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The Right Brain and the Origin of Human Nature
Free Virtual Event
Colleagues & Conversations @ Yellowbrick
The Right Brain and the Origin of Human Nature:
Working With Conscious and Unconscious Emotion in Psychotherapy
Presented by Allan Schore PhD
February 24, 2026 | 6pm-7:30pm CST
Free Virtual Event
1.5 CEU Credits offered through Trusted Provider Network
No Charge
Conference Description:
The capstone of three decades of work, Affect Regulation and the Origin of Human Nature details how the early developing right brain – the psychobiological locus of Freud’s unconscious mind – plays a central role in the origin of human nature, defined as the general characteristics and feelings attributed to human beings. Over the lifespan, at implicit levels beneath awareness, the early evolving right brain unconsciously generates the emotional capacity for both love and hate, ecstasy and agony, good and evil, forgiveness and revenge, creativity and destructiveness – all products of the deeper stratum of human nature.
In this PowerPoint lecture I offer recent brain laterality research indicating that rapid right brain emotional and relational implicit processes operate at unconscious levels not only in early attachment development but in psychotherapy. I present a neurobiologically informed clinical model for working with unconscious and conscious emotion in right brain psychotherapy, in which synchronized interactively regulated nonverbal emotional dynamics act as therapeutic change mechanisms that focus not on conscious verbal insight but on the formation of an unconscious right brain-to-right brain communicating bond implicitly embedded within the burgeoning therapeutic relationship.
Learning Objectives:
- The audience will learn how both a large body of recent neuroscience and clinical advances now highlights the importance of the unconscious right brain subjective self in intersubjectivity and attachment, not only in early development but across the lifespan.
- The lecture explains how the right temporpariental cortex in the posterior areas of the right brain is involved in the communication of emotion, while the right orbitofrontal cortex in the anterior area of the right brain is involved in the regulation of emotion.
- The participants will learn how hyperscanning technology that studies two brains in real time interaction with each other allows for a deeper understanding of the interpersonal neurobiology of the co-constructed therapeutic alliance.
- The audience will learn how the empathic therapist shifts from the left to right hemisphere to follow changes in the patient’s affects in order to interpersonally synchronize with and subliminally regulate the patient’s unconscious affective states, thereby facilitating therapeutic change.
Presenter
Allan Schore, Ph.D.
For 30 years I have been on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. In addition to numerous chapters and articles, I’ve authored nine seminal books that have been translated into 8 languages, as well as been past Editor of the prestigious Norton Series of Interpersonal Neurobiology, and a reviewer or on the editorial staff of over 50 journals. I’ve received numerous awards and honors for this work (see allanschore.com). In addition, I’ve lectured internationally for three decades, and have been in private psychotherapy practice for over 55 years.
The Right Brain and the Origin of Human Nature By Allan Schore
W.W. Norton & Co. 2025.
£34.00 (hb). 512 pp.
ISBN: 978-1324082958
The culmination of three decades of Allan Schore’s groundbreaking work, this book details how the right brain―the psychobiological locus of Freud’s unconscious mind―plays a fundamental role in the early origin of human nature (the general characteristics and feelings attributed to human beings). The early developing right brain not only grounds our bodily―based subjective experience of the world, but also allows us to make sense of it.
This volume offers interdisciplinary and clinical evidence indicating that during human infancy, right brain intersubjectivity (the emotional communication between unconscious minds) and attachment (the subliminal interactive regulation of emotion) underlie the essential foundation of the human personality. Beneath conscious awareness, the early evolving right brain implicitly generates the emotional capacity for both love and hate, ecstasy and agony, good and evil, forgiveness and revenge, creativity and destructiveness―all products of the deeper stratum of human nature.
Questions:
Call Tracy Ashworth 847-869-1500 ext. 207
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