The nature of feelings and emotion-based learning within psychotherapy and counselling: neuroscience is putting the heart back into emotion

Abstract

This paper reviews the contribution neuroscience is making to our knowledge of emotion and learning, and how it might impact on psychotherapy and counselling. In all cases, with the possible exception of procedures relying on operant and classical conditioning, psychotherapy and counselling depend on a conception of emotion. The neuroscience of emotion contains two conceptions of the nature of feelings, which are relevant to the foundational ideas of orientations within interpersonal therapies. Also, therapy models employ an element of learning as a measure of success, and neuroscience is revealing an interaction between emotion and learning. The potential application of the findings of neuroscience to work with people with cognitive impairments is explored, particularly use of psychophysiological analogues of emotion.

Keywords:

• affect, feelings, emotion, learning, neuroscience, psychotherapy