2007/05/07 by Brian Toomey, Bruce Ecker · 5 citations
Neuroscience · Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Pain Management and Placebo Effect #Mental Health and Psychiatry #Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology #Constructivism (international relations) #Psychology #Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) #Phenomenology (philosophy) #Unconscious mind #Epistemology #Cognitive science #Cognitive psychology #Psychoanalysis #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1080/10720530701347860
openalex publication_date 2007/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This first of three articles creates a framework for bringing the phenomenology of psychotherapy into fruitful coordination with neuroscientific knowledge. We suggest that constructivism is a conceptual paradigm adequate to this task. An examination of the main features of psychological constructivism and of neural constructivism serves to demonstrate their strong convergence. Attention then turns to a particular implementation of psychological constructivism, the relatively recently developed psychotherapeutic system known as coherence therapy or coherence psychology. We provide an account of the extensive neuroscientific evidence supporting this system's model of clinical symptoms as being produced by coherent, unconscious knowledge structures held in implicit, subcortical memory. Suggestions for research that could test our analysis are the focus of our conclusion.