Dynamic systems theories as a basic framework for psychoanalysis

Nonlinear dynamic systems theory provides a “metaframework” for psychoanalysis. It offers metaphors and aesthetics to help analysts become more precise, spacious, and immediate. Analytic therapists tolerate uncertainty, find meaning in apparently disordered communication, and embrace the unexpected twists and turns that emerge from intimate attention to the ordinary complexities of everyday life. Although systems theory may appear esoteric, it can be approached in an intuitive, experience-near way to clarify mental processes that defy categorization and linear explanation: It emphasizes such descriptors as pattern, complexity, flux and flow, the interplay of ambiguity and order, stability and instability, and the natural value of uncertainty and generative chaos. Dynamic systems theories are neither linear nor reductionistic. They do not supplant the psychological subjective level of analysis that is indispensable to our work and thus do not drag analysis away from its most imaginative virtues. The systems theories link to the natural sciences without biological reductionism. In this chapter, I survey several core concepts in systems theory, further develop the idea that analyses are dynamic systems, and then apply the core concepts to psychopathology and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.