A Chaotic Systems Model of Therapy

Therapy can be defined as “a systematic and intentional attempt, using a specific cluster of interpersonal skills, to assist another person to make self-determined improvements in behavior, affect, and/or cognitions” (Kottler & Brown, 1985, p. 44). Egan (1975/1990) describes a Helping Model of the therapeutic process which emphasizes action that leads to valued outcomes through a nine-stage process.

Goals must be the client’s goals, strategies must be the client’s strategies, and action plans must be the client’s plans. The helper’s job is to stimulate the client’s imagination and to help him or her in the search for incentives. (p. 49)

A chaotic systems model is one that uses the findings of modern chaos theory. Such a model can be used to describe the therapeutic process. The chaos theory of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, for example, describes how small stimuli can evoke massive responses. This finding has been used to explain the functioning of the olfactory system wherein a very small amount of stimuli, received by the olfactory bulb, is detected and magnified until it can be interpreted by the brain as a distinct smell (Freeman, 1991). Furthermore, testing food smells on rabbits has demonstrated that undergoing new experiences can actually change memory of older experiences. These two findings have led to a new understanding of the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) treatment (Flint, 1994).

The methodology used in EMDR is straightforward and relatively simplistic. The patient holds his or her attention on a particular trauma or bodily sensation while watching the therapist’s fingers moving in a back-and-forth motion. About 20 to 40 back-and-forth motions constitute one repetition of the technique. After several repetitions, the pain of a trauma or sensation is often lessened dramatically. Theoretically, the memory of a painful traumatic experience causes a unique pattern of neurological activity in the brain. Watching a moving finger, while in the relative safety of a therapeutic environment changes, or modifies the pattern, producing a lessening of the associated pain in many cases.

In chaos theory, the behavior of a complex system can be shown graphically on a plot called phase space. Each point on this plot represents the state space or specific condition of the system using primary system parameters (the main parameters that describe a system’s behavior). When a time history is used (when time is plotted along the x-axis), each point along the y-axis represents the state of the system at a given time. These plots are called trajectories and their shapes can tell us a lot about the behavior of the system. Sometimes several possible trajectories of a system will converge toward a point or region. Such points and regions are called attractors because they appear to attract a systems’s trajectory. The surrounding region of an attractor is called a basin.

Using the chaos theory of attractors, we can define neurological responses in the brain as attractors which give rise to particular behaviors (Flint, 1994). In a complex system such as the psyche, many attractors can be found, some in series with each other, and some giving rise to bifurcations (changes in one’s world view following periods of indecision). In a theraputic environment, these can be observed by the therapist in terms of their evoked sensory and motor responses.

In this model, we can define motivation, for example, as the state space of the psyche that exists within a specific environmental situation, in which the brain is destablized enough to evoke the low-level background activity of its neural networks or basins which correspond to previously learned activity that is meaningful in the current situation. In this state space, or phase space of the psyche, a small stimulus can generate a massive response resulting in information going out to all regions of the brain. In turn, this usually results in some kind of corresponding behavioral response. When the behavior results in beneficial situations (e.g., those that enhance survivability or that lead to pleasant or desired situations), the strength of the attractors is proportionally increased.

In this model, the client would describe one or more specific behavioral problems to the therapist who, in turn, would work with the client to form specific goals to work toward and measurable plans to reach those goals. These goals would become the desire attractors, and intermediate goals would be agreed upon as basins. The task of the therapist would then be to help guide the client from existing attractors to the desired ones through suitable bifurcations.

One of the tools that could be used in this process is the symbol. Tarot symbols, for example, can be used to stimulate the imagination of the client. During the short periods of instability (points of possible bifurcation) due to imaginative stimulation, small suggestions by the therapist would help drive the client toward the desired attractors. This is similar to the well-known therapeutic techniques used in family counseling described by Goldenberg & Goldenberg (1980/1991) of paradoxical communication, paradoxical intervention, and prescribing the symptom. All of these techniques use the paradox to induce periods of psychic instability in the client. However, the intended outcome of these interventions is not to create periods of uncertainty, but rather to allow for win-win outcomes for the client. Using the chaos model, the uncertainty can be used to perturb the patient’s psyche into the basin of the desired attractor.

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