A105 Psychotherapy and the Integration of Consciousness

Our increasingly refined understanding of the various brain processes underlying healthy self-regulation offers clinicians of all orientations a clearer map than ever of how to use their therapeutic tools. This course offers a highly practical exploration of how to work with both hemispheres of the brain and other aspects of neural integration to increase clients' capacity for relationship and mindfulness. Through case examples and in-depth discussions of personal experience, it focuses on how to work with here-and-now consciousness, emphasizing the role of internal states, imagery, body awareness, and spontaneous emotion. It also explores what neuroscience can teach us about the narrative and relational dimensions of consciousness and how to alter representations about the past and future from restrictive, cohesive patterns to more flexible and adaptive states of coherent functioning. This course is recommended for clinicians who already have a basic understanding of the principles of interpersonal neurobiology.

Meet The Instructor

Daniel Siegel has been one of the pioneers in incorporating the latest discoveries of brain science into everyday clinical work. He's shown that taking into account what we have learned about the deeply social nature of the brain is no less important than integrating the other systems that clients bring into therapy--family of origin, spouse and children, and cultural, ethnic, and social background. He is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, founding editor of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, and the author of The Developing Mind and Parenting from the Inside Out.

Course Contents

Session 1: "Night Vision" and Seeing in Four-Dimensional Space • Developing mindsight • Using our whole self in therapy • Coherent mind, integrated brain • Energy and information flow • Neural firing patterns • Neural plasticity • Altering synaptic connectivity • Emotion as integration

Session 2: How Relationships Can Change the Brain • The impact of experience on neural connectivity • Adaptations and self-regulatory functions • Contingent communication • Coherent core and autobiographical self • Authentic narratives of the other

Session 3: The Integration of Differentiated Components of a System Complexity theory • Activating differentiation • Promoting integration • Layers of neural integration • Temporal and interpersonal integration • Beyond the bodily defined self

Session 4: Creating Coherence • Cohesion as restrictive adaptive state • The mindful brain • Autonoesis across levels of awareness • Autobiographical memory and narrative in therapy

Session 5: The Impact of Therapeutic Experience on Mental Well-Being • How can therapy change the brain? • Neural plasticity • How interpersonal communication changes the brain • Adaptations to Experience Shape Synapse Formation • Uncoupling past adaptations

Session 6: Connection and Autonomy in Psychotherapy • Lessons from attachment research • The regulatory function of solitude • The oscillating process of connection and autonomy • The coherence of emerging minds

Learning Objectives

1. List seven forms of neural integration
2. Describe three applications of complexity theory in psychotherapy.
3. Describe how three specific therapeutic strategies balance integration and differentiation
4. Identify the basic principles of attachment theory.
5. Describe three findings in attachment research relevant to psychotherapy.
6. Define neural plasticity