Mutual Regulation and Unique Forms of Implicit Relational Knowing

In this chapter we will focus on the Mutual Regulation Model (MRM, Tronick, 1989). The sees infant and caretaker as components of a larger dyadic regulatory system, where each person - infant and adult - influences and is being influenced by the communications of the other, in a circular, moment-by-moment, continuous manner. Emerging out of this ongoing co-creative and messy process of mutual exchange of expressive actions, affects and relational intentions a relationship is co-created; that is the mutual regulatory process is the formative process for attachment and the form they take (Tronick, 2001, 2003). These co-creative processes lead to changes in the infant’s and child’s moods and state of knowing about themselves in relation to the worrld, and generates implicit relational knowing and implicit ways of being together (The Boston Change Process Study Group, 2002, 2005; Stern et al, 1998; Tronick, Als, Adamson, 1979; Tronick, 2002a). Here we will focus on the co-creative process, the process of mutual regulation, and recent research on the development of implicit relational knowing in infants and mother-infant dyads, and then draw some implications for psychopathology and therapy.