Psychotherapy can be defined as the attempt to change cognitions, emotions, and behaviours in humans who suffer from maladaptive consequences of their behaviour or have caused suffering in others, by means of scientifically evaluated psychological techniques and interventions.
Central to all kinds of psychotherapy is the assumption that alternative strategies to cope with interpersonal stress or other adverse stimuli can be accomplished throughout the human lifespan through learning and experience, albeit with different likelihood of success depending on age at onset, duration, and severity of the underlying disorder.
It is widely acknowledged among psychotherapists that logic in therapeutic discours alone does not suffice to enable a patient to give up maladaptive strategies; rather, it is essential that the patient feels a difference; perhaps first imaginatively, and later on, as therapy progresses, as part of his or her 'reallife' experience.
Even though it becomes increasingly clear that psychotherapy has the potential to induce long-lasting changes in brain
activation, particularly in the most recently evolved cortical midline structures involved in the representation of self and others, and in phylogenetically older brain centres involved in emotion regulation, the fact that any kind of psychotherapy is deeply rooted in the evolved psychology of our species is more implicitly, rather than explicitly, approved by therapists.
Mental representation of self and others is, however, at the core of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict, as well as of conflict resolution.
The ability to infer mental states and anticipate future actions of other individuals may not only have been a major driving force in human brain evolution, but also a major source of cognitive distortion causing psychological distress.