Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is primarily a theory and framework which describes human development and functioning as a product of the relationship between the body, mind and relationships. Another term for it is relational neuroscience, and it is a biopsychosocial model. IPNB describes how the brain and mind are shaped, or developed, and how they function based on the interplay of genes in the context of relationships. IPNB is rooted in attachment theory.
IPBN is a useful framework for people in the relational professions, including doctors, medical professionals, law enforcement (including hostage negotiators), clergy, educators, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals. It is equally useful for lawyers, litigators, mediators, judges.
IPNB was initially created by Dr. Dan Siegel. He is still the primary person describing IPNB as a theory. He has several books describing his approach. IPNB also has an array of support from other professionals and authors with books published as part of Norton Publishing’s Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology (50+ books).
IPNB learning resources
The Mindsight Institute offers courses and workshops. Portland State University offered a one-year graduate credit certificate program. Portland Community College has been offering an online Foundations in IPNB program. IPNB is also supported by the Global Association for Interpersonal Neurobiology (GAINS), at MindGains.org.
Good places to start learning about IPNB are YouTube video lectures by Dr. Dan Siegel, and the Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, now in its 3rd Edition offers detailed scientific insights into how the body, mind, and relationships interact and impact each other.
IPNB and ICCI
Occasionally and on demand, ICCI offers CLE/CEU formatted IPNB overview training for professionals.
IPNB and the ICCM share a broad-based biopsychosocial perspective on human functioning with a heavy reliance on attachment science and theory.
The ICCM incorporates components offered by a variety of authors in the Norton series on INPB, such as Stephen Porges polyvagal theory, and, to a degree, Iain McGilchrist’s neocortex theory. To the extent Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience is considered part of the IPNB universe, we share that model too.
IPNB, and the Norton Series, is more focused on medical and mental health fields. The ICCM incorporates many of Siegel’s personal concepts, but is geared towards professionals using a client-centered approach to problem solving, for professionals working with clients in the midst of conflict, making decisions under pressure, or involved in high conflict relationships. The ICCM also offers additional tools based on other theories and research and uses a more advanced model of attachment science.
Integration
The concept of “integration” is significant for both IPNB and the Integrative Client-Centered Model (ICCM), although the ICCM is based on both a broader and more specific set of theories relevant to the needs of legal professionals. Integration refers to a person’s use of all parts of the brain and body neural systems.
Dan Siegel’s counseling model, The Mindful Therapist
Dr. Siegel offers a set of counseling tools and approaches in his book The Mindful Therapist (2010), which are functional for any helping professional, including lawyers. In our view, the word “therapist” can be functionally replaced with “lawyer” in The Mindful Therapist. Thus, the book offers a thorough introduction to the concept of applying mindfulness in any counseling practice. We think it’s easy for lawyers to understand and apply concepts from this book.
IPNB and the DMM
IPNB is similar to the Dynamic Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM). Both are transdisciplinary, biopsychosocial models incorporating many fields of science to help understand human functioning, and both are reliant on attachment science and theory.
IPNB examines neuroscience and other sciences with more detail than the DMM.
The DMM focuses more on information processing and memory. It offers the most advanced and detailed theory of attachment, from which specifics of the “great information processing divide” are better elucidated. Both models identify this primary and basic division in human functioning with the top-level words cognition and affect. (IPNB also uses the “popular press” terms rigidity and chaos.) (Iain McGilchrist discusses this divide in terms of the left and right brain hemispheres.)
While IPNB provides practitioner’s an attachment framework, it cannot describe with particularity how self-protective behavioral strategies and patterns of information processing differ between cognitive and affective-oriented patterns. An example is in Siegel’s Whole Brain Child book series. While we recommend those books to our clients, it nevertheless cannot answer this question: If your child has learned a particular pattern of attachment survival strategies, how do you help them learn to incorporate strategies from the opposite pattern?
The DMM’s specificity allows, for example, an understanding of and guidance to specific parenting techniques of what a parent might do if their child is using attachment “A” or “C” self-protective strategies, or what a counselor might do if their client is using adult A (cognitive) or C (affective) patterns of information processing. This micro-level detail provides powerful insight for counselors, be they mental health or legal counselors.
Both models distance themselves from psychology’s Diagnostic Service Manual (DSM), nevertheless IPNB continues to maintain some connection to describing human functioning in terms of DSM type personality patterns and disorders, such as narcissistic personality disorder. The DMM fully distances itself from the DSM. It describes human functioning in terms of self-protective survival strategies and patterns of information processing. DMM research is showing how traditional personality descriptions can be better described with the DMM classification model. (For a summary of high end concepts, see the PDF on personality disorders at Dr. Crittenden’s site or at the Family Relations Institute.)
The DMM grew specifically from Dr. Patricia Crittenden’s research in attachment theory, and from her work with attachment founders Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby. Peter Fonagy describes the DMM as the best model of attachment to date. Siegel relies on the ABC+D, or Berkeley model of attachment, which is an underdeveloped model, and not sufficiently detailed to provide micro-level guidance for counselors.
We don’t mean to criticize any quality models. But intend to be critical of all models because there is still a long way to go to understand what’s going on.