John Wiley - Brain2Brain: enacting client change through the persuasive power of neuroscience

JOHN B. ARDEN

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Arden, John Boghosian, author.
Brain2Brain : enacting client change through the persuasive power of neuroscience / John Arden.
p. ; cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-75688-1 (pbk) ISBN 978-1-118-75667-6 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-118-75689-8 (epub)
I. Title. II. Title: Brain 2 brain. III. Title: Brain to brain. IV. Title: Brain two brain.
[DNLM: 1. Nervous System Physiological Phenomena. 2. Counseling;methods. 3. Mental Disorderspathology. 4. Neurosciencesmethods. 5. Psychotherapymethods. WL 102]
RC480.5
616.8914dc23

2014031893

A sea change is beginning to occur in the mental health system. An international movement to break down the boundaries among the different schools of psychotherapy to find common denominators is occurring. These common denominators are brain based. The new integrative model subsumes the relevant contributions of the past and discards the purely theory driven cul-de-sacs based only on the tight confines of a particular school.

During my last 40 years working as a mental health administrator, training director, and psychologist, I have seen many phases, fads, and theories burst on the scene only to fade away a few years later. Many of these phases and theories conflicted with one another. People seeking help from one therapist may hear a completely different perspective about their problem than they would from another well-meaning therapist from a different theoretical school.

The focus of this book is to provide you, the therapist, with suggestions on how to integrate all the domains of research, including neuroscience, in a down-to-earth manner to help clients understand and deal with depression and anxiety. The techniques that I will describe are supported by a broad body of research and consistent with what we know about how the brain works. Going beyond what has been called evidence-based practices (EBPs), these methods are ones shown by research to be most efficacious for helping people who suffer from various psychological problems. I explain which brain systems are either over- or underactivated when clients are anxious or depressed. The methods I describe to help clients with these problems bring together all areas of psychological research and neuroscience that are relevant to psychotherapy. I offer suggestions on how to help clients learn to activate areas of their brains that have been underactivated and how to quiet down those areas that have been overactivated, so that they can enjoy life without being plagued by anxiety and/or depression. By learning more about the brain, clients understand what they need to do to neutralize excessive anxiety or lift depression.

Consider this book a user manual for the brain. New cars and DVD players come with user manuals. Our brains do not. Clients can learn to use their brains more effectively. Today we know quite a bit about which brain networks are overactivated and which are underactivated with anxiety and depression. Thanks to brain imaging techniques developed in the last 20-30 years, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we can not only identify those neural firing patterns but also see how certain psychotherapeutic techniques can calm down overactivated areas while activating those areas that need to be activated. Essentially, we can teach our clients how to tune up their brains.

This book attempts to normalize psychological disorders and their resolution so that you can explain and make more tangible recommendations to your clients. We must leave behind those countertrends that pathologize normal human reactions to life stressors.

To gain an understanding of where we are going, it is important to use a bird's-eye perspective of where we have been. During the 20th century, as psychotherapy became a healthcare profession, the various schools of psychotherapy had little in common. This was because theorists of each school possessed very little understanding of how the brain worked. Some theorists even thought that brain activity was irrelevant. Freud and James did consider the brain important. However, Freud could only hypothesize about what the future might bring, saying We must recollect that all of our provisional ideas in psychology will presumably one day be based on an organic substructure (Freud, 1914). The father of American psychology, William James, speculated that The act of will activates neural circuits (James, 1890). Because they and others could not base their theories on the operation of the brain, a disparate range of theories emerged, from radical behaviorists to primal scream. We could refer to this era as the Cartesian Era, a brainless period with no common denominator.