The Implicit Realm in Couples Therapy: Improving Right Hemisphere Affect-Regulating Capabilities

Attachment theory, viewed through the lens of neurobiology, explains how infants learn, through unconscious, rapid, non-verbal 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 paper examines an implicit, emotion-focused approach to couples’ work that brings unconscious affect center stage.