The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain

Louis Cozolino

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Praise for The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy:

"[F]ascinating… I would highly recommend this book."

—Canadian Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Review

"[D]raws important links between the brain's architecture and how it processes emotions.”

—Internet Bookwatch

"Louis Cozolino provides a synthesis of the interface between psychotherapy and neuroscience. He argues that the art of psychotherapy that we pracitce has a profound impact on neural circuitry. Psychotherapists are in the brain building business, restoring neural network integration and coordinating amongst various neural networks. . . Cozolino believes that psychotherapy is essentially an optimistic endeavor, that it is possible to resculpt the brain after critical periods for neural development have been missed. . . Don't expect The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy to read like a traditional neuropsychology text book. Cozolino synthesizes the current neuroscience research, by no means a simple task, and integrates it with psychotherapeutic theory and practice. . . After reading The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, I was struck that as psychotherapists we possess a powerful range of neuro-surgical tools that, like the tools of a neuro-surgeon, are capable of providing our clients with enormous relief and healing when used skillfully, and also capable of inflicting great harm, as paralyzing and damaging as any 'slip of the surgeon's scalpel'. Thank you Professor Cozolino for providing us with an elegant framework in such a beautifully written book. I hope your book will help us exercise greater care in the responsibility entrusted to us in our psychotherapeutic endeavors."

—Psychotherapy in Australia

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Overview – Table of Contents

For years, the brain has been viewed as a relatively static entity, determined by the interaction of genetic preprogramming and early childhood experience. In contrast to this view, recent theoretical perspectives and technological advances in brain imaging have revealed that the brain is an organ continually built and re-built by one's experiences. We are now beginning to learn that many forms of psychotherapy, developed in the absence of any scientific understanding of the brain, are supported by neuroscientific findings.

Louis Cozolino's The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy illustrates in a clearly written and accessible way how the brain's architecture is related to the problems, passions, and aspirations of human beings. As Cozolino so eloquently argues, all forms of psychotherapy-from psychoanalysis to behavioral interventions-are successful to the extent to which they enhance change in relevant neural circuits.

Beginning with an overview of the intersecting fields of neuroscience and psychotherapy, this book delves into the brain's inner workings, from basic neuronal building blocks to complex systems of memory, language, and the organization of experience. It continues by explaining the development and organization of the healthy brain and the unhealthy brain. Common problems such as anxiety, trauma, and codependency are discussed from a scientific and clinical perspective. Cozolino concludes by introducing the emerging paradigm of the psychotherapist-as-neuroscientist and presents some practical applications of neuroscience to psychotherapy. Throughout the book, the science behind the brain's workings is applied to day-to-day experience and clinical practice.

Written for psychotherapists and others interested in the relationship between brain and behavior, this book encourages us to consider the brain when attempting to understand human development, mental illness, and psychological health.

 

About the Author

Louis Cozolino, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University and a clinical psychologist in private practice. His e-mail address is brainchange@earthlink.net.

ISBN: 0-393-70367-3
September, 2002
Hardcover, 256 pages