Langs’ research led him to posit the existence of a mental module he termed the "emotion-processing mind," a psychic function which evolved to ensure the survival of the species.
He maintained that he had identified the assets and limitations of the emotion processing mind clinically and shown how the insights from this approach can help correct adaptive deficits, allowing more fulfilling lives, both individually and collectively.
[4] Langs therefore rejects the prevailing belief among psychoanalytic traditions that sexual or aggressive wishes and fantasies, the need for sound relationships with and affirmations from others, or self-actualization are the main issues in emotional life (see psychoanalysis).
For Langs, the latter may be significant in any given clinical situation but precisely to the extent that they raise issues associated with emotional adaptation.
The unconscious mind evolved, according to Langs, due to the development of language acquisition, which brought with it the uniquely human awareness of the future and, correspondingly, the sense of our own mortality and other death-related issues.
This realization of mortality is often evoked by traumatic incidents and, thus, the anxiety-provoking ramifications of those experiences are barred from consciousness, though perceived unconsciously and then adaptively processed towards resolution.
Thus an important goal of adaptive therapy is to access the wisdom of the unconscious mind, which is denied at the conscious level due to the pain and anxiety associated with the traumatic event.
[7] According to Langs, the activities of unconscious processing reach the conscious mind solely through the encoded messages that are conveyed in narrative communications like dreams.
[10] In summary, Langs' approach to psychotherapy is deeply rooted in the psychoanalytic tradition, but differs from mainstream psychoanalysis in significant ways: he (1) draws his approach from evolutionary biology and the principle of adaptation; (2) treats the unconscious according to adaptive principles; (3) roots psychic conflict fundamentally in death anxiety and death-related traumas.
Among these genre are systematic psychoanalytic investigations, training texts, substantive transcripts from supervision sessions, popular books of applied psychoanalysis, plays, historical-analytical studies.
[citation needed] Dr. Langs wrote and lectured all over the world on dreams, emotions, unconscious communication, and the science of the mind.
[12] Langs is best known for his rigorous emphasis on establishing and maintaining a secure frame for analysis, his development of the concept of the bi-personal field, and his extensive documentation of encoded transference derivatives in the analytic interaction.
Langs' early work borrows heavily from leading classical psychoanalysts, above all from Freud, as well as from authors in the broader psychoanalytic tradition such as Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, Harold Searles, Ralph Greenson, Michael Balint, and Willy and Madeleine Baranger.
As Raney put it in his introduction: "In a little more than a decade, Robert Langs has made a remarkable contribution to the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
As a result of his determined search for the unconscious meanings of emotional disturbance, he has reworked older psychoanalytic ideas and introduced major innovations in psychotherapeutic understanding and technique.
"[26] The articles of this collection aim to "extend, criticize, and apply Langs's ideas in novel areas from their unique clinical perspectives".
Also during this period, Langs initiated book-length clinical dialogues with prominent psychoanalysts, including Harold Searles[25] and Leo Stone,[28] as well as an extended discussion on transference and countertransference with Margaret Little.
Nonetheless it is the investigations and conclusions derived from both phases together that constitute Langs' current approach, which he has most recently termed "the adaptive paradigm of psychotherapy".
These factors entailed a set of puzzles requiring some level of resolution, including why the mind would react against what it knows unconsciously to be healing?
Hence the work of the adaptive therapist includes learning to hear the encoded derivative communications both to discover the sources of psychic conflict which arise from the diverse points of view the conscious and unconscious systems have on life events, with a specific focus on death anxiety and death-related traumas and, second, to obtain encoded validation of therapeutic interventions.
[49] The fourth phase of Langs' career, from about the mid-1990s until the end of his life in the 2010s, came in the wake of this expanded view of the psyche, and led to new clinical theses.
The deep unconscious system contains, among other things, intense experiences associated with death, because the conscious mind feels too overwhelmed by them.
Consequently, due to evolutionary alterations of the emotion-processing mind, denial and obliteration rather than repression are the basic defenses of the psyche.
Nonetheless, facing these anxieties and learning how to process the emotional experiences which arise from them, is one of the key purposes of the adaptive approach to therapy.
[51] Lang's death anxiety theory also highly correlates to the ideas and findings of Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist and one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology.
Nonetheless, Cwik added that Langs, "with some tempering of his extreme sense of certainty, [has] illuminated a teaching interaction which is at the core of our craft.,.
[57] In contrast, the psychoanalyst and Jesuit William Meissner considered the book "a provocative and thought-provoking account that will challenge many of the convictions and persuasions of analytically oriented thinkers about these topics".
It is by its nature a component of the science of evolutionary biology whose central task entails the scientific study of the evolution and adaptive resources of the emotion processing mind.
Thus the task of the adaptive psychotherapist is to aid the client to come to grips with such triggers and learn how to process the emotional traumas, past and present, associated with them.
The members of the human species, on Langs' account, are therefore highly susceptible to denial and obliteration of the deepest traumas, more or less guaranteeing that they will not be healed and tending them to deep unconscious death anxieties, profound guilt, violent acting out and other emotional disturbances.