Coaching Understood: A Pragmatic Inquiry into the Coaching Process (original) (raw)
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THE ATTUNED BRAIN: Crossings In Focusing-oriented Therapy and Neuroscience
Current findings in interpersonal neurobiology are providing scientific support for more emphasis on whole-brain approaches in clinical practice that use empathy, emotion, attachment theory and other relational approaches to psychotherapy. These 'softer' approaches have previously been largely ignored as brain researchers favored study of the more cogni-tive aspects of the brain functioning in isolation. In this paper, I will provide an overview of current affective neuroscientific research with an emphasis on how it supports the use of Focusing-Oriented Therapy. I will explain how some aspects of interpersonal neurobiology provide evidence about why Focusing works. I will include relevant ideas from Eugene Gendlin's philosophy, and ground these ideas with clinical examples. If the 90's were widely referred to as the decade of the brain, the first decade of the new millennium could well be called the decade of the social brain. Over the last ten years, research into the inner workings of the human brain has shifted from its century-long emphasis on the brain in isolation, with its " almost restrictive focus on cognition, " (Schore, 2003a, p. 212) to the study of the brain in interaction, with a resulting greater emphasis on mutual emotional regulation and empathy. Many of these new discoveries offer strong support for the practice of Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT). In fact, the insights and discoveries from the field of affective neuroscience are bringing general psychological theories closer to what Gendlin (1997) has been saying all along: that human beings (indeed all living organisms) are processes that cannot be understood as discrete, static units, nor apart from each other or their environment. This paper will examine what we now know about the brain, with a particular focus on current neuroscientific research related to affect regulation and attachment, and will describe several specific examples demonstrating how FOT processes can facilitate emotional healing.
Coaching the brain: Neuro-science or neuro-nonsense?
This paper discusses some myths and misconceptions that have emerged in relation to neuroscience and coaching, and explores the notion that neuroscience provides a foundational evidence-base for coaching, and that neurocoaching is a unique or original coaching methodology. It is found that much of the insights into coaching purported to be delivered by neuroscience are long-established within the behavioural sciences. Furthermore, the empirical and conceptual links between neuroscientific findings and actual coaching practice are tenuous at best. Although at present there is no convincing empirical support for a neuroscientific foundation to coaching, there are important ways in which coaching and neuroscience can interact. There is good evidence that solution-focused cognitive-behavioural (SF-CB) coaching can reliably induce specific behavioural and cognitive changes. SF-CB coaching could thus be used as a methodology to experimentally induce specific changes including greater self-insight and better relations with others. Subsequent changes in brain structure or brain activity could then be observed. This has potential to be of great value to the neuroscience enterprise by providing more hard evidence for concepts such as neuroplasticity and brain-region function-specificity. It may well be that coaching can be of greater use to the field of neuroscience than the field of neuroscience can be to coaching. In this way we can address many neuromyths and misconceptions about brain-based coaching, and begin to author a more accurate and productive narrative about the relationship between coaching and neuroscience.
'Coaching underpinned by neuroscience' – A Humanistic, Facilitative Approach to 'Aha!' Experiences
A model is shown describing different levels of psychological processing in coachees, in terms of observable physiology. Physical manifestations in the coachee are described for both intellectualizing psychological states and for internalized, experiential, psychological states. This work suggests strongly that certain coach-interventions induce significant state-change in coachees. Five of forty facilitative coach-intervention skills are described, in order to illustrate their practical use in facilitating significant psychological change. Linkages are made between facilitative coaching interventions and neuroscience; how relevant changes in biochemistry are accompanying stimulation of the brain during coaching. These linkages are intended to help describe a (work-in-progress) concept of 'coaching underpinned by neuroscience'. An attempt to describe such a concept is made in order to create discussion; it is averred that a new discipline may arise, where links between the understanding of how facilitative coaching interventions work and their possible influence in neuroplastic change, may align in the future.
The self-regulation of attention is explored from a neuropsychological perspective. It is suggested that pre-reflective self-awareness and reflective self-consciousness may be related to two brain systems (cerebellum and cerebrum). Corresponding to these different levels or types of self-awareness, it is conceivable that there may be a pre-reflective mindfulness, and a reflective mindfulness. Some sources of competing input to the cerebral "screen" of attentive consciousness are noted, and the potentially disruptive impact of emotional information is highlighted. The notion of self-regulation is explored in terms of "the exertion of control over the self by the self", and some characteristics of automaticity are described. Concerning mindfulness when engaged with the external world, some advantages of fully attending to what we are doing are noted. However, regarding the contrast of "conscious choice" and "automatic pilot", it is stressed that attention and automaticity are complementary processes in the effective and efficient control of behavior and thinking.
Mindful Practices: On the Neurosciences in the Twentieth Century
Science in Context, 2001
The neurosciences have been full of promises throughout the last century -from cybernetics to artificial minds, from holistic and integrative medicine to psychoneuro-immunology, from psychosurgery to psychoactive drugs -and they enjoy an astoundingly benevolent public interest. Just after the ending of "The Decade of the Brain" some managers of research in the neurosciences had already arranged to mark the beginning of the next millennium with a conference proclaiming the next hundred years the "Century of the Brain." Whether a justifiable prediction or wishful thinking, the neurosciences have gained momentum. How does this optimistic omnipresence of the neurosciences relate to the actual research in this area? What will be the consequences of this concentration of research efforts? Will the flood of new data, concepts, and theories revolutionize psychology or clinical medicine? Will the experimentally supported assumption that there is no such thing as free will ultimately change our worldview and our epistemology? How will or could the results affect our daily lives?
© 2018 Copyright Mattes Verlag, Heidelberg • Dynamische Psychiatrie • Dynamic Psychiatry, 2018
The paper deals with the age-old problem of the self/brain relationships and its impact upon psychotherapy. Following Gell-mann‘s suggestion that the scientific project is composed of a hierarchy of complex systems, the author acknowledges that the brain and the self, being parts of the scientific project (biology, psychology), form complex adaptive systems (CAS). While each system in the scientific pyramid cannot exist without the lower, the “higher“ systems comprise the lower ones plus additional information. CAS oppose linear causality and the question “Where Action Begins in the Brain or in the Mind“? becomes irrelevant. While the brain is part of the biological system, the self is influenced in addition by the psycho/socio/cultural systems generated by many brains/minds in history. Mindfulness, imagery, and stress-reduction demonstrate that the self can generates changes in the brain and the body (brain neuroplasticity, neurogenesis) while paradoxically it is dependent upon them for its existence. There are common systemic mechanism effecting both the self and the brain such as: self-regulation, self-organization, emergence, actions according to pre-established patterns, and more. The common mechanisms form a meta-language by which the self, brain and body can communicate to effectively generate desired changes.
2020
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Dualism Persists in the Science of Mind
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2009
The relationship between mind and brain has philosophical, scientific, and practical implications. Two separate but related surveys from the University of Edinburgh (University students, n = 250) and the University of Liège (health-care workers, lay public, n = 1858) were performed to probe attitudes toward the mind-brain relationship and the variables that account for differences in views. Four statements were included, each relating to an aspect of the mind-brain relationship. The Edinburgh survey revealed a predominance of dualistic attitudes emphasizing the separateness of mind and brain. In the Liège survey, younger participants, women, and those with religious beliefs were more likely to agree that the mind and brain are separate, that some spiritual part of us survives death, that each of us has a soul that is separate from the body, and to deny the physicality of mind. Religious belief was found to be the best predictor for dualistic attitudes. Although the majority of health-care workers denied the distinction between consciousness and the soma, more than one-third of medical and paramedical professionals regarded mind and brain as separate entities. The findings of the study are in line with previous studies in developmental psychology and with surveys of scientists' attitudes toward the relationship between mind and brain. We suggest that the results are relevant to clinical practice, to the formulation of scientific questions about the nature of consciousness, and to the reception of scientific theories of consciousness by the general public.