VIDEO: Dr. Allan Schore on Our Culture, Parenting and Preventive Mental Health Care

Uncategorized By Allan Schore, Ph.D.

Watch an excerpt from PsychAlive’s interview with Dr. Allan Schore.

Dr. Allan Shore talks about the impact our culture has on the mother-infant bond that makes preventive mental health care difficult.

Dr. Allan Shore: And just for the record, you can have a whole culture who is going through such disorganization and such chaos and there are a number of cultures that we can easily think of right now in the world whereby it’s pretty clear that there are going be high levels of disorganized attachments and high levels of pathology and also high levels of physical disorders later down the line.

So how mental health (care) can also move now into preventive mental health (care) becomes really an important question, a larger question. The amount of secure attachments 20, 25 years ago in this country was 70%. They’re now down to 50% or 55%. There are broad trends here. And, just for the record, UNICEF did a study that came out last week, which showed that out of 22 countries, in terms of the well being of infants and children, the United States came out #21. And Britain came out #22.

The unique piece of that was that the United States came out dead last in the issue of children feeling safe in this country. It came out 22 out of 22. So there are broader things as a culture that we need to do also that are part of these matters here.

But the culture is impacting the mother/infant bond. I mean the way that the we treat our mothers and babies and the kind of care that we give them prenatally, medically, etc. and the kind of care that we give them postnatally, which has been severely cut back at this point in time is – ultimately will show. And then we’ve got this other matter also of children in this country going to day care at very, very early ages – 6 weeks as opposed to 40 weeks and 50 weeks in Europe.

About the Author

Allan Schore, Ph.D.

Dr. Allan Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. He is author of four seminal volumes,Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, and The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, as well as numerous articles and chapters. His Regulation Theory, grounded in developmental neuroscience and developmental psychoanalysis, focuses on the origin, psychopathogenesis, and psychotherapeutic treatment of the early forming subjective implicit self.

His contributions appear in multiple disciplines, including developmental neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, attachment theory, trauma studies, behavioral biology, clinical psychology, and clinical social work. His groundbreaking integration of neuroscience with attachment theory has lead to his description as "the American Bowlby," with emotional development as "the world’s leading authority on how our right hemisphere regulates emotion and processes our sense of self," and with psychoanalysis as "the world's leading expert in neuropsychoanalysis."

The American Psychoanalytic Association has described Dr. Schore as "a monumental figure in psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic studies."

Tags: culture, mental health, mother-child bond, video

One Comment

Margaret Klopfer September 23rd, 2020

Thank you for all your work and your effort to reach the public on the critical issue of attachment. We are so lucky to have you on this earth, now, more than ever!