Schema Intervention—To Manage or To Transform

This chapter explores the changes brought about by psychotherapeutic intervention, distinguishing between incremental change, which neutralizes a target learning through new learning, and transformative change, which annuls and rewrites the target memory using the Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process (TRP). Some Schema Therapy (ST) interventions already incorporate elements that can encourage deeper transformations of problematic reality models. For this reason, understanding the steps of TRP can help facilitate this type of change: Reactivation of target learning (the schema to be transformed). Experience contradictory to the target learning (a mismatch triggering prediction error). Juxtaposition of the target learning and the contradictory experience (both cannot be true simultaneously). Repeating this juxtaposition allows the target learning to be erased and rewritten. While incremental change helps manage a schema, transformative change fundamentally alters it. Each process has distinct effects on the brain and is empirically validated. This chapter highlights the differences between these types of learning and the key ingredients necessary for emotional memory transformation. Two Schema Therapy techniques, Mindfulness Flash Card and Imagery Rescripting serve as examples of how TRP can be effectively applied to promote deep and lasting change.