Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience to better understand emotion. We are hardwired to connect with one another, and we connect through our emotions. Our brains, bodies, and minds are inseparable from the emotions that animate them. Normal human development relies on the cultivation of relationships with others to form and nurture the self-regulatory circuits that enable emotion to enrich, rather than enslave, our lives. And just as emotionally traumatic events can tear apart the fabric of family and psyche, the emotions can become powerful catalysts for the transformations that are at the heart of the healing process. In this book, the latest addition to the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, leading neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, therapy researchers, and clinicians illuminate how to regulate emotion in a healthy way. A variety of emotions, both positive and negative, are examined in detail, drawing on both research and clinical observations. The role of emotion in bodily regulation, dyadic connection, marital communication, play, well-being, health, creativity, and social engagement is explored. The Healing Power of Emotion offers fresh, exciting, original, and groundbreaking work from the leading figures studying and working with emotion today. Contributors include: Jaak Panksepp, Stephen W. Porges, Colwyn Trevarthen, Ed Tronick, Allan N. Schore, Daniel J. Siegel, Diana Fosha, Pat Ogden, Marion F. Solomon, Susan Johnson, and Dan Hughes.

Born out of the excitement of a convergence of ideas and passions, this book provides a synthesis of the work of researchers, clinicians, and theoreticians who are leaders in the field of trauma, attachment, and psychotherapy. As we move into the third millennium, the field of mental health is in an exciting position to bring together diverse ideas from a range of disciplines that illuminate our understanding of human experience: neurobiology, developmental psychology, traumatology, and systems theory. The contributors emphasize the ways in which the social environment, including relationships of childhood, adulthood, and the treatment milieu change aspects of the structure of the brain and ultimately alter the mind.

Distinguished clinicians explain what lies at the heart of change in effective psychotherapy. A wide range of distinguished scientists and clinicians discuss the nature of change in the therapeutic process. Jaak Panksepp, Ian McGilchrist, Ruth Lanius, Francine Shapiro, and other luminaries offer readers a powerful journey through mindful awareness, neural integration, affective neuroscience, and therapeutic presence to reveal the transformational nature of therapy. Healing Moments in Psychotherapy dives deep into the art and science of healing from the perspective of a variety of clinical approaches and scientific viewpoints, including interpersonal neurobiology. Through the voices of a dozen clinicians and scientists presenting their combined experiences and wisdom, it serves as a window into the process of healing. Practical examples and empowering research data support the ways in which therapeutic relationships can help catalyze health and restore wellness within psychotherapy.

This book, a member of the Series in Affective Science, is a unique interdisciplinary sequence of articles on the cognitive neuroscience of emotion by some of the most well-known researchers in the area. It explores what is known about cognitive processes in emotion at the same time it reviews the processes and anatomical structures involved in emotion, determining whether there is something about emotion and its neural substrates that requires they be studied as a separate domain. Divided into four major focal points and presenting research that has been performed in the last decade, this book covers the process of emotion generation, the functions of amygdala, the conscious experience of emotion, and emotion regulation and dysregulation. Collectively, the chapters constitute a broad but selective survey of current knowledge about emotion and the brain, and they all address the close association between cognitive and emotional processes. By bringing together diverse strands of investigation with the aim of documenting current understanding of how emotion is instantiated in the brain, this book will be of use to scientists, researchers, and advanced students of psychology and neuroscience.

An exploration of how the unconscious is formed and functions by one of our most renowned experts on emotion and the brain. This book traces the evolution of the concept of the unconscious from an intangible, metapsychological abstraction to a psychoneurobiological function of a tangible brain. An integration of current findings in the neurobiological and developmental sciences offers a deeper understanding of the dynamic mechanisms of the unconscious. The relevance of this reformulation to clinical work is a central theme of Schore's other new book, Right Brain Psychotherapy.

A collection of groundbreaking research by a leading figure in neuroscience. This book compiles, for the first time, Stephen W. Porges’s decades of research. A leading expert in developmental psychophysiology and developmental behavioral neuroscience, Porges is the mind behind the groundbreaking Polyvagal Theory, which has startling implications for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and autism. Adopted by clinicians around the world, the Polyvagal Theory has provided exciting new insights into the way our autonomic nervous system unconsciously mediates social engagement, trust, and intimacy.

A groundbreaking examination of the transformational power of affect and a technique for harnessing it in the psychotherapeutic setting The first model of accelerated psychodynamic therapy to make the theoretical why as important as the formula for how, Fosha's original technique for catalyzing change mandates explicit empathy and radical engagement by the therapist to elicit and harness the patient's own healing affects. Its wide-open window on contemporary relational and attachment theory ushers in a safe, emotionally intense, experience-based pathway for processing previously unbearable feelings. This is a rich fusion of intellectual rigor, clinical passion, and practical moment-by-moment interventions.