Neuroscience and Therapist Self-Disclosure: Deepening Right Brain to Right Brain Communication Between Therapist and Patient

Schore and others have written extensively about the importance of unconscious implicit right brain to right brain communication in (1) driving therapeutic change and (2) understanding and working with the patient’s autonomic nervous system (ANS). Porges, who has re-conceptualized the ANS as a system arranged hierarchically rather than organized around balance, has been extremely influential on clinicians interested in neuroscience. Schore’s and Porges’ theories are discussed in order to make the case that therapist self-disclosure is a powerful and useful technique entirely consistent with their work.     

Treating Trauma Through Three Interconnected Lenses: Body, Personality, and Intersubjective Field

The neuroscience of trauma in increasingly oriented to the importance of understanding right brain to right brain dynamics and helping the therapist to respond to implicit communication, which is discussed, as well as Porges’ polyvagal theory. The traumatized patient presents a variety of challenges to clinicians, including a dysregulated autonomic nervous system (ANS), compromised ability to self-soothe and diminished capacity for relatedness with others. Therefore, one effective approach to treating trauma (especially dissociation) includes conceptualizing and responding to our patients through three separate but interconnected lenses: (1) patient and therapist as human mammals—orientation to the ANS, (2) patient and therapist as personalities—orientation to the internal world and, (3) patient and therapist as inhabiting an intersubjective field together—orientation to shared, co-created body/psychological states. The capacity to be guided by countertransference is an especially valuable skill for therapists, as well as the ability to know when they are being experienced as helper or adversary by their patients. Different dynamics driving dissociation and different strategies for responding to the dissociating patient are discussed. Clinical examples are included.