The Psychotherapist's Essential Guide to the Brain

by Matthew Dahlitz, Geoff Hall (Editor)

The Neuropsychotherapist's Essential Guide to the Brain is a full colour illustrated guide for psychotherapists describing the most relevant brain science for today's mental health professionals.

151 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 16, 2017

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated and filled with cutting edge understanding of the interface of brain, body, mind, mental illness and psychotherapy, I can highly recommend this book.
I feel I am pretty well versed in neurobiology and yet this book had much to teach me, from the "default mode" in the brain to the complexities of approach and avoidance and the circuits at play in depression and OCD, I feel I have deepened my understandings of the neurological underpinnings of mental illness and how to engage these in psychotherapy. For the most part this book still remains the kind of reading that only "brain geeks" can truly love, that being said, brain amateurs who strive to become brain geeks will find the beautiful illustrations and clear explanations very useful guides on their path.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this disappointing and lacking. Though there was helpful information, it felt like I was reading a high school paper and not a professionally written book. The illustrations were ofttimes distracting and random, taking away from want was already minimal content. As a student in a clinical mental health counseling program, I got this book to get a better idea of neurobiology and its relevancy to mental health and it failed to give me any sort of further information. It almost was like a Wikipedia article and at some points, some of the science presentation seemed like the author wasn't familiar with it so it poorly written. There were several parts in the first few chapters that I found myself getting more confused from what I already learned in other reading. Overall, this is just okay but I would not recommend it.

[Michael Kulyk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unlike a lot of other books in this genre re neuroscience and psychotherapy this book is very well illustrated. My main misgiving is with the whole approach which is essentially deterministic and reductionist. The author drowns the reader with facts rather than providing proper explanations, the end result at least for me was eye glazing confusion having to constantly reread to remember all the facts thrown at me. To make matters worse the author is in the habit of bringing in terminology and abbreviations without properly introducing them.
My impression is that this is a book for those psychotherapists who couldn't make it to medical school and become psychiatrists. Striving for social status and the disavowal of envy are powerful motivators that such 'psychotherapists' mostly choose to ignore, something that doesn't show up on a CAT scan.
For those who wish to read an alternative to this book I recommend 'The Human Brain; Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Neuropsychiatry, Mind. Primer, Overview Introduction. 2nd edition' by R. Joseph Ph.D.. This is more comprehensive, detailed and fully explained than this book though it covers many of the same areas.
I have rarely come across a book that I have found to so tedious and loathsome as this one. The author claims that knowing the intricacies of brain activity of people suffering from conditions like chronic anxiety and PTSD will make psychotherapists more empathetic for their suffering. Perhaps if the author was actually able to properly explain the sort of vicious circles relating to the self reinforcing response between physiology and subvocal cognition that maintains these conditions that might be the case but unfortunately he doesn't, I doubt if the author even knows about these interactions. If this is the future of psychotherapy all I can say is that there's been a terrible deterioration.