Longer pieces in which we explore some of the central themes from the lexicon in more depth. They are meant as an invitation to think along, without the pretension of capturing everything at once.
Written and edited by Hanneke Feijs. New pieces appear regularly. Guest contributions are welcome and can be proposed via info@complexityinmentalhealth.com.
Paul van Geert has written a Dutch-language introduction to complex dynamic systems for practice. A rich and personal book, published open access, with many points of connection for mental health care.
Read more →HiTOP describes how people differ from one another. How symptoms arise and change in one particular patient calls for a dynamic perspective. On the chapter by Olthof and Lichtwarck-Aschoff.
Read more →Van der Maas shows how chaos, tipping points and networks can help explain psychological processes. A freely available textbook to work with, inspiring for the clinician, although a translation of one's own to practice remains necessary.
Read more →A wilful Frisian garden of stacked rubble, laid out without cement and without a blueprint. What this garden can show us about self-organisation, emergence and the courage not to intervene.
Read more →The shallow lakes from Marten Scheffer's work can tip from clear to turbid, and back again, but not at the same value of the cause. On hysteresis, tipping and what ecologists can teach us about depression.
Read more →Statistically they cannot be told apart, but for interventions they have very different implications. An exploration of the reflective and the formative factor model, and of what the distinction can mean in the consulting room.
Read more →What holds for the group by no means always holds for one person. An exploration of Molenaar's thesis and of what it means for the way we practise evidence-based work in mental health care.
Read more →Carrying out a protocol feels safe, but it also has its limits. What might change if we focused less on the question of which technique fits which disorder, and more on the active processes in this one patient?
Read more →Much therapeutic effect seems to take place around moments of critical instability: brief windows in which a system lets go of its old form. A modest exploration of timing as a therapeutic craft.
Read more →In 1665 two of Huygens' pendulum clocks hung from the same beam. Of their own accord, they began to move in a shared rhythm. A look back at what that experiment might tell us about the therapeutic relationship.
Read more →A heart that always beats in exactly the same way is seldom a healthy heart. An exploration of what variability can say about mental health, and of what its loss might mean for diagnostics.
Read more →Starlings in a cloud above the beach: no conductor, and yet a form. A short exploration of what that image can teach us, and also of what it does not.
Read more →How a Dutch psychologist showed that development is sometimes better described as a leap than as gradual growth. And what that, cautiously translated, may mean for clinical practice.
Read more →What a beehive and a school of fish can remind us about what may work in psychotherapy. An exploration of the Dodo bird verdict, more than three quarters of a century after its discovery.
Read more →Patients do not always improve gradually. Sometimes they make a fairly sudden leap forward, and this happens more often than we tend to think. An exploration of sudden gains and of what they mean for our measurements and assumptions.
Read more →A photograph of a crowd during Holi, and what it can teach us about entropy: a term from physics that is fairly often misunderstood in mental health care. Without formulas.
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