‘Therapy in the Age of Neuroscience’
After reading a lot of books about neuroscience and attending talks and conferences on it, I started doing seminars for groups of counsellors and therapists in 2004. In 2011 I ran a comprehensive nine day course spread across the year for the first time. And then I wrote a book on the subject.
Therapy in the Age of Neuroscience was published in 2020 by Routledge. It sets out a comprehensive picture of relevant neuroscience around core themes, the principal ones being the relationship of brain and body and the differences between left and right hemispheres - themes that are interlinked. Chapter titles are:
Therapy meets neuroscience
The brain is a nervous system
One brain, two minds
Relationships and social engagement
Emotions, feelings and the felt sense
Stress, anxiety and depression
Trauma and dissociation
Mental health matters
The mind-body connection
Engaging the mind
Meaningful experiences
The book comes with endorsements from Stephen Porges (polyvagal theory) and Sue Gerhardt (author of Why Love Matters), and is dedicated to the memory of Eugene Gendlin, the originator of Focusing who died in 2017.
Some feedback from readers:
“absolutely superb”
“a delightfully readable guide”
“refreshingly direct and with a minimum of jargon”
“often witty, always interesting and occasionally poetic”
“more of a page-turner than any psych book in my recent memory”