This chapter argues that intuition is an emergent, nonverbal form of awareness that arises immediately, effortlessly, and automatically from bottom-up (nonconscious to conscious) processing within the implicit realm of perception, memory, and learning. Intuition likely evolved from social instincts within the mammalian brain that enable us to cope with a chaotic world filled with incomplete information and unpredictable situations. Conscious deliberation, which involves slower processing within the explicit realm, operates by focusing in on detail, stripping away context, and reducing wholes into component parts. By contrast, intuition is holistic and integrative, considering the big picture and full context. Intuition also facilitates fractal-like pattern detection by which the whole of things is perceived within the parts of experience. Within the field of clinical psychology, intuition is a central ingredient for deep, emergent, and unpredictable transformation. Clinical intuition is especially effective under conditions of uncertainty, urgency, and emergency. More generally, intuition promotes creativity, nuance, and fluidity in dealing with the unique dynamics of this person, with this developmental history, in this moment, with this therapist.
When psychoanalysis is conceived intersubjectively, full engagement between therapist and patient creates an emergent, indivisible whole. The coupled therapist/patient system takes on a life of its own to operate beyond reductive analysis. This paper offers a detailed clinical case in order to illustrate five key principles from the perspective of nonlinear dynamics: (a) A nonlinear relationship exists between diagnosis and treatment, when symptoms shift with treatment and diagnosis emerges out of it; (b) the intersubjective field is a complex web of feedback loops continually operating on multiple time scales and descriptive levels; (c) the coupled therapist/patient system self-organizes implicitly toward the edge of chaos; (d) at the fertile edge of chaos, novelty and greater system complexity emerge spontaneously; and (e) core therapist/patient dynamics are expressed as recursive, fractal pattern.As the methods, research, and paradigm of nonlinear dynamics slowly infuse through the social sciences, a rich body of theoretical and clinical literature accumulates within psychoanalysis Tyson, 2005). Nonlinear science provides a flexible description of how psychotherapy operates on multiple levelsranging from the time scale of milliseconds where subcortical, autonomic processes contribute to conscious "moments of meeting" plus their cascading effects over longer time scales. As a metaframework for psychoanalysis (Seligman, 2005), a nonlinear dynamical approach can unify a multiverse of cultural perspectives, to accommodate diverse schools of thought within a nonauthoritarian context (see Marks-Tarlow, 2008b). The holistic nature of the paradigm counteracts reductionist divisions and Descartian splits, helping to marry the art of psychoanalysis with its science while unifying meaning-making endeavors at ever wider descriptive levels.In order to illustrate the utility of a nonlinear perspective, this paper presents a clinical case, which is then analyzed from the perspective of five key nonlinear principles. The case involves
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