HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1603719
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Interaction between Self and Other in the Clinical Setting: The Role of Inter-SubjectivityView all 9 articles
Psychotherapy as Investigation: Cultivating Curiosity and Insight in the Therapeutic Process
Provisionally accepted
- 1Mindfulness Center, School of Public Health, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States
- 2Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University, Providence, United States
- 3Nous-School of Specialization (PsyD) in Psychotherapy, Milano, Italy
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Psychotherapy training and practice have grown increasingly complex, driven by expanding diagnostic frameworks, theoretical models, and intervention methods. This complexity can at best confuse and at worst overwhelm therapists, limiting therapeutic effectiveness and obscuring the relational core that is crucial to successful therapy. In this paper, we explore a different path than increasing complexity: simplicity. Specifically, drawing on recent insights from psychotherapy research and neuroscience, we highlight the intimate connection between simplicity and curiosity and how different types of curiosity can be operationalized in the therapeutic setting. We also explore how curiosity interacts with generative models or narratives that patients (and therapists) can be overidentified with, leading to confirmation bias. Also, we highlight how curiosity and simplicity can mutually foster each other in the therapeutic relationship, co-emerging as a strong driving factor for therapeutic insight and change. Further, we explore the relationship between curiosity and interoceptive awareness, which can be operationally enhanced by embodied practices (e.g. mindfulness, meditation etc.). Ultimately, rather than the accumulation of knowledge, psychotherapy that centers on curiosity empowers clients towards exploration and adaptive flexibility to foster autonomy and insight, while potentially protecting psychotherapists from stagnation, fostering continued personal and professional growth.
Keywords: Psychotherapy, curiosity, predictive procesing, mindfulness, training - coaching - monitoring
Received: 31 Mar 2025; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Brewer and Giommi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Judson Brewer, Mindfulness Center, School of Public Health, Brown University, Providence, 02903, Rhode Island, United States
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