MY EXPLORATION OF THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF EMOTION and its relevance to the process of changing minds in therapy has been immeasurably enriched by my teachers, colleagues, and friends. I have been stimulated by the thinking of colleagues from the Neuroscience Research and Reading Groups that I lead at the Northern School of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy in Leeds and at the Society of Analytical Psychology in London. I am particularly indebted to Chris Driver, Alan and Sally Galbraith, Carolyn Hart, Ruth Lanius, Linda Neal, Anna Nowasielska-Carey, Ursa and Janko Mrevlje-Lozar, Susie Orbach, Joy Schaverien, Valerie Sinason, and Sandra Walline. I am especially grateful to Pramila Bennett and Christine Firth for their willingness to help with the preparation and checking of the text before submission for publication. I have very much valued the interest, advice, and warm encouragement provided by Deborah Malmud and her colleagues at W. W. Norton. Finally, this book would never have been written without the continued encouragement and stimulus toward creative thought provided by Allan Schore, to whom I am immensely grateful.
I have a passion for this subject that sustained me throughout the writing process and a wish to make complex concepts accessible to a wide range of colleagues working in the mental health field, so that they may more easily absorb them and apply them to therapy in their own setting. For simplicity I have tended to use the terms therapist and patient to explore the therapeutic relationship. I trust that readers will translate these terms into the words that most adequately describe their own working relationships. This book is, in a sense, a record of my own exploration of some specific aspects of the process of changing minds through therapy and my growing understanding of the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach to the process.
Over the years I have come to specialize in clinical work with patients who have experienced early relational trauma. Many of these patients explore the changes in their inner world in extremely creative ways. Clinical case studies run throughout the book, and some patients whom the reader encounters in the early chapters are met again in later ones. All the case studies included in this book are composites of material from more than one patient. I am fortunate to have patients who have produced pictures that illustrate the changes that have occurred in their psyches at a very deep level. Some of these pictures are included in the book to illustrate the process of change in attachment and in the sense of self. All biographical material is disguised in order to preserve confidentiality. I would like to thank all those who have allowed their material and artwork to be used. Their generosity has enabled me to create the composite characters that help us to consider the process of changing minds in therapy throughout the book.