Theodore Wasserman - Therapy and the Neural Network Model

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16167

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The authors of this series acknowledge that the current series and this particular volume are asking a lot of readers. It is human nature to hold on to what we believe, often discarding what is discrepant from our currently held beliefs and schema. We will ask you to put aside what you have learned in school, throughout your training and have held as clinical orthodoxy, and consider the possibility that there may be a better way to understand mental health and the disorders thereof. That is never easy or comfortable. In fact, it was neither easy nor comfortable for either of us.

The current volume is the culmination of many hours, days, and years of thought, discussion, and discourse followed by more thought, discussion, discourse, and the occasional outright argument. Interspersed were many hours of scanning, reading, incorporating, and readjusting ideas based upon the newly incorporated material. Along the way, we published several articles and two books that serve as the foundation of what we have written herein. We would like to thank the wonderful folks at Springer Publishing for their ongoing support throughout this journey. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the ongoing professional consultation from Len Koziol without whose constant feedback this work would never have begun or borne fruit.

This volume, and the series of which it is a part, represents a dynamic shift from what we knew to what we need to know as we open a scientific door made accessible through multiple, newer scientific knowledge fused with the fundamentals of clinical therapies. It represents the fusion of a number of disciplines including cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, and clinical psychology that have, until now, somehow managed to remain distinct and largely uninformed by each other. This is unfortunate. The current model, which we anticipate to be an evolving one, represents the fusion of multiple systems across multiple disciplines.

Rather than a static cause and effect paradigm, whether it be for mental health or mental processing, we are asking the reader to go from two-dimensional thinking to applying the process of multidimensional thinking: Thinking about a paradigm from multiple dimensions, rather than simply adopting a single approach, thereby allowing for greater intellectual processing without relying heavily upon a unidimensional framework. In the world of mental health, this means revisiting, challenging, and perhaps discarding our current fundamental beliefs regarding the etiology and treatment of mental illness.

As we said, this is no easy task and no easy ask. We think you will find the effort is worth it. The implications are tremendous for understanding mental processing, interpreting mental processing, and how to use this information to intervene in clinical settings. It has profoundly changed the way that we practice. Ultimately, it is you, the reader, who will decide if it does the same for you. We believe that it will, in doing so, open the door to a new scientific model of clinical psychology/neuropsychology.