About This Interview
In the Legacy Interview recording, Allan looked back across his life’s work. In conversation with Jane O’Rourke, he reflected on the personal and clinical experiences that shaped him, how his ideas changed over time, and what he most wants therapists to understand now about affect, the body, the unconscious, implicit affect regulation and the right brain in the consulting room.
His special guest Clara Mucci brought the view from work with trauma, dissociation and borderline states, asking what changes when affect regulation is placed at the heart of treatment. Daniel Hill brought the everyday consulting room into view, reflecting on how affect regulation theory becomes something a working clinician can use.
The recorded conversation addresses these important clinical issues:
- How Allan built regulation theory by bringing neuroscience, attachment research, developmental studies and psychoanalysis into conversation
- The three revolutions he sees in the field, from the behavioural model to the cognitive model to the centrality of the emotions
- Why the early right brain, shaped in the first relationships, became central to his account of emotional development
- Why implicit affect regulation, rather than explicit, conscious regulation, became the centre of his work
- What right-brain-to-right-brain communication means in practice, and why so much of therapy happens below the level of words
- How his emphasis on implicit affective communication differs from more cognitive, representational or mentalisation-based accounts of therapeutic change
- Why he sees the unconscious as embodied, affective and grounded in right-brain process
- What Clara Mucci has learned about trauma, dissociation and borderline states by placing affect regulation at the centre of treatment
- How Dan Hill translates affect regulation theory into a clinical model that therapists across modalities can use
Special Guests
Clara Mucci
Clara Mucci, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and Professor of Dynamic Psychology at the University of Bergamo, Italy, where she directs the School of Specialization and Psychotherapy in Health Psychology.
Her work brings together psychoanalysis, attachment, trauma theory, affect regulation and the body, with a particular focus on trauma, dissociation and personality disorder. She has worked closely with Allan Schore for twenty years, having earlier studied with Otto Kernberg and Peter Fonagy, and has drawn directly on Allan’s affect regulation theory in her clinical writing. Her book Borderline Bodies: Affect Regulation Therapy for Personality Disorders, published in the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology with a foreword by Allan, places the body, affect and early relational trauma at the centre of treatment.
In the recorded conversation, Clara brought the view from work with some of the most difficult clinical presentations, showing what changes when affect regulation, the body and early relational trauma are placed at the centre of treatment.
Daniel Hill
Daniel Hill, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and educator in private practice in New York City. He is the author of Affect Regulation Theory: A Clinical Model (2015), published in the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology with a foreword by Allan Schore, and Affect, Consciousness and Self: The View from the Bottom of the Mind (2025).
He is on the faculties of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies and the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. For more than two decades, Dan has taught, written and led study groups on affect regulation.
His work helps clinicians use Allans’s regulation theory in practice, particularly in relation to attachment, shame, bodily states, implicit process, dissociation and right-brain communication. In the recorded conversation, Dan helped connect Allan’s theory to the clinical realities of the consulting room: how therapists read implicit affective communication, how they use their own bodily and emotional responses, and how regulation is built between patient and therapist.
About Allan Schore
Allan Schore, PhD, is a clinician-scientist and clinical psychologist on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He is past Editor of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, has lectured internationally and has received major honours from the American Psychological Association’s Divisions of Trauma Psychology and Psychoanalysis, as well as honorary membership of the American Psychoanalytic Association, which has described him as a monumental figure in psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic studies.
In 2017 Sir Richard Bowlby, son of John Bowlby, placed Allan alongside his father as a figure on whose work future generations of scientists would build.
His foundational book, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, was published in 1994 and became the foundation for much of his later work. His later books include Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, The Development of the Unconscious Mind, Right Brain Psychotherapy and The Right Brain and the Origin of Human Nature.
Perfect For
- Psychotherapists and psychoanalysts of all orientations interested in affect, attachment and the therapeutic relationship
- Clinicians working with relational trauma, dissociation and complex presentations
- Therapists working with personality disorder and borderline states
- Parent-infant and infant mental health clinicians
- Attachment-focused therapists, supervisors and trainers
- Clinical psychologists, counsellors and psychotherapists interested in the neurobiology of emotion
- Practitioners drawn to the implicit, nonverbal and body-based dimensions of therapy
- Trainees seeking a clearer sense of how affect regulation theory becomes clinical practice
- Anyone interested in the right brain, the unconscious and the science of emotional development
Interviewer
Allan Schore is in conversation with Jane O’Rourke.
Jane O’Rourke is a Child, Adolescent and Family Psychotherapist, broadcaster and Founder of MINDinMIND. Through the MINDinMIND Legacy Interview Series, she records the thinking, clinical wisdom and intellectual history of major figures in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, attachment, trauma and developmental science.
“It was an exceptionally well-managed interview with a giant of our field. Such an engaging, interesting and poignant interview: down to earth, richly educational with an impressive lightness of touch.”
Dr Thomas Harris, Clinical Psychologist & Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. Attendee of Otto Kernberg Legacy Interview
“I have really enjoyed this series and wish I had been given this kind of information when I started training. I feel they will continue to support me in my work.”
Neil, purchaser of Peter Blake Child Psychotherapy Training Series
“I would like to thank you for a beautiful interview and experience in honoring Jon Allen. I found your interview style warm, inviting, with real depth in knowing your honoree.”
Cythia Mulder, Psychoanalyst. Attendee of Jon Allen Legacy Interview
Continue with the Clinical Masterclass
The live four-hour Clinical Masterclass takes place on 17 September 2026. Book the Masterclass separately or choose the Allan Schore Legacy Series for immediate access to this Interview recording and a Masterclass ticket.