Hermann Haken

Wolfgang Tschacher

This book describes an encompassing modeling approach to psychotherapy, created with the most recent research in the field. Therapeutic interventions are staged within a therapist-client relationship ('alliance'), and become effective by the interplay of deterministic ('causation') and stochastic ('chance') forces. The authors use a Fokker-Planck approach complemented by a structural-mathematical framework from complexity theory. Chapters present statistical tools, which can be applied to analyze the differing time series that depict therapeutic processes. Chapters include examples of how to use these tools within research. The approach adopted in the book – contemporary psychotherapy terminology combined with a systems-theoretical model and algorithms for quantitative psychotherapy research – has the potential to become the new benchmark in psychotherapy. The Process of Psychotherapy is an informative and sophisticated resource for all levels of students, from undergraduate through post-doctoral studies, in the fields of psychology, cognitive psychology, and psychotherapy.

Causation and Chance

The Process of Psychotherapy

Claudia Bergomi

This edited volume is scientifically based, but readable for a larger audience, covering the concept of "embodied cognition" and its implications from a transdisciplinary angle. The contributions are from the fields of psychology, computer science, biology, philosophy, and psychiatry. First, the roots of embodiment are described with historical, computer-science, and phenomenological viewpoints. It is argued that embodied cognition is relevant for the discussion of intentionality, with a particular focus on underlying neural processes as well as the context of synergetics and self-organization theory. As cognition is socially embedded, a large section of this book concentrates on "embodied communication": How does embodiment influence the way to approach others, what role do body movements play in social interaction, what is the function of nonverbal synchrony in interpersonal relationships and psychotherapy? Embodied cognitive agents are further embedded in particular cultural and environmental contexts. This book thus addresses the active role that cultural and environmental aspects play in driving cognition. Some applications of embodiment, e.g. to psychotherapy and aesthetics are also presented.

Cognition and Communication

The Implications of Embodiment

Günter Schiepek

Ewald J. Brunner

Self-organization and clinical psychology signals the advent of a new paradigm in psychology. Physicists, neuroscientists and individual and grouptherapists have joined forces to elucidate the new and exciting advances that are being achieved by applying the concepts of non-linear dynamics and self-organization to the human nervous system and the mind.

Empirical Approaches to Synergetics in Psychology

Self-Organization and Clinical Psychology

Sergio Salvatore

Omar Carlo Gioacchino Gelo

Sabine C Koch

In an attempt to cease from reducing the world and its (emergent) phenomena to linear modeling and analytic dissection, Dynamic Systems Theories (DST) and Embodiment theories and methods aim at accounting for the complex, dynamic, and non-linear phenomena that we constantly deal with in psychology. For instance, DST and Embodiment can enrich psychology’s understanding of the communicative process both in clinical and non-clinical settings. In psychotherapy, an important amount of research has shown that – next to other ingredients – the therapeutic relationship is the most important active factor contributing to psychotherapy outcome. These findings give communication a central role in the psychotherapy process. In the traditional view, the underlying model of understanding psychotherapy processes is that of a number of components summatively coming together enabling us to make a linear causal prediction. Yet, communication is inherently dynamic. A shift to viewing the communication process in psychotherapy as a field dynamic phenomenon helps us to take into account nonlinear phenomena, such as feedback processes within and between persons. We thus propose an embodied enactive dynamic systems view as a new theoretical and methodological perspective that can more realistically capture what happens among and between two persons in psychotherapy. This view reaches beyond the current narrow model of psychotherapy research. DST and Embodied Enactive Approaches can offer solutions to the loss of non-linear phenomena, the complex dynamics of reality, and the holistic level of analysis. DST and Embodied Enactive Approaches have developed not in a single discipline but in a joined movement based on various fields such as physics, biology, robotics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology, and have only recently entered clinical theorizing. The two new paradigms have already triggered a rethinking of the therapeutic exchange by recognizing the embodied nature of psychological and communicative phenomena. Their integration opens up a promising scenario in the field of psychotherapy research, developing new, profoundly transdisciplinary, theoretical concepts, methodologies, and standards of knowledge. The notion of field dynamics enables us to account for the role of the communicational context in the regulation of intra-psychological processes, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of an ontologization of the hierarchy of systemic organization. Moreover, the new approach implements methodological strategies that can transcend the conventional opposition between idiographic and nomothetic sciences.

Dynamic systems theory and embodiment in psychotherapy research. A new look at process and outcome

Jean-Pierre Dauwalder

The shared platform of the articles collected in this volume is used to advocate a dynamical systems approach to cognition. It is argued that recent developments in cognitive science towards an account of embodiment, together with the general approach of complexity theory and dynamics, have a major impact on behavioral and cognitive science. The book points out that there are two domains that follow naturally from the stance of embodiment: first, coordination dynamics is an established empirical paradigm that is best able to aid the approach; second, the obvious goal-directedness of intelligent action (i.e., intentionality) is nicely addressed in the framework of the dynamical synergetic approach.

Concepts and Empirical Paradigms Based on Self-organization, Embodiment, and Coordination Dynamics

The Dynamical Systems Approach to Cognition

Gerald Hüther

Maja Storch

Benita Cantieni

Warum fällt es vielen Menschen so schwer, achtsam mit dem eigenen Körper umzugehen? Warum ist das Befassen mit dem eigenen Körper oft mit Peinlichkeit besetzt? Warum gilt nur als intelligent, wer Würfel im Raum drehen und lange Wörterlisten auswendig lernen kann? Warum geben Menschen die Autorität über ihren physischen Körper so bereitwillig ab an eine Wissenschaft, die ihn in scheinbar unzusammenhängende Einzelteile aufteilt? Maja Storch, Benita Cantieni, Gerald Hüther und Wolfgang Tschacher gehen in „Embodiment“ diesen Fragen nach und kommen einmütig zum Schluss: Es ist höchste Zeit, das wichtigste Erfahrungsinstrument des Menschen zurückzuerobern: den Körper. Sie fordern, das Prinzip Embodiment zu berücksichtigen. Wer Menschen berät, therapiert und erforscht, muss immer auch den Körper einbeziehen. Maja Storch beleuchtet, warum und wie die Psyche im Körper wohnt und wie im Zürcher-Ressourcen-Modell-Training (ZRM-Training) mit Embodiment gearbeitet wird. Wolfgang Tschacher zeigt auf, weshalb die Abspaltung des Geistes vom Körper nicht funktionieren kann. Gerald Hüther schildert, wie sich das gut funktionierende Gehirn und der gut funktionierende Körper gegenseitig bedingen. Benita Cantieni liefert schliesslich das anatomische Angebot: Richten Sie sich auf, richten Sie sich in Ihrem Körper ein. Mehr auch unter www.ismz.ch. „Das Wagnis, das die Autoren eingegangen sind, hat sich gelohnt. Es wird nachhaltige Wirkung auf die Gestaltung von Beratungs- und Therapieprozessen haben.“

die Wechselwirkung von Körper und Psyche verstehen und nutzen

Embodiment

Kommunikation beiginnt im Körper, nicht im Kopf

Embodied Communication

Wolfgang Tschacher

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