The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

"This book has been a disappointment. I admit i am only up to page 192 but am having to push myself to continue to read it. The references to psychotherapy are few and far between and it often drifts to being a text of how the brain works, with long and detailed reference to hosts of chemicals and brain regions etc. Whilst an understanding of these is helpful they are not embedded in a context that makes them memeorable or easily understandable and therefore, for me, have been largely meaningless. References to case studies tend to be those of patients with brain injuries rather than run-of-the-mill therapy clients. If you're looking for a more accessible book to understand how the brain is shaped by interaction with a meaningful other, go for 'Why Love Matters' by Sue Gerhardt. "
~ Written on 2008-11-08

"What this book does - splendidly - is nothing new. By groundingpsychotherapy in the ins and outs of the brain it does both disciplines afavor. Yet, many scholars disparage any attempt to map psychotherapeuticinsights into hard wired neurological facts.
The brain (and, by implication, the mind) have been compared to the latesttechnological innovation in every generation. The computer metaphor is nowin vogue. Computer hardware metaphors were replaced by software metaphorsand, lately, by (neuronal) network metaphors.
Metaphors are not confined to the philosophy of neurology. Architects andmathematicians, for instance, have lately come up with the structuralconcept of "tensegrity" to explain the phenomenon of life. The tendency ofhumans to see patterns and structures everywhere (even where there arenone) is well documented and probably has its survival value.
Another trend is to discount these metaphors as erroneous, irrelevant,deceptive, and misleading. Understanding the mind is a recursive business,rife with self-reference. The entities or processes to which the brain iscompared are also "brain-children", the results of "brain-storming",conceived by "minds". What is a computer, a software application, acommunications network if not a (material) representation of cerebralevents?
A necessary and sufficient connection surely exists between man-madethings, tangible and intangible, and human minds. Even a gas pump has a"mind-correlate". It is also conceivable that representations of the"non-human" parts of the Universe exist in our minds, whether a-priori(not deriving from experience) or a-posteriori (dependent uponexperience). This "correlation", "emulation", "simulation","representation" (in short : close connection) between the "excretions","output", "spin-offs", "products" of the human mind and the human minditself - is a key to understanding it. Sam Vaknin, author of "MalignantSelf Love - Narcissism Revisited"."
~ Written on 2004-04-28