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Memory reconsolidation research by neuroscientists has demonstrated the erasure of emotional learnings. This article reviews these historic findings and how they translate directly into therapeutic application to provide the clinical field with an empirically confirmed process of transformational change. Psychotherapists’ early use of this new, transtheoretical knowledge indicates a strong potential for significant advances in both the effectiveness of psychotherapy and the unification of its many diverse systems. The erasure process consists of the creation of certain critical experiences required by the brain, and it neither dictates nor limits the experiential methods that therapists can use to facilitate the needed experiences. This article explains memory reconsolidation, delineates the empirically confirmed process, illustrates it in a case example of long-term depression, indicates the evidence supporting the hypothesis that this process is responsible for transformational change in any therapy sessions, describes the differing mechanisms underlying transformational change versus incremental change, and reports extensive clinical evidence that the basis and cause of most of the problems and symptoms presented by therapy clients are emotional learnings, that is, emotionally laden mental models, or schemas, in semantic memory.

That memory reconsolidation is the process underlying decisive, lasting therapeutic change has long been our proposal, and the recognition of its critical role by Lane et al. is a welcome development. However, in our view their account has significant errors due to neglect of research findings and neglect of previous work on the clinical application of those findings.

Traditionally, educational practices in the United States have revolved around the identification and remediation of student deficits, with much less focus given to the identification and development of student strengths of character. A focus on strengths could equip students with the skills to not only overcome obstacles, but to flourish in the face of challenges. The present study examined well-being among urban adolescents through the use of a school-based character strengths program. Participants included 70 eighth-grade students from an urban middle school assigned to either an intervention group or a comparison group. Through a series of activities, students identified and built upon character strengths. Consistent with predictions, participants in the intervention reported an overall increase in well-being from the start to the conclusion of the 5-day intervention as measured by the EPOCH Measure of Adolescent Well-Being (Kern & Steinberg, 2012). Implications for educational practice and future research are discussed.

The Brain's Rules for Change Translating cutting-edge neuroscience into practice by Bruce Ecker What we clinicians have learned in recent years about the intricacies of the brain's implicit memory systems has certainly helped us better recognize the linkage between distressing or traumatic experiences and many of the previously puzzling symptoms clients bring to our offices. [...] quite recently, a century of research on learning and memory had established that, while all newly formed memories are unstable and relatively easily disrupted, experiences accompanied by intense emotion set down implicit memory circuits in the limbic system that last a lifetime, once the complex consolidation of these memory traces is complete. [...] these few articles received scant attention from brain scientists and even less from clinicians, and the immutability of consolidated memory traces remained dogma in brain science.

Therapists are all too familiar with the strength and tenacity of ingrained emotional schemas--unconscious templates of feeling and behavior, usually established during childhood, that can seem immune to their best clinical efforts. Ecker describes Coherence Therapy, a technique he developed to treat these schemas.

Depressive affect and depressive disorders have been shown to increase in the transition from childhood to early adolescence. Furthermore, although Major Depression is classified as an affective disorder and many have asserted the importance that knowledge about emotions holds for understanding the organization, etiology, neurobiology, and treatment of depression, empirical investigation has been lacking. This is particularly true as regards adolescence. The current study explored the subjective experience of emotions, with attention also to emotional expression, associated with depression in groups of 39 psychiatric inpatients and 22 non-clinical control young adolescents. Measures included a self-report measure of depressive symptomatology, the Childhood Depression Inventory (CDI), and a self-report measure of the frequency of experience of individual emotions, the Differential Emotions Scale-IV (DES-IV). Two new emotions scales, Loved and Detached, were added to the DES-IV. There also was a video mood induction procedure accompanied by verbal report of immediate emotional state and detailed analysis of emotional facial expressions using the AFFEX system. Results were analyzed considering differences in depression level and gender. Depressed subjects scored significantly higher on a Dysphoria factor, most saliently comprised of Inward Hostility and Shame but also including Shyness, Fear and Sadness, and significantly lower on a Joy/Loved factor. The depressed subjects also reported being more aware of their emotions. Regarding emotional expression, depressed subjects showed a higher frequency of negative emotions (anger, sadness, disgust) and a lower frequency of joy than their non-depressed counterparts. There were no depression-related differences in self-report of emotional state in response to the video mood induction procedure, though males reported being happier than females. The relationship between emotional experience and emotional expression was stable over all depression level by gender groupings with the exception of highly depressed males. Overall, there were large gender-related differences in the organization of emotions associated with depression, with relationships for males characterized as fragmented. Study results are discussed in reference to research on emotions and depression in children and adults, normal adolescent emotional development, and adolescent development in other domains, most notably the self-concept.

It was now clear to me that not fighting back, even though under attack, was what I should regard as Marlene's \"real\" symptom. However, rather than assuming a deficit of assertiveness skills, which I needed to teach her, I assumed she had some definite, unconscious, purpose for not fighting back when under attack. To find that purpose, I guided her into imagining fighting back in various bold ways.

Nothing. Nothing's coming,\" Tina said after her first try. She then repeated, \"If they know I'm doing something that matters to me--.\" Bruce waited. \"--she'll take it,\" Tina suddenly said quietly. She became motionless and stone silent. Then, with obvious amazement, she almost shouted, \"I erased myself!\" Her voice was low but edgy and full of bitterness and pain. \"She takes everything! She fucking takes it all!