Psychotherapy: The Search for Chaos and the Discovery of Determinism

Abstract

The search for a science of psychoanalysis is introduced by defining three modes of psychoanalytic science: domain, statistical-stochastic, and formal. The paper outlines the domain science propositions of the communicative approach to psychoanalytic psychotherapy and indicates how this version of psychoanalytic theory led to the development of an extensive series of statistical-stochastic and formal science studies of the communications between patients and therapists. The formal science efforts which began as a mathematical search for chaotic attractors revealed instead a deep determinism within the psychotherapeutic dialogue. Three specific laws of the mind and human communication have been identified. The research is centred on how we communicate (the communicative vehicle) rather than what we express (the contents). After describing a wide range of unexpected and unprecedented results, the paper concludes with a discussion of some of the clinical implications of these findings and of the new formal science of psychoanalysis created by these investigations.