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BMC Medicine
Published in: BMC Medicine 1/2020

01-12-2020 | Psychotherapy | Opinion

A complex systems approach to the study of change in psychotherapy

Authors: Adele M. Hayes, Leigh A. Andrews

Published in: BMC Medicine | Issue 1/2020

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Abstract

Background

A growing body of research highlights the limitations of traditional methods for studying the process of change in psychotherapy. The science of complex systems offers a useful paradigm for studying patterns of psychopathology and the development of more functional patterns in psychotherapy. Some basic principles of change are presented from subdisciplines of complexity science that are particularly relevant to psychotherapy: dynamical systems theory, synergetics, and network theory. Two early warning signs of system transition that have been identified across sciences (critical fluctuations and critical slowing) are also described. The network destabilization and transition (NDT) model of therapeutic change is presented as a conceptual framework to import these principles to psychotherapy research and to suggest future research directions.

Discussion

A complex systems approach has a number of implications for psychotherapy research. We describe important design considerations, targets for research, and analytic tools that can be used to conduct this type of research.

Conclusions

A complex systems approach to psychotherapy research is both viable and necessary to more fully capture the dynamics of human change processes. Research to date suggests that the process of change in psychotherapy can be nonlinear and that periods of increased variability and critical slowing might be early warning signals of transition in psychotherapy, as they are in other systems in nature. Psychotherapy research has been limited by small samples and infrequent assessment, but ambulatory and electronic methods now allow researchers to more fully realize the potential of concepts and methods from complexity science.
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Metadata
Title
A complex systems approach to the study of change in psychotherapy
Authors
Adele M. Hayes
Leigh A. Andrews
Publication date
01-12-2020
Publisher
BioMed Central
Keyword
Psychotherapy
Published in
BMC Medicine / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 1741-7015
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01662-2

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