Neurofuturity: A Theory of Change

Abstract

Our experience is dominated by familiar sameness and unfamiliar change. This article is about change and why and how people change. The capacity to change is critical to the ability to adapt to a changing environment. Our brains help us to manage change by constructing possible futures and enabling us to behave in a way that prepares us for those futures. Capturing the world outside of us to make it into an internal experience is called perception. Some therapies aim to capture the work as it is. Capturing our world as it has been is termed ‘memory’. Therapies which aim to revisit and remould this work so that the present and future are easier to deal with, help adaptation. Capturing the possible worlds to come is described here as neurofuturity. It is much broader than expectations and includes our feelings towards the future as well as our beliefs. Therapies are described in terms of which questions they answer and which time frame they address. Therapies and therapists address these big questions and work in different time frames. Reconstructing patients' experience of the future and acceptance of what cannot change are two of the main tasks of clinicians.