Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains

Summary

In Why Therapy Works, Louis Cozolino explains the mechanisms of psychotherapeutic change from the bottom up, beginning with the brain, and how brains have evolved—especially how brains evolved to learn, unlearn, and relearn, which is at the basis of lasting psychological change.

Listeners will learn why therapists have to look beyond just words, diagnoses, and presenting problems to the inner histories of their clients in order to discover paths to positive change. The book also shows how our brains have evolved into social organs and how our interpersonal lives are a source of both pain and power. Listeners will explore with Cozolino how our brains are programmed to connect in intimate relationships and come to understand the debilitating effects of anxiety, stress, and trauma.

Finally, the book will lead to an understanding of the power of story and narratives for fostering self-regulation, neural integration, and positive change.

Always, the focus of the book is in understanding underlying therapeutic change, moving beyond the particular of specific forms of therapy to the commonalities of human evolution, biology, and experience.