| Summary: | "The Psychological Meaning of Chaos: Translating Theory Into Practice" introduces practicing psychologists to the concepts, implications, and applications of the chaos theories that have revolutionized scientists' concept of the physical world over the past 30 yrs. This new way of seeing--variously called chaos, nonlinear dynamical systems theory, deterministic chaos, and the broader sciences of complexity--stands in sharp contrast to the linear, reductionistic models that have dominated most psychological thinking. In this new model, unpredictability and instability are accepted as intrinsic to complex systems and essential in any transformative process. Chaos is seen as a healthy and essential part of the creation process, without which new order is impossible. The implications of this new model of systems dynamics for understanding the human change process are enormous. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved).
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