ABSTRACT

This important new book explores the nature of the divided brain and its relevance for contemporary psychotherapy. Citing the latest neuroscientific research, it shows how the relationship between the two hemispheres of the brain is central to our mental health, and examines both the practical and theoretical implications for therapy.

Disconnections, dissociations, and imbalances between our two hemispheres underlie many of our most prevalent forms of mental distress and disturbance. These include issues of addiction, autism, schizophrenia, depression, anorexia, relational trauma, borderline and personality disorders, psychopathy, anxiety, derealisation and devitalisation, and alexithymia. A contemporary understanding of the nature of the divided brain is therefore of importance in engaging with and treating these disturbances.

Featuring contributions from some of the key authors in the field, The Divided Therapist suggests that hemispheric integration lies at the heart of the therapeutic process itself, and that a better understanding of the precise mechanisms that underlie and enable this integration will help to transform the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century. The book will be essential reading for any therapeutic practitioner interested in how the architecture of the brain informs and effects their client’s issues and challenges.

chapter |69 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|15 pages

Ways of attending

How our divided brain constructs the world

chapter 3|21 pages

Social and emotional laterality

chapter 4|20 pages

Distinct but linked

Wellbeing and the multimodal mind

chapter 5|32 pages

Systems-centred group psychotherapy

Developing a group mind that supports right brain function and right–left–right hemispheric integration

chapter 6|21 pages

Going beyond sucking stones

Connection and emergent meaning in life and in therapy

chapter 7|26 pages

A right-brain dissociative model for right-brain disorders

Dissociation vs repression in borderline and other severe psychopathologies of early traumatic origin