Digital Commons Network^™

Coherence, Complexity, And Information Flow: Self-Organizing Processes In Psychotherapy, David Pincus

Psychology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter is written in the spirit of optimism, suggesting that self-organization is just such a general theory that may assist in providing a deeper, scientifically grounded understanding of the complex biopsychosocial processes involved in psychotherapy. To provide some foundation to this rather grand suggestion, the following review rests on five more specific theoretical propositions stemming from self-organization theory... The analysis of these propositions begins with an integrative review of traditional theories of interpersonal process through the lens of nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) and self-organization theory in particular. Next, the contemporary empirical and theoretical developments using NDS to understand psychotherapy …