Emotion in the System

The chapter begins with a focus on emotional experience as both given and made. It incorporates that which is immediate and brute (the given) with that which is constructed of the given through individual and social processes (the made). The importance of meeting those we seek to help emotionally and using emotional resonance as a guide throughout therapy is underlined and illustrated through case examples. Three contemporary theories of emotionality are reviewed: Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann’s system of self and interactive emotional regulation, Peter Fonagy and colleagues’ concept of mentalising, and Jessica Benjamin’s version of intersubjectivity.