ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book looks at various ways in which the ideas derived from chaos theory can be used to think about clinical phenomena. A central idea has been that of the strange attractor observed in the functioning of a complex non-linear dynamic system. This has implications for psychoanalysis because it gives rise to a new model for understanding psychic reality. Further, it gives us a means of understanding how the psychoanalytic method reveals this structure of psychic reality. The new perspectives of a complex systems approach to the understanding of the psychoanalytic process can be summarised as: that the mind should be seen as a non-linear system that cannot be studied by methods assuming linearity. This enables psychoanalysts to counter the critics of psychoanalysis, because these critics assume that satisfactory methods of investigation must rest on linearity.
