ABSTRACT
Psychotherapy, under pressure to produce ‘‘scientific’’ evidence, has much to gain from the impetus and dynamism of contemporary neuroscience. New science was born from the attempt to understand dynamic, complex, open systems, such as the ecosystem, the weather system, and the behaviour of living creatures. Psychotherapy has long wrestled with the implications of biology and its associations with determinism. The new biology—within the framework of self-organization theory—emphasizes interaction and contingency as major principles of formation, and therefore is more aligned with the emphasis on historical and relational principles of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy has always sought to work with the non-linear, apparently irrational, uniqueness of each individual or group. Psychotherapy, in other words, joins neuroscience in researching "at the border between chaos and order". The prototype and initial bridging concept between biology and psychology was self-regulation, modelled on physiological homeostasis and incorporating the behavioural concept of adaptation.
