By Louis Cozolino - Some therapists bristle at the integration of neuroscience and psychotherapy, calling it irrelevant or reductionistic. But it's hard to grasp how the brain could be irrelevant to changing the mind. Knowing about neuroscience is invaluable for therapists, not because it offers specific new techniques or clinical theories, but because it provides a deeper understanding of the biological power of the "talking cure."

The aspects of our brains that evolved 50,000 years ago—which give us astonishing powers of thought, logic, imagination, empathy, and morality—also share skull space with the ancient brain equipment that we've inherited from our mammalian and reptilian forebears over the past several million years, including the neural circuitry involved in fear and anxiety. Some therapists bristle at the integration of neuroscience and psychotherapy, calling it irrelevant or reductionistic. But information about the brain and how it evolved helps us communicate with clients about their problems in an objective and non-shaming manner. It's hard to grasp how the brain could be irrelevant to changing the mind.

It’s commonly suggested that depression results from seeing reality too clearly. Repression, denial, and humor grease the social wheels and lead us to put a positive spin on the behavior of those around us. This may be why humans have so few networks dedicated to self-insight and so many ways of distorting reality in their favor.

When thinking about the general evolution of humans, we primarily compare ourselves to our chimp-like ancestors. But when it comes to the specific evolution of the human brain we must share skull space with the ancient brain equipment that we’ve inherited from our mammalian and reptilian forebears over the past several million years.

The human brain is an anachronistic menagerie that confronts the psychotherapist with the challenge of treating a human, a horse, and a crocodile, all attempting to inhabit the same body and often struggling for dominance simultaneously.