Rehearsals, Confession, and Confabulations: Psychotherapy and The Synaptic Self

Abstract

Several novel therapeutic approaches are explored around a brain-based premise. The conceptual platform is Baltes’s holistic “Bio-cultural Co-constructivism,” which situates humans in their environmental and biological settings. Rehearsal and habit are at the core of this approach, which leads to gene-expression and obviates the need for the construct psyche. Clinics are viewed as confessionals for purging pathogenic secrets, and therapists are regarded as spin doctors, complicit with their clients in confabulating virtual realities in which they can lead happier lives. Such therapies promote dendritic and synaptic change, which loop back into adaptive behavior.