Tread softly: Counselling psychology and neuroscience

Abstract

Advances in the fields of neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience and behaviour genetics pose a significant philosophical and epistemological challenge to the models of mind and psychotherapeutic practice advocated by counselling psychology. Drawing on contemporary work within psychoanalysis, however, I argue that a marriage of neuroscientific and psychotherapeutic research is not only possible but necessary. This paper discusses current research in the fields of memory, mental state understanding and behavioural genetics and examines some of the inherent methodological and conceptual problems facing interdisciplinary research within counselling psychology. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about the ways in which counselling psychology may be well-placed to contribute to a psychotherapeutically-informed neuroscience.