Integrating Positive & Negative Emotions, Quiet vs Excited Love
01:03:33 Splitting, Borderline; Therapy & Emotions
01:09:24 Tool: Right Brain, Vulnerability & Repair
01:15:32 Right vs. Left Brain, Attention
01:19:26 Right Brain Synchronization, Eye Connection, Empathy
01:25:39 Music & Dogs, Resonance
01:30:58 Right Brain & Body; Empathic Connection, Body Language
01:36:47 Tool: Text Message, Communication, Relationships
01:42:18 Right Brain Dominance & Activities; Tool: Fostering the Right Brain
01:50:10 Defenses, Blind Spots
01:53:14 Creativity, Accessing the Right Brain, Insight
01:59:31 Paternal Leave, Parent-Child Relationships, Attachment
02:05:16 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
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