What Psychotherapists Can Begin to Learn from Neuroscience: Seven Principles of a Brain-Based Psychotherapy.

Abstract

Advances in neuroscience provide guidance for the development of psychological conceptualizations of mental illness and treatment that go beyond a reductionistic biological etiology.The authors propose that these advances can be translated into practical clinical applications.Through the elaboration of 7 principles that can be helpful in using neuroscience to enhance clinical practice, this article describes areas of neuroscientific knowledge with particular relevance to psychotherapy.We know two kinds of things about what we call our psyche (or mental life): first, its bodily organ and scene of action, the brain (or nervous system) and, on the other hand, our acts of consciousness. . . .Everything that lies between is unknown to us, and the data do not include any direct relation between these two terminal points of our knowledge.