Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychotherapy

Network Principles for a Unified Theory

Warren Tryon

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780124200715
• eBook ISBN: 9780124200982
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychotherapy provides a bionetwork theory unifying empirical evidence in cognitive neuroscience and psychopathology to explain how emotion, learning, and reinforcement affect personality and its extremes. The book uses the theory to explain research results in both disciplines and to predict future findings, as well as to suggest what the theory and evidence say about how we should be treating disorders for maximum effectiveness. While theoretical in nature, the book has practical applications, and takes a mathematical approach to proving its own theorems. The book is unapologetically physical in nature, describing everything we think and feel by way of physical mechanisms and reactions in the brain. This unique marrying of cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology provides an opportunity to better understand both.- Unifying theory for cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology- Describes the brain in physical terms via mechanistic processes- Systematically uses the theory to explain empirical evidence in both disciplines- Theory has practical applications for psychotherapy- Ancillary material may be found at: http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780124200715 including an additional chapter and supplements

Section 1

Theoretical Unification

Outline

Part One. The Problem

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Issues and Impediments to Theoretical Unification

Part Two. A Proposed Solution

Chapter 3. Core Network Principles

Chapter 4. Corollary Network Principles

Chapter 5. Emotion

Chapter 6. Simulating Psychological Phenomena and Disorders

Part Three. Evaluation: Criticisms & Rebuttals

Chapter 7. Evaluation, Criticisms, and Rebuttals

Part One

The Problem

Outline

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Issues and Impediments to Theoretical Unification

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract

This chapter reveals that psychology has a major explanatory problem. Psychologists do not agree on how to explain their findings. Unlike mature sciences that are organized around principles, psychology is organized around individuals who have proposed different ways to explain psychological and behavioral phenomena. Clinicians have an evidence–theory knowledge gap in that they have developed treatments that work based on their personal and professional lives but cannot explain how they work in principled scientific terms. Some psychologists see this as healthy diversity while others see it as corrosive disunity. Psychologists are as reluctant to use other people’s theories as they are to use their toothbrushes. Psychologists are also theory shy. Moreover, their preferred biopsychosocial model is shown to be a simple list of ingredients that carry no explanatory value. Box and arrow and statistical models impute causality but do not provide causal mechanism information. They can’t because there are no psychological mechanisms because there is no psychological substrate for them to operate on. Psychology can either ignore this anomaly or embrace reductionistic neuroscience and some form of emergent network theory. Reductionism provides but half of a complete explanation. Emergence provides the other explanatory half. The proposed Bio↔Psychology Network Theory combines emergence and reductionism.

Keywords

anomalies; disunification; emergence; explanation; explanatory complement; reductionism

Contents

Our Explanatory Problem 7

Preview 15

Preliminary Issues 17

Clinical Relevance 17

Case Formulation 18

Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology 19

Science Relevance 20

Reductionism vs. Emergence 21

Theoretical Disunification 21

Is Disunification Healthy or Corrosive? 21

Dissolution vs. Integration or Unification 22

Models and Mechanisms 25

Need for Explanation 27

Theoretical Issues 28

Three Explanatory Problems 28

Toothbrush Problem 28

Grand vs. Mini-Theories 33

No Mechanism Information 35

Three Defective Psychological Models 37

Ingredient Models 37

Box and Arrow Models 37

Statistical Models 37

Two Theoretical Anomalies 38

Functional Theories Lack Mechanism Information 38

No Psychological Substrate 41

Three Possible Resolutions 42

Recall Request for Mechanism Information 43

Deny Anomalies 43

Ignore Anomalies 44

What Constitutes Legitimate Mechanism Information? 45

Biochemical Pathways 45

Neural Cascades 45

Artificial Network Cascades 46

Integration with Neuroscience 47

Psychology Needs Neuroscience 49

Psychology Needs Some form of Network Theory 51

Resolving Anomalies 51

Learning and Memory 52

Unifying Personality Theory 53

Neuroscience Constraints 53

Informal Network Theories 54

Neural Network Coprocessors 56

Innateness 57

Conclusions 59

Emergence is the Explanatory Complement 59

Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Neuroscience 62

Mature Science 63

Psychology Departments Change their Names 64

Conclusions 66

Psychotherapy requires one to understand how cognition and affect interact to produce behavior. Psychological science is expected to inform clinical psychologists in this regard but unfortunately it has been of remarkably little help because it has a serious explanatory problem. This problem has prevented psychotherapy integration because it has foiled theoretical unification and precluded psychology from developing beyond its current preparadigmatic state into a mature science¹ (Kuhn, 1962, 1970, 1996, 2012).² Clinical psychologists have had to primarily rely on their personal and professional experience to develop the therapies that they use. Clinical science has mainly focused on testing the efficacy and effectiveness of these interventions.³ Psychological science has not kept pace and this has resulted in an evidence–theory explanatory gap. We cannot explain why our empirically supported treatments work, and I believe this has created resistance to their widespread adoption.

This book is about psychotherapy integration through theoretical unification. I do this using a slightly expanded version of the hybrid cognitive neuroscience⁴ Bio↔Psychology Network Theory introduced by Tryon (2012). It also provides a way to practice psychology as a mature science. Chapters 3–7 aim to close our explanatory gap as much as is presently possible using connectionist network and neuroscience mechanisms along with multivariate statistics. The four core and eight corollary network principles developed in these chapters provide a way to theoretically unify psychological science. They also enable psychology to be practiced as a mature science. Chapters 8–12 use these principles to provide psychotherapy integration through a Hegelian synthesis of the following Big Five clinical orientations:⁵ (a) behavioral (applied behavior analysis); (b) cognitive; (c) cognitive-behavioral; (d) psychodynamic (emotion-focused therapies); and (e) pharmacologic.

The proposed Bio↔Psychology Network Theory is not a new theory in the ordinary sense of needing to be tested to see if it can be empirically supported. Only its organization in terms of core and corollary network principles is new. Its content consists of the unanticipated, unarticulated, and unacknowledged implications of well-replicated psychological phenomena that can be explained by accepted neuroscience and connectionist mechanisms plus multivariate statistics.

Our Explanatory Problem

Mature sciences explain well-replicated facts and phenomena on the basis of accepted principles and/or laws, using a common vocabulary. Immature sciences provide interpretations by individuals. Teo (2012) revealed this explanatory problem when he commented upon a psychological explanation by a prominent psychologist. ‘Lilienfeld (2012) could not rely on general laws or even statistical facts to provide a scientific explanation for this question. What is evident from all we know from the philosophy of science is that Lilienfeld offered us an interpretation’ (p. 807, italics in the original). Psychology presently offers interpretations rather than explanations because, with a few exceptions, it lacks general principles upon which to base its explanations. If you want a psychological explanation, just ask a psychologist. Some interpretations will make more sense than others. Some explanations will be better grounded in research than others. But in the end, one is faced with choosing among interpretations by individuals because no principled explanation is available. This means that the public has every right to view psychology as a secondary science as Lilienfeld (2012) revealed. Take a minute to reflect and ponder the devastating implications of this statement for a discipline that considers itself to be a science.

Psychologists tend to form groups based on their affinity for particular interpretations. These groups are frequently referred to by the most prominent psychologist who either originated or best publicized that particular interpretation. Freud and Skinner are two good examples. Individual psychologists who prefer similar, but not necessarily identical, interpretations of events associate with one another to form professional organizations whose main purpose is to advocate for their particular explanatory approach. These groups continue to divide psychologists into opposing schools and camps whose competitions with one another impede the development of theoretical unification and preclude psychology from becoming a mature science. Adherents to each form of interpretation generate their own vocabulary, methods, and findings. They avoid replicating the work of other investigators to appear original. Students of psychology must choose to align themselves with one or another of these schools because there is no overarching principle-based form of psychology to identify with.

Groups of psychologists who provide similar interpretations tend to cluster together and produce larger professional associations such as the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Association for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, and the American Psychoanalytic Association, among others. These groups are mainly concerned with expanding their membership through ‘education’ and controlling discourse through journal editorships, grant review panels, and advisory boards. Put bluntly, these groups seem more concerned with perpetuating their particular orientation than advancing psychology as a science.

Mischel (2009) described the reluctance of psychologists to use the work of others as our ‘toothbrush problem’: ‘Psychologists treat other peoples’ theories like toothbrushes – no self respecting person wants to use anyone else’s’ (p. 3). Kruglanski (2013) described our reluctance to move beyond midlevel theories to more comprehensive explanations as our ‘theory shyness’ (p. 871, emphasis added). Gigerenzer (2009) noted that ‘much of the theoretical landscape in psychology resembles a patchwork of small territories’ (p. 22). Gigerenzer (2010) remarked that ‘As a consequence, in some parts of psychology, theories have become replaced by surrogates, such as circular restatements of the phenomenon, one-word explanations, and lists of general dichotomies’ (p. 733). McNally (1992) viewed this theoretical diversity as a sign of scientific health, while Staats (1983) considered it to be corrosive, and Spence (19...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Preface
• How to Use
• Section 1. Theoretical Unification
• Section 2. Psychotherapy Integration
• References
• Index