Sympathy of clocks
The therapeutic relationship as a coupled system, considered in the light of an observation from 1665.
From a sickbed in his house in The Hague, Christiaan Huygens wrote a letter to his father in February 1665. He had noticed something that occupied his mind.
He had hung two pendulum clocks, both of his own design, from a common beam. After a few hours the pendulums were moving in exactly opposite rhythm. When he deliberately put them out of step, they returned of their own accord to the same anti-phase within half an hour. He spoke of a sympathy of clocks: a sympathy that did not arise from good intentions but from the beam that connected the two clocks.
Only three centuries later, with the rise of Hermann Haken's synergetics, was this phenomenon studied systematically. When two oscillating systems are weakly coupled, they can, under certain conditions, fall into a common rhythm of their own accord. No intention or instruction is needed for this; a connecting beam is enough.
A second pendulum beside the first
For those who work in the consulting room, this is an observation worth reflecting on. From this perspective the therapeutic relationship is not only a matter of technique or method but also of coupling. Two dynamical systems, a patient and a clinician, come together and, under favourable conditions, can become part of each other's rhythm. A breath that slows during a session, shoulders that gradually drop, a thought that becomes gentler, not because it has been restructured but because it comes to rest in a different context.
Schiepek elaborates on this phenomenon with the concept of the order parameter. In his view a therapeutic process is itself a dynamical system, with its own patterns, hesitations and tipping points. What the clinician brings in is, in a sense, a second pendulum beside the first. What develops from there depends on the beam: on the quality of the connection and on the attention and presence it can carry.
"Rhythm between people rarely arises through willpower. It arises through what connects them." (freely after Strogatz)
A beam is built
This image is not a plea for passivity. A good beam does not come about by chance; it is built and maintained, with time, regularity, sincere interest, appropriate reserve and lasting commitment. The image does, however, serve as a reminder that what is effective in psychotherapy arises not only from what happens in the separate pendulums, but also from what can develop between them.
A postscript from the laboratory
Huygens's observation, incidentally, has a nuance that is told less often. When the two clocks hung too far apart, or the beam was too heavy, the synchronisation disappeared. The coupling required a suitable distance: not so close that the pendulums would hinder each other, and not so far apart that sympathy was no longer possible.
This detail, too, can be carried over to the consulting room with some caution. Too little distance can stifle, too much distance can isolate. In between lies the range within which a connection can develop. Where exactly that range lies in a particular conversation is, in our view, more a matter of sensitivity than of rules.