Volume_4_Issue_1_Digest

TPC D igest 3 Integrating Left-Brain and Right-Brain: The Neuroscience of Effective Counseling – DIGEST Thomas A. Field Thomas A. Field, NCC, is a Faculty/Program Coordinator for the Master of Arts in Counseling program at City University of Seattle and a Ph.D. candidate in the counseling and supervision program at James Madison University. Correspondence can be addressed to Thomas A. Field, City University of Seattle, 521 Wall Street, Seattle, WA 98121, tfield@cityu.edu. N euroscientists such as Allan Schore have suggested that activities associat- ed with the left hemisphere (LH) cur- rently dominate mental health services. This is evidenced by the mineralization of counseling, a reductionist and idealistic view of “evidence- based practice,” and a lack of respect for the counseling relationship in treatment outcomes despite a large body of evidence. Dr. Iain McGilchrist takes this argument further: if left unchecked, the modern world will increase its reliance upon the LH compared to the right hemisphere (RH), with disastrous con- sequences. A “left-brain world” would lead to increased bureaucracy, a focus on quantity and efficiency over quality, a valuing of technology over human interaction, and uniformity over individualization. While such dystopian ideas do not fully reflect the current reality, one could argue that the focus on standardization and uniformity in mental health services points toward an increasingly left-brain world. Thanks to emerging findings from neurosci- ence, the current predicament can be concep- tualized as a valuing of left-brain processing above right-brain processing. Researchers now know that effective counseling requires both conscious knowledge of research evidence and unconscious clinical intuition—in other words, the integration of the LH and RH of the brain. A balance can be struck between the extreme polarities of structured vs. spontaneous ap- proaches, fidelity to manuals vs. individualiza- tion, rigidity vs. flexibility, conscious mind vs. unconscious mind, cognitions vs. emotions, and LH vs. RH. Radical adherence to either polarity is less effective. At one polarity, a structured, manualized, rigid, conscious, LH- activating cognitive treatment would lack the flexibility and individualization necessary to establish a strong counseling relationship. At the other extreme, a purely spontaneous, indi- vidualized, flexible, unconscious, emotionally- activating RH approach would be uninformed by research evidence, and therefore be unethi- cal. By incorporating research evidence from neuroscience, counselors have a new model