The insecure-avoidant infant is parasympathetically-biased,while the insecure anxious is sympathetically-biased (Schore, 1994), and thatANS-to-ANS communications continue in all later intimate relationships, includingthe patient-therapist relationship (Schore, 1994). Recent studies show that theANS controls visceral organs, effectors in the skin, and the cardiovascularsystem, and that these systems are not under voluntary direction, and thatsympathetic dominance is expressed in a tight engagement with the externalenvironment and high levels of energy mobilization, while parasympatheticdominance is manifest as disengagement from the external environment, and lowlevels of internal energy (Recordati, 2003). In line with currentintersubjective models, Tatkin, a leading expert on the clinical application ofrecent neurobiological knowledge of the autonomic nervous system, expandsrelational theory into a bodily-based, psychodynamic marital psychotherapy.
A psychobiological approach to couple therapy (Tatkin, 2004;Tatkin & Solomon, in preparation) focuses on early attachment as ablueprint that both acts and is acted upon by the autonomic nervous system(ANS) and neuroendocrine system in response to interpersonal stress. Thisreciprocal action between attachment organization and the ANS can beexperienced and observed via preparatory rising and falling of arousal statesand the conscious and unconscious activation of both smooth and striated musclesin the face and body as expressive efforts to move toward or away from a primaryfigure. Approach and avoidance mechanisms, as informed most fundamentally by anindividual’s internal working model, are “wired in” as experience in thesomatosensory- motor systems of the body; namely, the peripheral nervoussystem, right hemisphere, and frontolimbic areas of the brain (Schore, 2001a).The human attachment system, which includes needs for deep interpersonalconnection as well as for safety and security, engages with the human arousalsystem for purposes of both love and war.
