In this interview excerpt, the host asks neuroscientist Mark Solms to explain what makes a therapy session effective. Solms emphasizes the central role of the therapeutic relationship, describing it as a process of containment and a corrective emotional experience that allows distressing memories to be metabolized. He critiques the common framing of exposure therapy as "extinction," clarifying that modern neuroscience points to memory reconsolidation—updating the original memory rather than erasing it. Solms references a seminal paper by Richard Lane (often mis‑spelled Lang) in Behavioral and Brain Sciences that outlines brain mechanisms underlying various psychotherapies, and notes his own commentary on that work. He connects these ideas to the Flash Technique, portraying it as a focused, rapid version of containment where the therapist helps the client experience distress without having to actively process it, thereby facilitating reconsolidation. Throughout, Solms underscores the importance of the therapist’s calm, non‑distressed stance, likening it to a mother’s holding of a distressed child, which teaches the client that distress is bearable and can be integrated into memory.
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I think I mentioned this to you before, but how about this idea? What is a good therapy session? You're my therapist. I come in and say, oh, Dr. Soames, I had a tough week. This happened, or that happened. I'm depressed, or I'm anxious, or all kinds of things that are disturbing me. And I'm telling you the story. So that you can hear it. And little by little, I notice that you're really getting it. And whatever you say, I, I feel understood. And suddenly I'm out of the story, the negative, and I'm into you as the positive, engaging, caring, um, you want the best for me. Maybe my parents didn't, uh, all of that. It's almost like the Flash technique in slow motion. I think if you have a good session where Somebody feels catharsis or just feel heard. That's so such an— the relationship is so important in therapy. We know the whole, uh, your points about the cognitive fallacy that you— the cortical fallacy that you've been trying to let people know about for about 20 years, I think, at least. Um, and what we're talking about here is a paradigm shift from exposure therapy is the only way to go. So let me ask about that. Is that extinction? They're working off the extinction idea for exposure therapy.
Yeah. So, you know, it's not quite extinction. I know the word is used loosely, but when it was originally introduced, we didn't have a better word, and it literally meant the memory is extinguished. It's no longer there. So that's wrong. Yeah. So reconsolidation hadn't yet been discovered. So I think that what, what we're talking about is not extinction so much as reconsolidation. In other words, the same memory, but in a different form. An updated version of the memory. And what you said earlier, a few minutes ago, about a good session, I absolutely agree with what you said there. There's a paper— I'll have to dig out the reference. It's by Richard Lane. He's from Phoenix, Arizona.
L-A-N-E or Lang?
L-A-N-E. Yes. Richard Lang. L-A-N-E. And, and others. But he was the first author. And it's in a journal called Behavioral and Brain Sciences. And it came out about 5 years ago. And it's, it's, it's on the brain mechanisms of different forms of psychotherapy. But the— it's a very good paper, as it would have to be in order to get into Behavioral and Brain Sciences, because that fabulous journal.
Yeah.
In fact, I wrote a commentary on it in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. That's— they were the pioneers of that format, that there's a target article and then open peer commentary and then a reply by the, by the author. So he basically said in many more words what you've just said, which is that really what is therapeutic is something about the distressing experience being metabolized, becoming contained becoming manageable because of the experience of, of it being digested for you by, by the therapist. In other words, and in psychoanalysis, they use the word containment, that the, the affect is contained, that the therapist provides a container, it doesn't blow out all over the place. Yeah, it's kind of like being held. You know, by a mother. So the child's all distressed and the mother doesn't get distressed, doesn't, doesn't get into a sort of mutually reinforcing cycle of distress with the child. The mother is calm, the mother's not distressed, mother says it's going to be okay, you know, the mother can bear it. And then the child learns, oh, this is bearable. Okay, you know, and then so they calm down. And then the next time they're in that sort of situation, they have not only their distress, but also the memory that this too will pass. You know, this can be managed. And so you internalize this. And I think that the Flash Technique, as you say, is a focused version of that. Yes, a version of a good session where, you know, the, the technique formalizes the process of you're having a very distressing thing and, you know, this thing will make it less distressing and you don't have to do anything. It'll just, you know, so it's like containment or what did they used to call it? What was that word? Corrective emotional experience.
Oh yes, yeah, yeah.
Ah, that's, um, so I think you would enjoy that paper by Richard Lane. Well, you should take a look at it.
