| Series Foreword | p. ix |
| Foreword | p. xi |
| Preface | p. xv |
| Preface for the English Translation | p. xix |
| Acknowledgments | p. xxiii |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| The insights gained in the neurosciences are relevant for each of us | p. 1 |
| Brain, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology | p. 3 |
| Neuroscience and psychotherapy | p. 8 |
| What is meant by the term neuropsychotherapy? | p. 12 |
| How might neuropsychotherapy look in concrete clinical practice? | p. 14 |
| Structure of the book | p. 23 |
| What Psychotherapists Should Know About the Brain | p. 29 |
| The brain: The epitome of complexity | p. 29 |
| What exactly happens during the transmission of activation potentials between neurons? | p. 32 |
| The biochemical processes transpiring at the synapses and within neurons | p. 35 |
| Implications for psychotherapy | p. 40 |
| Is it reductionist to relate mental processes to their neural basis? | p. 42 |
| Neural activity transpires in patterns of activation and inhibition | p. 44 |
| How do neural activation patterns originate? | p. 48 |
| Neural activation patterns on the basis of cell hierarchies | p. 48 |
| Binding together of neural activation patterns via synchronization | p. 50 |
| The neural constitution of perceptual units | p. 52 |
| Neural circuits | p. 54 |
| The formation of new memory contents | p. 57 |
| Being captivated by music | p. 67 |
| Love-related feelings | p. 73 |
| Anxiety | p. 75 |
| The amygdala as the anxiety center | p. 75 |
| The conditioning of fear reactions | p. 79 |
| Anxiety as a feeling | p. 82 |
| Can anxiety be extinguished? | p. 86 |
| Conclusions for psychotherapy | p. 90 |
| Intentional action | p. 92 |
| The neural representation of goal hierarchies | p. 94 |
| The neural circuits for the implementation of actions | p. 99 |
| Consciousness from a neural perspective | p. 101 |
| Acts of will from a neural perspective | p. 104 |
| Explicit and implicit mental processes | p. 106 |
| Conclusions for psychotherapy | p. 108 |
| Covariation of neural and mental activity | p. 112 |
| Neural plasticity | p. 114 |
| Conclusions for psychotherapy | p. 121 |
| Neural Correlates of Mental Disorders | p. 125 |
| What can be said today about the neural correlates of mental disorders? | p. 125 |
| Neural correlates of depression | p. 132 |
| What is the role of the prefrontal cortex in depression? | p. 128 |
| The role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in depression | p. 132 |
| What about the hippocampus in depressed individuals? | p. 134 |
| What role does the amygdala play in depression? | p. 136 |
| Evaluation and conclusions for psychotherapy | p. 137 |
| Neural correlates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) | p. 141 |
| Neural correlates of generalized anxiety disorder | p. 148 |
| Neural correlates of panic disorder | p. 151 |
| Neural correlates of obsessive-compulsive disorder | p. 154 |
| What psychotherapeutic conclusions can be drawn from the neuroscientific research on mental disorders? | p. 159 |
| Need Fulfillment and Mental Health | p. 165 |
| Basic human needs | p. 165 |
| Consistency regulation as a basic principle of mental functioning | p. 168 |
| Basic needs, consistency regulation, motivational schemas, and incongruence | p. 169 |
| The attachment need | p. 174 |
| From attachment need to attachment styles | p. 174 |
| Neurobiology of the attachment need | p. 177 |
| Violations of the need for attachment and their consequences for mental health | p. 186 |
| How are insecure attachment styles formed? | p. 186 |
| What influence does a person's attachment style exert on his or her well-being in early and middle childhood? | p. 188 |
| What influence does a person's attachment style exert on the development of mental disorders in adulthood? | p. 191 |
| Conclusions for psychotherapy with the example of depression | p. 198 |
| The need for orientation and control | p. 211 |
| Control processes permeate all mental functioning | p. 211 |
| Controllable and uncontrollable incongruence | p. 216 |
| Consequences of controllable incongruence | p. 220 |
| Consequences of uncontrollable incongruence | p. 224 |
| The need for self-esteem enhancement and self-esteem protection | p. 230 |
| The need for self-esteem enhancement as a specifically human need | p. 230 |
| Is there really a general tendency to self-esteem enhancement and self-esteem protection? | p. 231 |
| Self-esteem enhancement and mental health | p. 237 |
| The need for pleasure maximization and distress avoidance | p. 240 |
| The good-bad evaluation: A continuously active monitor of mental activity | p. 240 |
| Functional relations between good-bad evaluations and approach-avoidance | p. 245 |
| Approach and avoidance as two independent motivational systems | p. 248 |
| The development of motivational goals | p. 252 |
| The functional significance of approach and avoidance goals | p. 257 |
| Neural mechanisms of approach and avoidance learning | p. 268 |
| Beyond the pleasure principle | p. 280 |
| Consistency and consistency regulation | p. 283 |
| Forms of inconsistency in mental functioning | p. 283 |
| Neural mechanisms for ensuring consistency continuity | p. 290 |
| Inconsistency reduction as the engine of mental development | p. 297 |
| Inconsistency and mental health | p. 304 |
| Continuous dissonance undermines physical health | p. 305 |
| Negative consequences of motivational inconsistency | p. 309 |
| Incongruence and mental health | p. 317 |
| The development of mental disorders from a lifetime developmental perspective | p. 329 |
| Development of disorder foundations | p. 329 |
| The significance of early childhood life experiences | p. 329 |
| Conclusions for psychotherapy | p. 334 |
| From early childhood into adulthood | p. 337 |
| The onset of mental disorders during times of heightened inconsistency | p. 340 |
| Implications for Psychotherapy | p. 349 |
| Mental disorders result from unsuccessful inconsistency regulation | p. 350 |
| Psychotherapy works via consistency improvement | p. 353 |
| The most important options for enhancing consistency via psychotherapy | p. 356 |
| Improving consistency via disorderoriented treatment | p. 356 |
| Consistency improvements via experiences in the therapy process | p. 358 |
| Consistency improvements via the treatment of individual sources of incongruence | p. 386 |
| Consistency improvements via changes in neural structures? | p. 395 |
| Implications for an effectiveness-optimized psychotherapy | p. 396 |
| Neural mechanisms of therapeutic changes | p. 399 |
| Changes via inhibition of neural excitability | p. 399 |
| Changes via activation of existing and facilitation of new neural activation patterns | p. 405 |
| Guidelines for therapy practice | p. 409 |
| Guidelines for therapy planning | p. 410 |
| Guidelines for the therapy process | p. 410 |
| Summary and Future Prospects | p. 417 |
| References | p. 425 |
| Author Index | p. 457 |
| Subject Index | p. 471 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
