Self-regulation — treated throughout the depth-psychology corpus as synonymous with affect-regulation in its developmental and clinical dimensions — occupies a pivotal position at the intersection of neurobiology, attachment theory, and psychopathology. Allan Schore’s foundational 1994 work establishes the concept’s neurobiological substrate: the orbitofrontal cortex, particularly in the right hemisphere, serves as the hierarchical apex of a frontolimbic system whose capacity for autoregulating emotional states is forged through early dyadic caregiver interactions. The core of the self, on this account, resides in patterns of affect regulation that sustain continuity across state transitions. Daniel Siegel extends this framework into complexity theory, proposing that optimal self-regulation is integration — and that its failure manifests as the chaos or rigidity visible across the DSM diagnostic spectrum. Stephen Porges and Deb Dana, working through polyvagal theory, insist that self-regulation is properly built upon prior co-regulation: the autonomic nervous system learns to regulate itself only from a scaffold of interactive, socially engaged attunement with a regulated other. Gabor Maté and Tian Dayton press the clinical consequences: failures of early self-regulation underlie addiction, emotional dysregulation, and compulsive behavior. William Miller imports a cybernetic metaphor — the thermostat — to describe how discrepancy detection drives motivational change. Across these voices, a central tension persists between self-regulation as an intrapsychic achievement and as an irreducibly relational, co-constructed capacity.