by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 29, 2025 | Uncategorized
The Neuroscientist Who Found Consciousness in the Feedback Loops of the Brain When you look at a face, what happens in your brain? The answer turns out to be surprisingly complex. First, visual information streams forward from your eyes through your visual cortex,...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 29, 2025 | Neuroscience and the Brain for Therapists, Phenomenology and Existential Psychology
Why Understanding the Science of Consciousness Matters for Therapy Before we dive into the life and work of one of the most important consciousness researchers alive today, we need to address a fundamental question. Why should therapists care about neuroscience? Why...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 29, 2025 | Neuroscience and the Brain for Therapists, Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
Why Understanding the Architecture of Mind Matters for Therapy Before we explore the life and revolutionary work of Bernard Baars, we need to understand why his ideas matter so profoundly for anyone working in the healing professions. Baars did not merely propose a...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Phenomenology and Existential Psychology, Psychology, Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
The Great Remembering: Why the Future of Psychotherapy is Just History Repeating Itself In the rush to modernize mental health treatment, the field of psychotherapy often suffers from a peculiar form of historical amnesia. We celebrate “new” modalities as...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 27, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
On a spring day in 1987, Francine Shapiro walked through a park near her home in Northern California, carrying troubling thoughts that had been persistent and distressing. She noticed something unexpected: as her eyes moved rapidly from side to side, following the...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 27, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
When a Dutch child grows up during Nazi occupation watching his father return from a work camp, watching hunger hollow out his neighbors, watching liberation armies arrive too late for too many, trauma stops being an abstract concept. It becomes the air you breathe,...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 26, 2025 | Neuroscience and the Brain for Therapists, Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
When Stephen Porges began studying heart rate variability in newborn infants in the early 1970s, he noticed something curious. Babies whose heart rates fluctuated rhythmically with their breathing, a phenomenon called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, responded better to...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 26, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
Sándor Ferenczi: The Mother of Psychoanalysis and the Architect of Trauma Therapy While Sigmund Freud is the undisputed father of psychoanalysis, there is a quieter and more tender voice that was silenced for decades but has recently emerged as the true architect of...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 26, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
In 1969, a graduate student named Nancy arrived at Peter Levine’s office suffering from panic attacks so severe they left her incapacitated, attacks she could not explain and for which no medical cause could be found. Levine, then in his late twenties and...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 26, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
The body knows things the mind has not yet learned. This insight, articulated by Carl Jung nearly a century ago through his concepts of the psychoid unconscious and somatic intuition, found its empirical validation in the laboratories of a Portuguese neuroscientist...
