Love and Passion: with recent contributions from infant research, recognition theory, and neuroscience.
Infant studies demonstrate that the human capacity for intersubjetivity is present at birth. Neuroscience demonstrates that the prefrontal cortex actually organizes other parts of the brain and neurological systems according to the interpersonal experiences available and not available to the infant. Right brain to right brain affective communication can be achieved between infant and caregiver through the cultivation of complex processes of mutual affect attunement and regulation – thus giving rise to reciprocal experiences of mutual pleasure.
The human polyvegal nerves allow genetically-driven neuroception of safety and danger – of potential pleasure and pain – that can give rise to a developing sense of safety, security, and love. Recognition and attachment theories clarify how these and other primal human response systems can be cultivated toward mutual pleasuring in infancy and early childhood, pleasuring that is foundational to later experiences of reciprocal and mutual sexual pleasure accompanied by a sense of psychological attunement and union. Relational psychotherapy encourages – through studying affective transactions in the ongoing therapeutic relationship itself – the establishment, resumption, and/or expansion of reciprocal affect attunement processes that are essential to human sexual pleasure.
