ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how couple therapy informed by chaos theory moves troubled couples out of their limit-cycle functioning and encourages the development of new strange attractor patterns that confer enhanced flexibility of response in the couple system, bringing couples new adaptability and confidence to meet developmental challenges. It looks at chaos theory, complexity theory, or dynamical systems theory for a new way of thinking about unconscious communication, the development of psychic structure, coupling, and therapeutic action in the analytic treatment of couples. Chaos theory, the theory of dynamical systems, offers a new paradigm for understanding the dynamics of psychological, mental, and affective processes in couples and the development, maintenance, and therapy of couple relationships. The processes of growth and development are iterations of life's operating equations, and they show sensitive dependence on initial conditions. In chaos theory terms, interactions, affect states, and object relations separately and together exert a tuning force on the individual personality.
