How Psychotherapy Works synthesizes recent science to provide an accessible, practical, and clinically relevant understanding of the infrastructure underlying the hundreds of therapies in current use. In joining the best of modern neuroscience with a warm-hearted understanding of human troubles, the book guides beginning and experienced therapists to better therapy through clarity about what is happening now and what to do next.

Both groundbreaking and paradigmatic, the book extends modern concepts of memory reconsolidation and thinking fast and slow to bring to light the nonconscious world where problematic patterns are frozen in time, waiting for empathic connection with a therapist. The final section of the book gives the reader a simple but sophisticated, science-based set of questions to apply to real-world pathology and therapeutic goals.