Transprocessing: neurobiologic mechanisms of change during psychotherapy-a proposal based on a case report

This article proposes transprocessing (as in "transduction" and "processing") as a term to denote mechanisms by which the brain processes information in psychotherapy and develops solutions that have a lasting, curative effect. The case of a woman with a history of posttraumatic conversions, who recovered after long-term psychotherapy, is presented as the basis for a discussion on psychotherapeutic changes of the brain. Psychological healing and change, in general, is seen here as a result of a large variety of neurobiologic processes that reframe complex or multimodal memories. Through transprocessing, multimodal memories are deconstructed along the different axes of the brain tissue and restored through memory mechanisms at the synaptic, cellular level. Transprocessing requires a sustained interplay between the extended projections of the "language brain" and the repeated, alternating activation and deactivation of the midline structures associated with the self, to form pathways through long-term therapeutic experiences. We propose three separate stages of transprocessing by which new implicit and explicit memories of the therapeutic narrative are internalized into a first-person experience. Those stages are 1) evaluation, 2) acquisition, and 3) contextualization.