Psychotherapy and neuroscience – a rediscovering dialogue

A dialogue of neuroscience and psychotherapy is a newly emerging, mutually inspiring topic that gets interest of both neuroscientists and psychotherapists. Neuroscience has a power to enrich psychotherapy with recent neurobiological findings concerning general and specific mechanism of the effect of psychotherapy. Psychoterapeutic and phenomenological approach prevents neuroscience from taking a reductionistic position. It points out to the uniqueness of a personal experience and an interpersonal encounter in a therapeutic session. This paper reviews neuroscientific findings relevant for therapeutic concepts. It stresses plasticity, representational and reconstructive ability as well as complexity and integrationability. Psychotherapy can significantly change functions and structure of the brain. Neuroscience has considerably influenced the conceptualization of conscious and unconscious processing, employment of cognitive functions and importance of early attachment experiences. These topics hold interesting prospects for the future research in psychotherapy using recent neuroimaging techniques and theoretical neuroscientific concepts.

Kristýna Drozdová, Psychiatric Hospital Havlíčkův Brod, Czech Republic e-mail: drozdova25@seznam.cz