Since the onset of psychotherapy with Freud's novel technique of psychoanalysis, proliferation of schools of psychotherapy – from 1 to more than 400 (Karasu Reference Karasu1986) – suggests that theoretical orientations are not critical to identify what makes for successful psychotherapy. An alternative is to specify universal neuropsychological elements that cut across all theoretical orientations. Lane et al. advance a top-down integrative solution for understanding memory reconsolidation psychotherapies, some of which are already manualized (e.g., Ecker et al. Reference Ecker, Ticic and Hulley2012). Reconsolidation, first discovered by preclinical investigators (from Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Misanin and Miller1968; Misanin et al. Reference Misanin, Miller and Lewis1968; to Nadel et al. Reference Nadel, Hupbach, Gomez and Newman-Smith2012; Nader et al. Reference Nader, Hardt and Lanius2013; Schwabe et al. Reference Schwabe, Nader and Pruessner2014) may explain how emotionally troubling memories are transformed by being retrieved and recontextualized in positive/supportive affective contexts. Accordingly, psychotherapies may also be facilitated by pharmacological facilitators – for example, glycine receptor partial agonists such as d-cycloserine and GLYX-13, which appear effective antidepressants that work by directly promoting positive social affects, as evaluated in preclinical models (Burgdorf et al. Reference Burgdorf, Panksepp and Moskal2011).

We applaud the search for neurobiological underpinnings of psychotherapies that improve client care. However, we find the extensive use of “implicit emotions” in the target article to be problematic, (i) because it suggests affective experiences cannot be had without explicit syntactic reflections, properly called “awareness,” (ii) which would seemingly exclude other animals from being affectively vibrant creatures, a view not supported by cross-species data (Panksepp Reference Panksepp1998), and (iii) as a result of the debatable quality of data summarized supporing unconscious emotions, where many cited studies (e.g., Winkielman & Berridge Reference Winkielman and Berridge2004) may have missed experiential shifts because the most sensitive tools were not deployed (e.g., Shevrin et al. Reference Shevrin, Panksepp, Brakel and Snodgrass2012).

Although top-down perspectives on emotional feelings are widespread among investigators of human emotions, bottom-up affective neuroscience perspectives highlight that rewarding and punishing circuits in animal brain, constituting affective experiences, arise from subcortical circuits (Panksepp & Biven Reference Panksepp and Biven2012). Memory reconsolidation is surely critical for psychotherapeutic change, with affective reshaping of troubling memories being critical for all successful psychotherapies, from cognitive/behavioral to psychodynamic ones. Still, memory reconsolidation may be an outcome of successful treatment, rather than its sole driving cause. There is more to effective therapeutic engagements than just memory reconsolidation.

We also need to place memory reconsolidation that results from high positive affective arousal in evolutionary/developmental frameworks of attachment theory. This includes explicitly recognizing the negative affect of separation distress as aroused by PANIC circuitry in the brain (please note that capitalizations are our standard nomenclature for primary-process, subcortical affective systems; below we also include the best vernacular descriptor of the feeling each system promotes; please see Panksepp Reference Panksepp1998). This also includes various interrelated subcortically concentrated positive emotions, especially SEEKING, CARE, and PLAY (Panksepp Reference Panksepp1998; Panksepp & Biven Reference Panksepp and Biven2012). All are critical for optimal therapeutic benefits (Marks-Tarlow Reference Marks-Tarlow2012; Reference Marks-Tarlow2014; Panksepp et al. Reference Panksepp, Wright, Döbrössy, Schlaepfer and Coenen2014). Mere activation of the SEEKING circuit through deep brain stimulation (DBS) can alleviate depression (Schlaepfer et al. Reference Schlaepfer, Bewernick, Kayser, Mädler and Coenen2013). So can medicines, such as GLYX-13, which was discovered by analysis of PLAY networks (Burgdorf et al. Reference Burgdorf, Panksepp and Moskal2011; fast-tracked by the FDA [http://www.news-medical.net/news/20140304/Naurexs-GLYX-13-receives-FDA-Fast-Track-designation.aspx]). Such unconditional benefits are attributable not just to reconsolidation, but also to shifts in the unconditional affective dynamics that redirect cognitive activities.

Cognitive processing is essential for conscious “awareness,” but primal affective experiences (qualia), inferred from rewarding and punishing brain states, do not require the neocortex (Merker Reference Merker2007; Panksepp Reference Panksepp1998; Solms & Panksepp Reference Solms and Panksepp2012). Well-timed arousal of primal affective processes without reflective cognitive experiences (which Lane et al. would call “implicit”) may be essential for memory reconsolidation to proceed. This vision respects evolutionary levels of the mind, evident in the neuroanatomy and functions of basic emotional systems (e.g., those that survive neo-decortication in animal models). Affectively instigated memory reconsolidation may proceed by “Laws of Affect” yet to be neuroscientifically deciphered (Panksepp Reference Panksepp2011). It is possible that troubling memories are transformed by subcortical neurochemistries that mediate primal positive affects, especially of SEEKING, CARE, and PLAY (see Panksepp & Biven Reference Panksepp and Biven2012). Without such perspectives, namely compelling bottom-up affective neuroevolutionary views, the “neuro-psycho-mechanics” of successful psychotherapy may never be understood. Therapeutic reconsolidation, at its best, may reflect the psychodynamic induction of affectively positive “attractor landscapes” during the recall of miserable memories, yielding new ways of being that can yield lasting changes in character structure.

A comprehensive understanding of memory reconsolidation may also require conceptual frameworks of dynamic systems theory. Rather than functioning as linear processes that move from past to present to future, memory reconsolidation may represent a nonlinear neurodynamic where experiences of past, present, and future, evolutionary and existential, promote new psychic coherences (Marks-Tarlow Reference Marks-Tarlow2008).

From bottom-up perspectives, perhaps reconsolidating therapeutic transitions reflect positive primal (unreflectively experienced) affective systems being aroused, such that they recontextualize troubling cognitive perspectives, with ancient regions of the mind controlling how more recent ones think (Panksepp & Biven Reference Panksepp and Biven2012). Amplifying Lane et al.'s position, we propose that skilled therapists are adept at promoting affectively positive attractor landscapes in the midst of emotionally troubling therapeutic cognitive conversations, softening painful edges of memories, yielding new cognitive perspectives.

Emotional arousals evoked by therapeutic interactions often push therapist/patient dyads far from equilibrium, into negative, trauma-ridden, affective spaces that need repair. Therapists who explicitly wish to promote reconsolidation may need to skillfully coax primal affective tone toward more positive, reparative brain-mind dynamics. In therapeutic exchanges, skilled clinicians must intuitively navigate, like sailboats in brisk winds, with raw affective energies (subcortically mediated) recontextualizing associated cortico-cognitive information through temporarily open affective boundaries. Here, far from equilibrium, at the edge of chaos, positive affective arousals can soften troubling cognitive complexities in highly beneficial ways. But that can happen only if the right subcortical affective gusts can be evoked – the ones that promote reconsolidation processes to change past negativistic perspectives through bottom-up “Laws of Affect” barely understood (Panksepp Reference Panksepp2004; Reference Panksepp2011). The remarkable positive affective power of PLAY (Marks-Tarlow 2015; in press; Panksepp Reference Panksepp2008), which remains poorly conceptualized in most psychotherapies, may provide, with due sensitivity, clinical climates to promote successful treatments.

Therefore, we share cautionary notes about treating memory reconsolidation too reductively or mechanistically, before we understand the extensive experiential nature of raw affects, which clearly have many subcortical loci of control, in the neuro-mental economy, a neuroscientific project that has barely gotten off the ground. This said, we both enthusiastically agree that reconsolidation is a major breakthrough toward our future understanding of how clinically beneficial memorial/psychotherapeutic dynamics emerge within the brain (Nadel et al. Reference Nadel, Hupbach, Gomez and Newman-Smith2012; Nader et al. Reference Nader, Hardt and Lanius2013; Schwabe et al. Reference Schwabe, Nader and Pruessner2014).