The Network Effect

Reflective Network Therapy goes far beyond interpretations and insight for the child patients. It uses classroom educational structure and social, networks as a means for emotionally invested and therefore powerful brain exercise, which helps reverse atrophy or underdevelopment of residual internal, neural networks.

The term Reflective Network Therapy (RNT) refers to several levels of concepts. Reflective Network Therapy concepts include mental and emotional reflection within individuals as well as within social networks.  “Reflective” refers to the use of the power of discourse, especially giving verbalized thoughts in conversations with a child about what goes on in the child's mind and in the minds of others in the classroom.  There is interpersonal and intersubjective mirroring of emotions and thought by the adults and children in the RNT classroom.  The “network” concept has at least three levels or components:

Interpersonal − meaning relationships between the child and people in the child’s classroom treatment situation.

Intrapsychic − meaning the mental representations of other persons and the emotional life of the child who is being treated.

Neuronal − meaning the possible effects on the child of having his brain development enriched by the stimulation of classroom education, treatment, peer and family activities conducted for his benefit.

In practice, Reflective Network Therapy employs two primary uses of the terms “reflect” or “reflection” -- thinking about and expressing the caring and thoughtful mirroring of a child’s inner life by others. The therapeutic team of adult and peer helpers (therapist, teachers, parents/primary caregivers, and classmates) express their thinking or internal reflections--perceptions about the child.  They talk and express feelings about what the child is thinking and doing, as well as reflections about his or her behaviors, relationships, events and interactions within the classroom.  Internal reflections of the participants, when expressed and externalized in language, expression and complex behavior, produce “mirroring” for the child. This is done in a manner which stimulates emotive exercise, including exercise of the limbic system and associated mirror neurons, as well as the brain’s entire cognitive apparatus. The cognitive apparatus is a widely distributed neural system in the two brain hemispheres, which actively communicate with each other and across many brain centers.  The in-classroom use of network therapy gives emotionally charged and positively toned support for the child in the midst of cognitive exercise. These charged internal reflections of others about and for the child, externalized in verbalizations and emotional expressions, reflect back to the child how he is perceived as perceiving and feeling.  It teaches him how others think and feel about his mental life.

Moreover, everyone in the network shares reflections.  The child becomes a member of the reflective team on his own behalf. The team’s reflections are produced on the spot during Cornerstone’s structured and unstructured educational activities, during individual therapy sessions, and during hundreds of briefings and debriefings about what has been going on with the child to which the child is not only privy but in which the child also participates. A complex network of therapeutic interactions is followed throughout the classroom day. These interactions exercise the child’s emotional and underlying brain processes, leading to mental health improvements and cognitive development.  Rather than focusing on whether the child’s behavior is socially acceptable or on task, this method quickly generates internal rewards, motivation for social and cognitive tasks and develops skills which are emotionally positively charged by interpersonal transactions.  Learning becomes based in part on intensive exercising of positive self-perceptions experienced through in-classroom and team-guided family relationships. The term network also takes into account my respect for the value of an interdisciplinary and multigenerational team. The child’s treatment situation is deliberately designed as a network of children, parents, teachers and therapists --with mental and emotional mirroring and reflections among all of them-- right in the children’s real life classroom space.