ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a dynamic systems view on social behaviour in adolescence. Social development is disturbed, leading to problematic behaviour in adolescence. The attractor landscape requires change and this change is achieved by therapy and intervention. Intervention attempts to change the network of proximal causal factors. Whether or not this goal succeeds depends on the nature of the causal process that leads to the unwanted attractor that the therapy tries to cure. Therapy and intervention are attempts to control complex, self-organizing systems, that is, networks of proximal causes. The attractor metaphor helps explain the inter-individual variability in intervention effects. The emergence of attractor states-such as the pattern of mountain climbing and edelweiss picking-is an example of a fundamental property of complex dynamic systems, namely self-organization. Self-organization is a very important principle for understanding developmental processes.
