When you watch a movie, you are seeing arrangements of pixels. The movie is 100 percent dependent on pixels and cannot exist apart from them. But knowledge of pixels is irrelevant to understanding the movie. We can know everything there is to know about pixeIs and have no concept of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, or the battle for the empire. Movie supervenes on pixels. Likewise, mind supervenes on brain. Mind depends on brain and cannot exist apart from it. But knowledge of brain is not knowledge of mental life. They are different levels of analysis requiring different concepts and methods (View Highlight)
Despite endless promises, there is no biological test for any mental health condition (View Highlight)
Neurobiology is one level of analysis, mental life is another. Thoughts and feelings must be studied at their own level of analysis. The brain is the subject matter of neurobiology, and mental life is the subject matter of psychology. There are, of course, areas of intersection and overlap, but neither can supplant the other. (View Highlight)
We should stop misleading the public to believe that emotional suffering is like medical disease, or that different kinds of psychotherapy are like different medications. These assumptions are false at every level. (View Highlight)
We should study outcomes that matter to patients and the psychotherapists who treat them. Real psychotherapy is not about DSM diagnoses and never was. Real psychotherapy outcomes are not reducible to DSM symptom lists (View Highlight)