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Representing the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), the two editors of this impressive and innovative volume deserve much credit. James Pollard states in the Foreword how this volume on “the engagement between psychotherapy and neuroscience” represents a major step forward for the advancement of psychotherapy and the assurance of the highest standards of professional training and practice (p. xi, emphasis added).
Readers will find much to savor here; although there is some heady reading, it is clearly stated, extremely valuable, and clarifies the many useful details of mind/brain integration. It seems to this author that the “engagement” has become a “marriage” of sorts, within which there appears to be a healthy willingness from both sides toward vastly improving their relationship over time. I recommend this book for its not glossing over obvious differences in approach, while acknowledging the profound impact of cognitive neuroscience research and psychotherapy (and psychoanalytic) research on “each other.”
Chapter 1, written by Allan Schore, sets the stage for what will follow by explicating what is now obvious: our current appreciation of the decisive role of the caretaker(s) early in life in the formation and further development of the infant's and child's immature nervous system. As Gedo (1999) has pointed out so well, one key is Schore's focus on the structuralization of the ventromesial frontal lobes (VMFL), a subject around which this book revolves as much as the earth around the sun.
[This structuralization] (particularly in the right hemisphere), with its connections to the limbic system … [provides] circuits that are essential for the development of emotions, and, consequently, of motivations; through the hypothalamic connections, they regulate the autonomic nervous system and thus play a decisive role in psychobiology. This subsystem of the brain [including especially the VMFL], through neuroendocrine mechanisms, activates the centers for pl