Nonlinear Psychoanalysis: Notes from Forty Years of Chaos and Complexity Theory , by Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, Routledge,
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Book Review Nonlinear Psychoanalysis: Notes from Forty Years of Chaos and Complexity Theory, by Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2017, 273pp.
We are currently participating in a radical shift from a linear mechanistic worldview that is reductionist in its understanding of the world to a nonlinear dynamic worldview that takes interaction and holism as its foundations. Working at what is referred to as the edge of chaos is a challenging, but exciting possibility, where small inputs lead to large changes and where strange attractors and fractals emerge in novel, creative, sudden and surprising manners. Given the advances in chaos and complexity theory over the past half-century, it seems to me vital that psychoanalysts become more familiar and well versed with nonlinear dynamic systems theory in order to further our understanding of the mysteries of the psychoanalytic process. And Galatzer-Levy’s book, Nonlinear Psychoanalysis: Notes from Forty Years of Chaos and Complexity Theory, should, in my estimation, become a classic in this new tradition. Freud, naturally influenced by the science of his times, held a linear mechanistic worldview. Linear dynamical systems refer to relationships that are proportional. Changes in variables over time are related to each other in a proportional manner. The crucial point is that linear dynamic thinking leads to perceiving the world as continuous, smooth and orderly. Small changes in input lead to small changes in output, whereas larger and larger changes in input lead to larger and larger changes in output. From this perspective, where order reigns and cause-and-effect are proportional, abrupt change is an illusion. Galatzer-Levy writes, ‘‘The analyst postulates that underlying such apparent abrupt changes and reorganizations is some continuous, orderly transformation. The only thing that is thought to change abruptly is manifest behavior or consciousness’’ (p. 179). In other words, the analyst influenced by a linear mechanistic model attempts to understand abrupt change by turning the narrative into a cohesive, continuous and smooth story. This is accomplished by assuming and searching for early and unconscious material in order to fill in the gaps, thereby indicating that the apparent abruptness of the change was in actuality an illusion. From a nonlinear dynamic worldview, abrupt change may very well be real. Nonlinear dynamical systems are far more complex and disorderly than linear dynamical systems. Proportionality is thrown out the window, and the focus of nonlinear dynamics is on variables that tended to be overlooked from a linear dynamics perspective. ‘‘The genius of Chaos theory was to invert the order of interest and to focus on the disorder, rather than considering it as simply an interference with
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the prevailing orderly development’’ (Levenson, 1994, p. 18). Weather systems are a classic example of nonlinear dynamics—prediction is impossible beyond short periods of time because very small differences in initial conditions can l
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