Medscape: Commentary - Psychotherapy Is 'The' Biological Treatment

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
Posting for the insight it provides into psychotherapists thinking.
Neuroscience surprisingly teaches us that not only is psychotherapy purely biological, but it is the only real biological treatment. It addresses the brain in the way it actually develops, matures, and operates. It follows the principles of evolutionary adaptation. It is consonant with genetics. And it specifically heals the problematic adaptations of the brain in precisely the ways that they evolved in the first place. Psychotherapy deactivates maladaptive brain mappings and fosters new and constructive pathways. Let me explain.

The operations of the brain are purely biological. The brain maps our experiences and memories through the linking of trillions of neuronal connections. These interconnected webs create larger circuits that map all throughout the architecture of the cortex. This generates high-level symbolic neuronal maps that take form as images in our consciousness. The play of consciousness is the highest level of symbolic form. It is a living theater of "image-ination," a representational world that consists of a cast of characters who relate together by feeling as well as scenarios, plots, set designs, and landscape.
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https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/893720
 
Neuroscience surprisingly teaches us that not only is psychotherapy purely biological, but it is the only real biological treatment.
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Does anyone else find that opening sentence idiotic?

Downhill from there, as far as I can see.

Edit: Well, I guess I could say reading that article was biological. It irritated me, so it probably had a temporary biological effect in my brain. Fortunately I don't have a photographic memory, so the effect will soon be erased.
 
From a certain point of view, it is true, but the biology that can be theoretically influenced by psychotherapy is probably much more limited than what is typically claimed. Given the many wrong claims about psychotherapy supposedly having an effect on disease I think skepticism as default position is well justified.

Are there high quality clinical trials that clearly show that the "active ingredient" in psychotherapy leads to biological changes?
 
So I'm now psychology proof? As I no longer seem to have an image based "image-ination"* the author would seem to suggest so.

*one of a related set of cognitive functions that have recently disappeared and currently seem to be out for the count.

I suppose there has to be an upside ;)
 
adambeyoncelowe said:
It reads like bad science fiction.
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I can't decide if it's more like "Altered States" (1980), where other modes of consciousness actually can rearrange your molecules...

Altered-States-3.jpg


...or maybe it's more like a World of Pure Imagination.

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But I always defer to a Higher Authority....

Miracle.jpg


“To me the imagination is a place all by itself, a separate country. Now you’ve heard of the French nation and the British nation. Well, this is the Imagi-nation!" - Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
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