Coherence Therapy and Research
Neurobiological research on memory reconsolidation has revealed the brain's only known process for actually unlocking and rewriting the neural encoding of emotional learnings, which are responsible for clinical symptoms of many kinds, behavioral, emotional, cognitive and somatic. The required process identified by neuroscientists for neurologically eliminating a specific underlying learning matches the process of Coherence Therapy in detail. Likewise, clinical observations of profound change in Coherence Therapy exactly match the characteristics of change observed by neuroscientists in laboratory studies of the "erasure" of emotional learnings by the reconsolidation process. These parallels, described more fully in the articles listed and linked just below, support the hypothesis that Coherence Therapy achieves profound change by inducing reconsolidation and neurologically eliminating problematic emotional learnings. This would be consistent also with the fact that in Coherence Therapy, symptoms are observed to cease with no use of counteractive methods aimed at building up preferred responses--the strategy of most psychotherapies in widespread use. For more information:
[Peer-reviewed journal article]
[Peer-reviewed journal article]
[Book chapter]
» "Depotentiation of Symptom-Producing Implicit Memory in Coherence Therapy"
[Peer-reviewed journal article]
» "Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Finding the Neural Key to Transformation"
[Psychotherapy Networker article]
» "The Brain's Rules for Change: Translating Cutting-Edge Neuroscience into Practice"
[Psychotherapy Networker article]
» "Reconsolidation Neuroscience and Coherence Therapy"
[Page on this website]
[FAQ page on this website]
Research on causation of behavior, emotion and cognition by unconscious, nonverbal, acquired knowledge has amassed extensive findings that afford much support for Coherence Therapy's model of symptom production. For a survey of this research and its implications, see:
» "Of Neurons and Knowings: Constructivism, Coherence Psychology and Their Neurodynamic Substrates"
[Peer-reviewed journal article]
Research on mechanisms and processes of therapeutic change provides substantial support for the advantages of Coherence Therapy's strategy of achieving symptom cessation by dispelling the specific, implicit knowledge responsible, relative to other strategies of change. For a survey of this research in relation to Coherence Therapy, see:
» "Competing Visions of the Implications of Neuroscience for Psychotherapy"
[Peer-reviewed journal article]
Research on the effects of experiential methods of psychotherapy has demonstrated the clinical value of essentially all of the component methods utilized within Coherence Therapy. For a survey of this research, see:
» Elliott, R. K., Greenberg, L.S. and Lietaer, G. (2004). Research on experiential psychotherapies.
In M. J. Lambert, Ed., Bergin and Garfield's Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change,
5th Edition (pp. 493-539). New York: Wiley.
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