Clinicians worldwide have come to see the value of linking abstract, theoretical notions of human change to embodied transitions manifested, for example, in the concepts of neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change and grow) and epigenetics (the study of genes).
Interpersonal neurobiology has shown us that positive neuroplastic changes during meditative prayer and securely attached relationships lead to greater integration of the prefrontal cortex (i.e., healthier relationships lead to healthier brains and vice versa).
In my book, Anatomy of the Soul, one of my goals was to draw people’s attention to the deep connection between Christian spiritual formation and its practices (prayer, fasting, sharing the Eucharist, worship, confession, etc.), attachment research, psychotherapy and real somatic changes that take place in the brain/body matrix.
Educating patients and assisting them to experientially explore the brain’s functions and its connection — not only to therapeutic interventions but also spiritual growth — provides tangible, helpful tools by which their relationship with God matures along with their general psychological health.
The explosive growth in awareness of these interlocking domains of the mind’s activity is something for which to be grateful. Essentially we are discovering more of God’s good creation, how it works and, as St. Paul articulates in Romans 1:20, how becoming familiar with it points us to God’s nature and power.
This information is also changing the landscape of what constitutes fundamental expectations for professional training requirements. It is not too much to imagine that within the next two decades, many professional disciplines related to mental health will require basic proficiency in the neurobiological correlates of human behavioral change.
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Science, and its unspoken way of understanding what is authoritative in the universe, has become the dominant lens through which we reflect upon the world. Of all the disciplines, neuroscience currently reigns as queen. Appealing to the authority of neuroscience has become fashionable in just about every realm of culture. It is the authority to which we turn in law, business and education.
Many times the mere inclusion of an image of the brain in the presentation of data grants the data greater credibility. Somehow, if we can connect behavioral events to activity in the brain, we believe that explains it. This tendency pays homage to a reductionist view of the universe, which appeals to our desire for certainty in a world that, according to the biblical narrative, is less one of certainty, as we humans long for, but rather one of trust — not in abstract data, but in relationships. And relationships are never as certain as we would like.
We must be wise in our awareness of the beauty and the limitations of brain studies, which, like any science, can tell us the “how,” but not necessarily the “why” or “for what purpose” of behavior. The moment we turn to the latest neuroimaging scan as the authority to “prove” our lives are changing because of prayer, we have subjected the authority of Jesus to the authority of the prevailing plausibility structure.
It is for this reason, ironically, that it is so important we as clinicians are well informed about the amazing connections between neurobiology, relationships and our lives in the body of Christ. If the world increasingly turns to neuroscience as the final judge of human behavior, we will be those to whom the world also turns as interpreters of this information — and we must be prepared to articulate its possibilities and limits. For every part of creation can only serve its creator well when it does so within the bounds for which it was intended to operate.
A question that needs to be asked is, “Where do we go to understand who we are becoming?” Yet we must always bear in mind the God who created the brain is personally in the middle of our pain and suffering, bringing healing in the form of a relationship and changing us along the way. We can afford to be no less mindful that God is in charge of neuroscience, and not the other way around.
Dr. Curt Thompson, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in Falls Church, Virginia. Dr. Thompson is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Throughout his career the main focus of clinical and research interest has been the integration of psychiatry, its associated disciplines and Christian spirituality. This excerpt was used with permission by the author and Christian Counseling Today, a publication of the American Association of Christian Counselors (aacc.net).
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