Integrative processing: a biological foundation for psychotherapy

The biological base for psychodynamic psychotherapy has been increasingly recognized as archaic--unable to provide a conceptual framework within which to place the rapid progress in the basic neurosciences and the clinical successes of modern psychopharmacology. A gradual conceptual synthesis has been occurring between the study of the formal properties of general systems, including both animate and inanimate systems and evolutionary thinking, with special emphasis on the adaptive design of the human mind/brain. That synthesis points the way to an evolutionary-based complex adaptive systems model. Such a model would reflect our understanding of the brain as a modular system, with distributed memory and no central locus of executive control. A prominent design feature would be an automatically operating process coordinating and harmonizing various specialized brain modules--integrative processing. Pennebaker's research (Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, Guilford, 1997) on personal self-disclosure illustrates ways in which the concept of integrative processing can help our understanding of the brain's basic function in dealing with emotional issues. It also provides a useful way of conceptualizing the clinical effect of psychopharmacological interventions.