Dr. Wolfgang Tschacher ist Dozent im Psychiatrischen Institut der Universität Bern.Günter Schiepek ist Professor für Psychologie an den Universitäten Krems und Bamberg und Leiter des Forschungsprojekts 'Synergetik der Psychotherapie' am Universitätsklinikum der RWTH Aachen sowie Direktor des Center for Complex Systems (Stuttgart). Seine Arbeitsschwerpunkte sind die Synergetik und Dynamik nichtlinearer Systeme in der Psychologie und in den Neurowissenschaften, Prozess-Outcome-Forschung in der Psychotherapie, Neurobiologie der Psychotherapie, Computerbasiertes Real-Time Monitoring in verschiedenen Anwendungsfeldern, Sozialpsychologie, Management und Kompetenzforschung. Schiepek ist Wissenschaftlicher Beirat zahlreicher Institute, Verbände und Fachzeitschriften und hat zahlreiche internationale und deutschsprachige Publikationen veröffentlicht.Prof. Dr. Ewald Johannes Brunner ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls Pädagogische Psychologie an der Universität Jena.

This book presents a fascinating account of how ideas of chaos theory and non-linear dynamics are bearing fruit in the field of psychology. New descriptions of mental health in terms of bifurcations, instabilities and critical fluctuations will interest both the scientist and the practitioner alike.

I Synergetics in Psychology: Basic Issues.- Application of Synergetics to Clinical Psychology.- Synergetics in Psychology.- Chaos in Health and Disease - Phenomenology and Theory.- Chaos and Disorder.- Instability and Cognitive Order Formation: Self-Organization Principles, Psychological Experiments, and Psychotherapeutic Interventions.- II Simulation and Empirically Based Models of Self-Organizing Processes.- Simulation of Psychological Processes: Basic Issues and an Illustration Within the Etiology of a Depressive Disorder.- Simulating Clinical Processes by Population Dynamics.- Synergetics in Psychiatry - Simulation of Evolutionary Patterns of Schizophrenia on the Basis of Nonlinear Difference Equations.- Dynamical Systems and the Development of Schizophrenic Symptoms - An Approach to a Formalization.- Psychiatric Disorders: Are They "Dynamical Diseases"?.- Using Multivariate Time Series Models in Systemic Analysis.- Interactional Bifurcations in Human Interaction - A Formal Approach.- III Self-Organizing Processes in Psychotherapy.- Synergetics of Psychotherapy.- Theories of Self-Organizing Processes and the Contribution of Immediate Interaction to Change in Psychotherapy.- System-Theoretical Prerequisites Concerning Paradoxical Intervention.- GOLEM - Two Adaptive Systems Communicate.- The Relation Between Mental and Social Systems.- Clinical Constellations: A Concept for Therapeutic Practice.- IV Studies of Social and Mental Self-Organization.- Self-Organization in Social Groups.- Applicability of Dimension Analysis to Data in Psychology.- The System Game as a Research Paradigm for Self-Organization Processes in Complex Social Systems.- The Systemic Character of the Psychosocial and Psychiatric Health Services.- Recursive Interaction and the Dynamicsof Knowledge Production in Research Groups: An Empirical Simulation of Knowledge Production.- Author Index.

Self-organization and clinical psychology signals the adventof a new paradigm in psychology. Physicists, neuroscientistsand individual and grouptherapists have joined forces toelucidate the new and exciting advances that are beingachieved by applying the concepts of non-linear dynamics andself-organization to the human nervous system and the mind.