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The Metamorphosis 93this process may be an important approach to clarifying the integration of the selfthrough regulating the personal orientation to the interpersonal context (Tucker,1989).In more recent years, neuropsychological models building on psychoanalyticconcepts have continued to examine possible roles of left and right hemispheresin personality organization. Schore (2003a, 2003b) has integrated an impressivebody of literature to examine neural mechanisms of emotional self-regulation,emphasizing a primary role of the right hemisphere not only in affective responsebut in the support of the attachment relation. Moller (2005) has integrated classicalpsychoanalytic formulations of interpersonal orientations, for example, towardor away from people (Horney, 1945) with modern theoretical studies of bonding,such as mediated by oxytocin, and the relevant psychological mechanisms, suchas the capacity to represent the mental states and intentions of others. The righthemisphere aim is toward social attachment, integrating emotional response withthe closeness of the affectionate relationship, and it may support the empathic basisof emotional resonance that makes this possible (Tucker et al., 2005). This motivationalaim becomes a defining feature for the domain of the self, representedby the right side of the brain. In contrast, the left hemisphere aim is toward autonomyand self-preservation. It is closely aligned with the primitive fight–flightresponse, and this motive aim is integral to even the more complex psychologicalstructures supported by left hemisphere cognition (Moller, 2005).Moller proposes that the analysis of human brain evolution must consider thesesocial motives as causative processes in the primitive hominid societies that supportedthe neoteny and protracted development of the human brain (Moller, 2005).Whereas the right hemisphere’s support of attachment and affiliation must havebeen the defining feature of the unusual support provided by hominid parenting,the left hemisphere’s maintenance of the individual’s autonomous motives appearsto have been the essential counterpoint in individuating from the attachmentcontext.Hemispheric Contributions to Object Relationsin the Adolescent BrainWith the discovery of the differing psychological capacities of the left and righthemispheres, it was perhaps inevitable that psychological theorists would attemptto relate this neuropsychological division to the psychological separation of mentalfunctions formulated within psychoanalytic theory. Although the theorizingon hemispheric specialization in personality has not been particularly influentialin today’s academic cognitive neuroscience, it does offer a scope of psychologicalanalysis that is suited to the models of self-organization in object relationstheory. If we apply this approach to neuropsychological theory to the challenges