LAST weekend my sister came to stay with her brood, including her three-month-old baby boy. Having recently read Sue Gerhardt's book – Why Love Matters: how affection shapes a baby's brain, I was able to reassure my sister that she was providing optimum conditions for the healthy growth of her baby's prefrontal cortex! But we debated anxiously how, when she goes back to work next month, her young son will fare spending two days a week in a nursery. Even such a modest amount of day care feels like a cause for concern after reading Gerhardt's book, the main message of which is that the quality of love and care we get as babies determines how our right brain develops, therefore impacting the future of our emotional lives. What young babies need most is to be cared for by someone who knows and loves them and is tuned in to their own particular needs. With these conditions they will flourish, producing more neuronal connections and more richly networked brains. Without them, the development of their social brain will be greatly reduced.

Much of Gerhardt's thesis is based on Allan Schore's research which is not new – it was first published 10 years ago. But like so much research, Schore's study has not made it much beyond academic circles, until Gerhardt translated it for a wider audience. This cross-fertilisation of psychotherapy and neuroscience is now gathering momentum on both sides of the Atlantic... By immersing herself in social psychology and neuroscience research, American psychotherapist Babette Rothschild has discovered a new dimension to our understanding of empathy. As she explains in her fascinating article The Physiology of Empathy, empathy has always been rather a mystical concept but in the mid-1990s neuroscientists discovered mirror neurons - neurons that are activated when a person observes actions or behaviour in someone else, so that we are 'grabbed by their nervous system' (Daniel N. Stern). If mirror neurons really are the foundation of empathy, Rothschild says, then the more we as therapists develop our understanding of this, the more we can use empathy as a tool, learn to control it and reduce its negative effects for therapists working with trauma.

Contributors to this issue

Babette Rothschild
Babette is in private practice in LA and gives professional trainings worldwide. She is the author of several books including The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma & Trauma Treatment

John O'Reilly
John is a UKCP registered psychotherapist and has completed the BASRT accredited diploma in transpersonal psychotherapy. He can be contacted at coupletherapist@yahoo.co.uk

Colin Feltham
Colin is Reader in Counselling at Sheffield Hallam University and is currently writing What's Wrong with Us?: The Anthropathology Thesis for Whurr Publishers

Amanda Carter
Amanda is a writer and newly qualified counsellor. She has previoulsy written on expatriate issues, focussing on the emotional difficulties associated with living abroad.

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