Dissipative processes in psychology: From the psyche to totality

Abstract

This paper articulates a possible framework for understanding and resolving psychopatho-logical phenomena from the perspective of chaos theory and based on the application of Ilya Prigogine's concepts of dissipative structures and processes. Twenty-eight years in clinical practice have shown the human being to be memory-inheritance, which produces a type of "psychological DNA." The personality is thereby crystallized, generating dynamic patterns (fractals) in its interference with reality. Although necessary for living, this crystallization is imprisoning. Once the shadow of memory has been resolved and dissolved, the person achieves reorganizing and transrational processes. We develop the concepts of the emergent crisis and vortices such as sensitivity, instability and bifurcation, considering the symptom to be a trigger for healing-transformation.