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consequences of early dyadic experiences (Balbernie, 2001; Siegel, 1999; Schore, 2003, 2010) in children with and without early traumatic histories. The key message from neuroscientific studies of brain development is that “human connections shape the neural connections from which the mind emerges” (Siegel 1999, p. 2). During the first three years of life, three basic cortico-limbic circuits for the self-regulation of affect are activated and shaped by interaction with caregivers, thus providing the basis for how future significant emotions will be experienced and handled. In this context, Schore (2003) also studied the neurobiological correlates of early onset of dissociation among infants who were observed to be matching the rhythmic structure of their mother’s dysregulated states of both hyperarousal and dissociative hypoarousal. The work of Allan Schore (2001) on the regulation of affects provided by the dyadic relationship is very close to the concept of containment. Although he never uses that specific word, he dedicates a lot of thought to the issue of projective identification as an unconscious communication between right hemispheres of both mother and child (or patient and analyst), thus describing a process whose internalization will eventually lead to the ability of emotional regulation, which seems to be the basis for containment. It is interesting to note the proximity between the concepts of containment and emotional regulation, as is expressed by Anne Alvarez (2016) “There is much interest nowadays in America in self-regulation, and in Britain in containment, but what are their components?”. This question reveals that terms such as self- regulation and containment show conceptual and clinical overlap that deserves fuller exploration and integration. The neurobiological concept of Default Mode Network (DMN) described by Raichle (2001) promoted several developments in neuroscience and allied disciplines. DMN, a network operating in spontaneous mentation which occurs around 50% of daily life, is a highly interconnected pathway linking the centers of social cognition and memory, involving self- other perspectives, daydreaming, sense of self, exploration of the future and others. It is interesting to note that it reaches its final form by the end of childhood, and is absent or altered in Alzheimer and autistic patients. Considering that such structures (DMN) encompass several experiences concerning the sense of self, one might wonder if it could be viewed as a material expression, in terms of brain networks, of what psychoanalysis describes as the function of containment (Fonseca, 2019). An attempt at integration of cognitive sciences and psychoanalytic clinical and metapsychological thought of various conceptual networks, including Freud and Contemporary Ego psychology, Bion and Post-Bionian thinking and other British and North American Object Relations theorists, as well as French tradition, comes from Serge Lecour and Marc-André Bouchard (1998). They propose a bi-dimensional view of mentalization that includes multiple levels of containment: descriptive levels of affect tolerance (disruptive impulsion/acting out and enactment, modulated impulsion/catharsis, externalization, appropriation and abstraction/reflective association) on the one hand, and distinct modes of representation channels of drive-affect expression (somatic and motoric action, imagery, word/verbalization) on another. This complex framework influences both the patient’s and the analyst’s capacity
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