The Mind Beyond our Immediate Awareness:
Freudian, Jungian, and Cognitive Models of the
Unconscious
Week 15
Group 4:
Kindra Akridge
Kimberly Villalva
Zhiheng Zhou
What’s wrong with the “soup
model?
• It is not accurate at determining the cause for
depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Brain
circuits are more accurate when researching this.
LeDoux's principals are supported.
Discuss LeDoux’ principles of brain
circuit function.
• Neural systems function
more or less
independently and
carry out a separate
function
• Neural systems work in
parallel
• Parallel processing may
also be coordinated by
modulators
Discuss LeDoux’ principles of brain
circuit function
• Convergence zones
• Neural processes that
normally work more or
less automatically can be
reversed.
• Emotional states
monopolize brain
resources
• Imperfection reflects in
implicit and explicit
aspects of the self do not
overlap completely.
17. Present Cozolino’s ideas about psychotherapy’s neural
underpinnings and how this connects with LeDoux’ thinking.
Cozolino: focuses on two specific criteria for exploring how research about
psychotherapeutic changes occurs: neural network growth and neural network
integration. He assumes that “any form of psychotherapy is successful to the
degree to which it enhances positive experiential change and underlying neural
network growth and integration.”
Six ways psychotherapy addresses neural systems. They are:
• 1. The establishment of a safe and trusting relationship.
• 2. Gaining new information and experiences across the domains of
cognition, emotion, sensation, and behaviour.
• 3. The simultaneous or alternating activation of neural networks that are
inadequately integrated or dissociated.
• 4. Moderate levels of stress or emotional arousal alternating with periods of
calm and safety.
• 5. The integration of conceptual knowledge with emotional and bodily
experience through narratives that are co-constructed with the therapist.
• 6. Developing a method of processing and organizing new experiences so
as to continue ongoing growth and integration outside of therapy.
17. Present Cozolino’s ideas about psychotherapy’s neural
underpinnings and how this connects with LeDoux’ thinking.
LeDoux’s principles for brain circuit communication all deal with neural
network change or alternation as well. They specifically describe synaptic
plasticity and how connections between neural systems are constantly being
changed by experience.
It is reasonable to assume that psychological growth and integration in
psychotherapy happen because communication between brain circuits has been
stimulated and that one or more of the processes described by LeDoux has
been activated .
Involving synchronous binding across brain regions, seems particularly
relevant to what happens in psychotherapy, since it could explain how
information may be integrated across the domains of cognition, emotion,
sensation, and behaviour.
Any good psychotherapy tries to accomplish and the fourth principle,
convergence zones, in particular, deals with how the human brain
accomplishes integration and self assembly.
18. Discuss theoretical changes and their significance
that have occurred between Freud’s time and modern
work discussed in the article.
•
The explanations for how the unconscious functions have changed.
•
Roger Schank’s idea of non conscious are akin to depth psychology, but it does not
ask those old ideas of why stories are told, how our mind uses them, and why they
are being remembered.
•
No more is the focus on a latent level of meaning but on how we find meaning by
using certain memory structures.
•
Stories are no longer conscious elaborations of experiences but the necessary
cognitive structures which are dynamically changing as we integrate new
experiences.
•
Innate expressions of for the symbols that form in treatment are not be viewed
validate. Recent clinical accounts confirm that the ability to symbolize is acquired.
19. The authors mention ways that we can take advantage of new
data in improving therapeutic approaches…
•
•
•
•
New data should allow more precise understanding of how the analyst’s memory
works and ways the analyst learns to use in. How the analyst structures the
encounter from the particular way of remembering and obtaining meaning is a
concern when it comes to training. The authors say we have neglected to search for
ways to establish what effective analysts have in common and how they develop
their abilities.
New data offers a further understanding of psychopathology and diagnosis, any
may make it possible to pin point a more precisely aspects of the patient’s
problems’. Data from neuroscience also seems to turn the table on the simplistic
and market-driven claims of metal disorders being caused by a chemical imbalance
in the brain.
New data allows us to review our understanding of early childhood condition.
Studies in attachment theory may have a broad consequences in how we view many
central issued about treatment.
New Data shed light on dreaming and dreams (the main source for understanding
the unconscious). There is still disagreement about the neurological function of
dreaming, but there is agreement that dreams may deal with how experiences are
recorded into long-tem memory. Along with dreaming has things in common with
other particular experiences such as altered stats, hypnotic states, and psychosis.
19. …Tell the class what they think.
They think the things their patients did or said in treatments reflect their
unconscious activity. However, they think their unconscious is not limited
to past experiences or underlying collective patterns of experiencing. What
they bring to treatment are the ways of experiencing themselves.
They also things that happen in a therapy hour will not be remember. We will
mostly remember what we can connect to in some previous memory
structure. They authors will absorb things about their patients that they may
not have a conscious account, especially when it involves our emotional
brain system.
Much of the unconscious cannot be made conscious. Recent emphasis on
synaptic plasticity and connection between neural systems constantly being
changed by experience has given us a closer appreciation of psychotherapy
as promoting learning.