Synergetics in psychology: Patterns and pattern transitions in human change processes

Abstract

Synergetics has arrived in psychology. More than this – it has proven to be an inspiring research paradigm for investigating and modelling complexity and dynamics of mental, behavioural, and social phenomena. The evolution of human systems is characterized by features as circular causality, the emergence and dynamics of order parameters, order transitions, and critical instabilities. Psychotherapy research was one of the most productive fields for empirical research on self-organization in psychology. Referring to several studies on psychotherapy processes we will demonstrate that human development and learning generate some kind of order. They are chaotic in a strict sense, i.e., they can be characterized by low-dimensional, complex, and changing dynamics. Empirical studies used different data sources, coding methods, and time scales and focused on synchronization, non-stationarity, and local instabilities of psychotherapeutic processes. Referring to the concept of order transitions, synergetics offers an explanation to what is called “sudden changes” in psychotherapy. Empirical evidence also exists for coordinated order transitions in the dynamics of subjective experiences and brain activity, measured by repeated fMRI scans. During the treatment of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), transitions started by the destabilization of current patterns and hence by critical fluctuations. The most important change rates of neuronal activity in different brain areas occurred during cognitive-affective order transitions.