Depotentiation of Symptom-Producing Implicit Memory in Coherence Therapy

The Active Inference Model of Coherence Therapy

Coherence Therapy is an empirically derived experiential psychotherapy based on Psychological Constructivism. Symptoms are viewed as necessary output from an implicit model of the world. The therapist curates experiences and directs attention toward discovering the model. Rendered explicit, the model is juxtaposed with contradictory knowledge driving memory re-consolidation with resolution of the symptom. The Bayesian Brain views perception and action as inferential processes. Prior beliefs are combined in a generative model to explain the hidden causes of sensations through a process of Active Inference. Prior beliefs that are poor fits to the real world are suboptimal. Suboptimal priors with optimal inference produce Bayes Optimal Pathology with behavioral symptoms. The Active Inference Model of Coherence Therapy posits that Coherence Therapy is a dyadic act of therapist guided Active Inference that renders the (probable) hidden causes of a client's behavior conscious. The therapist's sustained attention on the goal of inference helps to overcome memory control bias against retrieval of the affectively charged suboptimal prior. Serial experiences cue memory retrieval and re-instantiation of the physiological/affective state that necessitates production of the symptom in a particular context. As this process continues there is a break in modularity with assimilation into broader networks of experience. Typically, the symptom produced by optimal inference with the suboptimal prior is experienced as unnecessary/inappropriate when taken out of the particular context. The implicit construct has been re-represented and rendered consciously accessible, by a more complex but more accurate model in which the symptom is necessary in some contexts but not others. There is an experience of agency and control in symptom creation, accompanied by the spontaneous production of context appropriate behavior. The capacity for inference has been restored. The Active Inference Model of Coherence Therapy provides a framework for Coherence Therapy as a computational process which can serve as the basis for new therapeutic interventions and experimental designs integrating biological, cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors.

Minding the findings: Let's not miss the message of memory reconsolidation research for psychotherapy

That memory reconsolidation is the process underlying decisive, lasting therapeutic change has long been our proposal, and the recognition of its critical role by Lane et al. is a welcome development. However, in our view their account has significant errors due to neglect of research findings and neglect of previous work on the clinical application of those findings.

Developing through relationships: an embodied coactive systems framework

In recent decades, the developmental sciences have undergone a relational turn. Epigenetic (Gottlieb & Lickliter, 2007), embodied (Thompson, 2007), relational (Lerner & Overton, 2008) and systems (Kelso, 2003) approaches are transforming the ways in which we think about the nature and origins of psychological structures. At their most basic level, relational and systems approaches analyze the developmental origins of order and variability not in terms of sets of separable causal forces but instead in analyses of relations between causal systems. From this view, genes and environment, biology and culture, cognition and emotion, self and other, and so forth are inseparable as causal processes in the development of action and experience. Drawing on these principles, this paper contains an outline of an embodied coactive systems framework for understanding how individual psychological structures develop as a product of socially distributed coactions that occur among elements of the extended person-environment system. Based on these principles, a system for the Developmental Analysis of Joint Action is described. This system provides a set of conceptual and empirical tools for making precise assessments of dynamic structure of jointly constructed patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. By tracking developmental changes in joint action, the system allows researchers to track the origins of higher order psychological structures through particular sequences of coconstructive activity. The holistic analytic system is illustrated through microdevelopmental analyses of (1) the joint construction of shoe-tying skill between a 5-year-old boy and a caregiver, and (2) socioemotional organization developing representations of self in a young adult over the course of a single session of psychotherapy.