Bringing Neuroscience to the Clinical Setting

by Linda Chapman, MA, ATR-BC

Allan Schore, Ph.D., the premiere neuroscientist in the frontiers of our knowledge about brain development, attachment theory, and their relationship to psychotherapy, is now moving rapidly ahead with the application of this material in the clinical setting. He recently received a standing ovation at the American Psychological Association for his keynote address: The Paradigm Shift: The Right Brain and the Relational Unconscious.

The paradigm shift, occurring across all sciences, is the shift from a conscious, explicit, rational left brain model of therapy to the non-verbal, bodily based emotional processing of the right brain (Schore, 2008). Within this paradigm, the expert therapist does not create insight via interpretations or interventions, the expert therapist processes and regulates the patient’s unconscious bodily based affective state. Just as the infant depends on the mother’s psychobiological attunement with infant’s internal states of arousal, the therapist’s focus is on the commonality of the unconscious affect dysregulating mechanisms in the stressed, insecure infant and the symptomatic patient.

Just as the left brain communicates to other left brains via conscious linguistic behavior, the right brain nonverbally communicates its unconscious states to other right brains tuned to receive the communications (Schore, unpublished paper). This takes place in an intersubjective field, a space for client and therapist to exist in a mutually co-regulated state. The patient communicates to therapist via multiple, subsymbolic channels. Images are key referents connecting the subsymbolic, nonverbal affective cues, as are the tone, syntax, rhythm and prosody of speech, and the posture, gesture and tone of the body. All transfer to one another via the right hemisphere (RH), in a two person therapy, and a two-person biology (Schore, unpublished paper).

In my clinical work with violent teens with complex, developmental trauma, the application of this model to the clinical setting is demonstrating profoundly positive results. The emerging images sometimes surprise me, yet prove to be extremely valuable in the creation of co-regulated states. The art is such an integral part of the experience as the teens work in the preferred metaphorical language of the RH.

Tip: Sit to the left of your client when dialoguing about the art and you will be speaking directly into their RH!

Reference:
Schore, A. (2008). Paradigm shift: The right brain and the relational unconscious. Ppsychologist-Psychoanalyst, Summer 2008, p. 20-26.

© Copyright 2009-2011 Linda Chapman.