ArticleFrontiers in psychology2019
"Surprise" and the Bayesian Brain: Implications for Psychotherapy Theory and Practice.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 88 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Learning Under Uncertainty: Predictive Processing as an Integrative Framework for Educational Research.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2026Article
- Freud's Model of the Mind Within a Predictive Processing Neuroscientific Paradigm.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A matter of psychic life and death: reappraising the death drive and its link to psychosis through the prism of the free energy principle.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- When the market asks no price: AI chatbot interaction as psychic market disruption.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Inferring Attachment Trauma from Clinical Symptoms and Dynamics: A Challenge for Scientists, a Gift for Therapists and Their Patients.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2025Article
- Synaptic Function and Sensory Processing in ZDHHC9-Associated Neurodevelopmental Disorder: A Mechanistic Account.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Integrating neuropsychoanalytic and neuropsychiatric perspectives into psychiatric clinical neuroscience curricula: a conceptual overview.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Review
- Early maladaptive schemas from child maltreatment in depression and psychotherapeutic remediation: a predictive coding framework.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- LSD flattens the hierarchy of directed information flow in fast whole-brain dynamics.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Active Inference in Psychology and Psychiatry: Progress to Date?Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Friston, Free Energy, and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The journey within: mental navigation as a novel framework for understanding psychotherapeutic transformation.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Mentalization-based approach for schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a psychotherapeutic proposal for evolved schizophrenic trajectories and serious mental disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Neurobiological mechanisms of dialectical behavior therapy and Morita therapy, two psychotherapies inspired by Zen.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2023Review
- Functional contextual implementation of an evolutionary, entropy-based, and embodied free energy framework: Utilizing Lagrangian mechanics and evolutionary game theory's truth vs. fitness test of the veridicality of phenomenological experience.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Friston's free energy principle: new life for psychoanalysis?BJPsych bulletin · 2022Review
- Clinical Manifestations of Body Memories: The Impact of Past Bodily Experiences on Mental Health.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Beauty and Uncertainty as Transformative Factors: A Free Energy Principle Account of Aesthetic Diagnosis and Intervention in Gestalt Psychotherapy.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Piloting the Update: The Use of Therapeutic Relationship for Change - A Free Energy Account.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The free energy principle (FEP) has gained widespread interest and growing acceptance as a new paradigm of brain function, but has had little impact on the theory and practice of psychotherapy. The aim of this paper is to redress this. Brains rely on Bayesian inference during which "bottom-up" sensations are matched with "top-down" predictions. Discrepancies result in "prediction error." The brain abhors informational "surprise," which is minimized by (1) action enhancing the statistical likelihood of sensory samples, (2) revising inferences in the light of experience, updating "priors" to reality-aligned "posteriors," and (3) optimizing the complexity of our generative models of a capricious world. In all three, free energy is converted to bound energy. In psychopathology energy either remains unbound, as in trauma and inhibition of agency, or manifests restricted, anachronistic "top-down" narratives. Psychotherapy fosters client agency, linguistic and practical. Temporary uncoupling bottom-up from top-down automatism and fostering scrutinized simulations sets a number of salutary processes in train.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.