Courting the Edge of Chaos: A Review of “Self-Organizing Complexity in Psychological Systems,” Edited by Craig Piers, John P. Muller, and Joseph Brent

Abstract

The argument in the book, Self-Organizing Complexity in Psychological Systems, edited by Craig Piers, John P. Muller, and Joseph Brent, is that complexity theory, if not “the parent science of psychoanalysis,” has proven enormously useful in describing the process of analytic change. Particularly, most of the authors aver that psychoanalysis must destabilize or perturb old and rigid expectancies and affective patterns in order to promote new relationship configurations.

Keywords:

• complexity theory
• edge of chaos
• fittedness
• neuronetworks
• paradigm shift
• self-organization