Nonlinear Psychoanalysis

Nonlinear concepts from chaos theory, complexity studies, and fractal geometry have transformed the way we think about the mind. Nonlinear Psychoanalysis shows how nonlinear dynamics can be integrated with psychoanalytic thinking to shed new light on psychological development, therapeutic processes, and fundamental psychoanalytic concepts.Starting with a personal history of the author’s engagement with nonlinear dynamics and psychoanalysis, this book describes how his approach applies to diagnosis of psychological conditions, concepts of normal and pathological development, gender, research methods, and finally the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. This book is full of new ideas about the basic nonlinear processes of human development, nonlinear views of gender and fundamental psychoanalytic process like working through, and the nature of the therapeutic process as conceptualized in terms of the theory of coupled oscillators. Galatzer-Levy questions many standard psychoanalytic formulations and points to a freer practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thinking. His new approach opens the reader’s eyes to ways in which development and treatment can occur through processes not now included in standard psychoanalytic theory. The book not only provides useful theories but also helps readers take note of commonly passed over phenomena that were unseen for lack of a theory to explain them.Galatzer-Levy brings an unusual combination of training in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and mathematics to this unique study, which summarizes his forty years of exploration of nonlinearity and psychoanalysis. Nonlinear Psychoanalysis will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists as well as students of nonlinear dynamics systems.

"Whether as psychoanalysts or simply as human beings struggling to understand the course of our own lives, we easily mistake our underlying world view for reality itself. Galatzer-Levy’s book is a personal and stimulating look at how implicit assumptions about continuity, mechanism, and predictability color as well as limit analytic understanding. A larger and more variable universe emerges from the complex entwining of a mathematician’s curiosity with an analyst’s experience. The result is a surprising, often counterintuitive view of the nonlinear nature of mind, relationship, development, and healing."—Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ph.D., Core Faculty, Insight Center, Los Angeles; author, Psyche’s Veil; Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy; Awakening Clinical Intuition."Robert Galatzer-Levy has written an extraordinary book with a new way of thinking about psychoanalysis. He uses an approach of non-linear systems theory and its dynamics to offer a new model which provides novel ways to understand how psychoanalysis works, how psychic change is possible and how new learning occurs. His critique of the psychoanalytic developmental paradigm from a non-linear point of view provides us with surprising new perspectives. Human development doesn’t primarily occur by epigenetic unfolding of predetermined developmental lines but by periods of relative disorganization. Reading this book with its innovative ideas one becomes more and more familiar with a non-linear worldview which alters one’s thinking about psychoanalysis and opens a wider landscape of analytic material."-Werner Bohleber, Ph.D., psychoanalyst, editor of the journal PSYCHE, author of Destructiveness, Intersubjectivity, and Trauma. The Identity Crisis of Modern Psychoanalysis.

Robert M. Galatzer-Levy is a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago and a faculty member of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He practices child, adolescent, and adult psychoanalysis and psychiatry in Chicago.