Next Big Breakthrough
Dr Terry Marks-Tarlow
Big Question
“What is the next big breakthrough you are waiting for in mental health?”
Ibelieve the next important revolution in mental health involves the full embrace of nonlinear science. This holistic paradigm is large and flexible, with methods and models that span the full complexity of how one mind/body/brain system can interact and emerge out of other mind/body/brain systems.
I was originally led into this field of study indirectly, through my deep friendship with the late and great, Nobel-winning physicist, Richard Feynman. Feynman was inspirational, in taking no body of knowledge for granted and encouraging everybody to be curious and ask big questions. I labored for decades to read original sources on nonlinear subfields of chaos theory, complexity theory, and fractal geometry. My struggles to understand these strange new topics felt worthwhile, because I could envision how nonlinear science would bridge multidisciplinary realms. It could preserve the mystery to blend the art of psychotherapy with its scientific and spiritual dimensions.
In 2008 I published Psyche’s Veil: Psychotherapy, Fractals and Complexity (Routledge; Foreword, Daniel Siegel). The book took 12 years to write and is case-based, with science boxes and original drawings. [ go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvPH94TMhY0 for a video of Psyche’s Veil as interpreted through children’s dance]. I proudly hoped to help usher in a major paradigm shift in the mental health field.
Important points in a nutshell include:
1. Chaos theory tells us that no matter how well we understand a complex system in present time (like a person’s psyche, predicament, or developmental history), we can neither predict its future accurately nor control it;
2. Complexity theory turns notions of health and pathology upside down; healthy states of mind, brain, and body are demonstrate some chaos and variability, while unhealthy states are stable and regular;
3. Fractal geometry models holistic, universal patterns in nature, where the pattern of the whole is repeated in the pattern of the parts; whether as patterns in space or in time, fractals model fuzzy, paradoxical boundaries between mind and brain, mind and body, self and other, and inner/subjective versus outer/objective processes broadly.
Despite my excitement, the book received little attention. I was invited to give few lectures (except at Tavistock, which was fantastic!). As I recall, the book wan’t even reviewed. While I take responsibility for being lousy at self-promotion, I have also come to realize that math and science scare away my fellow practitioners.
I learned my lesson and realized I would have to slip nonlinear topics in “through the back door” in any future work. I believe my writing is now more accessible and user-friendly. My last book, Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy: The Neurobiology of Embodied Response (Norton, 2012; Foreword, Allan Schore), discovered a topic that applies in an experience-near, heart-felt way to every practitioner within the mental health field, regardless of degree or orientation. My hope was to give readers just a taste of nonlinear topics in this book, so that they might return to Psyche’s Veil for more.
Here is why clinical intuition is nonlinear:
- Its workings can’t be predicted;
- Its subcortical roots can’t be reductively analyzed or broken down into parts or steps;
- It is a self-organized, nonconscious faculty whose products are spontaneous and emergent;
- As a clinical mode, it is indispensable to change and most associated with novelty, growth, and creativity during psychotherapy.
I believe it’s only a matter of time before people realize the advantages of nonlinear science. Nonlinear lenses help us to view the full complexity of the psyche as embedded in physiological processes on the one hand, and cultural processes on the other hand, with intricate feedback loops in both directions.
Thanks to the Neuropsychotherapist for the platform to rant and rave on this topic. Perhaps this opportunity to speak out can help to usher in that paradigm shift after all!
I’m a fan of non linear perspectives and admire your push to incorporate them. My background in Cognitive Neuroscience has lead me to integrate non traditional perspectives into therapy. one of which was developing an immediate relief for panic attacks based on the neurological structure of the brain. I think you are just ahead of the field. I know I was when I started integrating a more diverse scientific approach to understanding and treating mental health. I had to prove my methods before anyone would even consider it as an option. The main issue in mental health is the historic adherence to inferences over function, rather than function leading to inferences. The incorporation of new theories that utilize Neuroscience, nonlinear theories, etc. create a truly holistic approach that will hopefully gain ground soon.
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your supportive response!
I spent many years wondering if my integrative vision was wrong or even crazy. Slowly, over time, I have gotten more confident of its truth value, including its possibility of providing a counterpoint to the postmodern quagmire within clinical psychoanalytic theory.
Hopefully, my intellectual loneliness has been indeed that of a foreruner. Meanwhile, your work with panic attacks sounds interesting as well. Do you have a paper to share?
I haven’t published the ideas yet, other than my thesis. You are welcome to a copy or the chapter. E-mail me at [email protected] and we can discuss it more. I spent 8 years in Cognitive Neuroscience before moving to what I always wanted to do, therapy. I don’t have a lab anymore so I wasn’t sure if dozens of clients and word of mouth results around town was worthy enough for publication or perhaps an op-ed piece. Maybe through Neuropsychotherapist? Or Collaboration? Not sure. Either way, I think you’ll find the premise and conclusion interesting.
I just stumbled across this site so am looking at the articles, your books look really interesting I will certainly be checking them out.
I am a counsellor/psychotherapist working in the UK and hoping to do my Masters on the connections between neuroscience and psychotherapy. I’m particularly interested in how the latest research in neuroscience could start to bridge the gap between the work of Carl Rogers and other disciplines, and perhaps turn the current CBT/medical model hegemony we have over here on its head Thanks for posting I hope to run across more of your work!
Hi Rob, Very nice to make your virtual acquaintance. I’m so glad you found this website and have begun checking out my work. I think you will find great congruence between the client-centered approach of Carl Rogers and my presentation of clinical intuition from the relational perspective of interpersonal neurobiology. I’m completely behind and on board your agenda of fighting the medical model with more holistic and integrated approaches.
Good luck with your endeavors, and do stay in touch!
Terry
This may be slightly off-topic but I’d like to ask how the various theories about consciousness might impact your understanding of what goes on in the therapy dyad. I’m thinking in particular of the idea that consciousness could be one of the fundamental forces of the universe, as posited by David Chalmers. I’m interested in what takes place at the ‘consciousness’ level in the therapeutic relationship. If consciousness is some kind of field, for example, it could provide possible explanations. In depth psychology patients often find themselves bonding to their therapists in an extraordinary fashion. Could this be because the therapy encounter has somehow facilitated a temporary sharing of their respective areas of the consciousness field. Patients also often regress in therapy. Could this be because they have accessed the consciousness field in a way which has enabled them to experience a temporal shift? (I’m imagining now a consciousness field that exists outwith the normal bounds of time and space.)
I would be interested in your thoughts.
Hi Hilda, I think this is a great question that I would like to answer from my clinical experience. When I think about a “field of consciousness,” ironically, I think about ways in which we are all connected at unconsciousness levels, beneath the surface of everyday awareness. Here is an example I have written about. After months of impasse, a patient came into a session with a very uncharacteristic dream. It was nothing like anything she had ever dreamed. Instead it reflected my own repetitive childhood dreams and had the effect of re-stimulating movement in our work together. I believe that babies and animals naturally and intuitively tap into this field, but that adults have to turn off their thinking minds in order to do so.