Cozolino sets out the biological case for talking cures, treating the brain as a social organ built and rebuilt through relationships. He argues that psychotherapy heals because the same processes that shaped the developing brain, attuned interaction, emotional regulation, and coherent narrative, remain available across the lifespan. The therapeutic relationship becomes the medium through which neural circuits reorganise: safe connection quiets fear networks, and the co-construction of a life story links affect, memory, and meaning that trauma had kept apart.
Written for clinicians who want a physiological account of what they already practise, the book connects familiar consulting-room moves to their neural correlates. Chapters run through attachment, the regulation of arousal, the integrative role of language, and the place of empathy in change. Cozolino published it in 2016 within Norton's Interpersonal Neurobiology series, and it reads as a bridge between affective neuroscience and daily clinical work rather than a laboratory report.
About the author
Louis Cozolino
Louis Cozolino is an American clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Education and Psychology in Los Angeles, where he has taught since 1986. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology from UCLA and a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard. His work connects neuroscience with psychotherapy, attachment and human relationships, and he is the author of The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy. Alongside teaching, he maintains a clinical and consulting practice in Los Angeles.
Details
- 2016
- W. W. Norton
- W. W. Norton
- 271
- 9780393709056