Reassembling Models of Reality

Clinical musings on the nature of reality and “known experience.”

Therapists must rely on their clients’ reporting of experience in order to assess, treat, and offer help. Yet we all experience the world through various filters of one sort or another, and our experiences are transformed through several nonconscious processes before reaching our conscious awareness. Science, philosophy, and wisdom traditions share the belief that our awareness is very restricted. How, then, can anyone accurately report their experience, let alone get help with it?

Neuropsychologist Aldrich Chan examines how our experience of reality is assembled and shaped by biological, psychological, sociocultural, and existential processes. Each chapter explores processes within these domains that may act as “veils.” Topics in the book include:

• the default mode network
• cognitive distortions
• decision-making heuristics
• the interconnected mind
• memory
• cultural concepts of distress

By understanding the ways in which reality can be distorted, clinicians can more effectively help their clients reach their personal psychotherapeutic goals.