Interpersonal neurobiology examines the process of integration - the linkage of differentiated parts - and illuminates how a range of sciences can be used as the basis for psychotherapeutic intervention. Harnessing the power of this interdisciplinary framework, we'll identify specific ways in which clinical assessment, treatment planning, and therapeutic interventions can be applied using the fundamental scientific principles of this new approach to healing.

When a system is integrated it becomes flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable. When not emerging toward integration, the individual, couple, family, or larger grouping of individuals tends to experience chaos or rigidity within their psychological structures. Learning how to identify conditions that counter well-being empowers clinicians to take on a new approach to clinical assessment.

Modern research has revealed exciting new support for the proposition that health is based on integrative functioning whereas impairments to integration produce a spectrum of psychological disorders. We will review how the classic descriptions of major psychopathology - from autism to bipolar disorder - reveal blockages to neural differentiation and linkage in regions of the brain involved in social cognition and self-regulation. We will explore new approaches to clinical assessment that are based on revealing the precise impairment to integration, and which offer a new way of formulating a conceptual framework for the field of mental health.

With a framework of integration as the core mechanism of health, treatment strategies can be formulated to promote the growth of integrative fibers in the brain that will be those most likely to support movement toward health. We will explore how neuroplasticity, by cultivating differentiation and linkage of neural circuits, becomes the mainstay for therapeutic treatment planning.

The therapeutic relationship forms the essential beginning for implementing therapeutic interventions that promote integration and knowledge about the development of the brain from childhood becomes shared between therapist and client so that together they can create an approach that is most likely to succeed in cultivating integration. Eight domains of integration will be introduced and steps that promote the growth of the brain and foster integrative relationships in the client's life will be provided.

Why is the process of awareness found to be important in every form of therapeutic intervention? Beginning with an exploration of the nature of consciousness, we'll explore how defining the mind as an embodied and relational emergent self-organizing process that regulates the flow of energy and information helps us to see how therapeutic interventions in psychotherapy can change the function and structure of the brain itself. Awareness to the therapist is what a scalpel is to the surgeon. Learning how to use the powerful instrument of attention is the essential tool of psychotherapy.

The development of the brain within the body only occurs within the context of supportive relationships across the lifespan. Knowing how relationships support or inhibit the differentiation of the two sides of the brain, the lower and higher neural regions, and the various circuits involved in implicit, explicit, and narrative memory, is the building block of effective therapeutic intervention. Case examples will continue to illustrate how these interpersonal neurobiology approaches enable the therapist to use 'mindsight' to cultivate integration in the client's life.

Personal transformation is brought about through the compassionate and empowering setting of a therapeutic relationship. Importantly, we come to discover the "we-state" that enables many clients to experience a sense of vulnerability, safety, and openness to change. These internal and interpersonal experiences also support the exploration of the deepest existential issues of life and death that often remain either far from awareness or a source of perpetual terror and fear. The emergence of integration in a person's life during therapy is not an end-point, but rather the beginning of a way of awakening the individual's mind to become more connected internally and as a fuller member of humanity. Ultimately, compassion and kindness, toward the self and others, can be seen as integration made visible. This is the process of the therapeutic journey and the way in which integration prepares the individual to become more resilient, have emotional equilibrium, and to create more meaningful connections with others, and the self.