Nature heals: An informational entropy account of self-organization and change in field psychotherapy.

Psychotherapeutic change can be modeled using biophysical principles from synergetics and the free energy principle. Introducing sensory surprise into the patient-therapist system may trigger self-organization and the formation of new attractor states, disrupting entrenched patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. The therapist can facilitate this by cultivating epistemic trust and modulating embodied attention, allowing surprising affective states into shared awareness. Transient increases in free energy enable updates to generative models, expanding the phenomenal field. Increased entropy, complexity, and lower determinism at behavioral and physiological levels are proposed as markers and predictors of therapeutic gains. Future research should explore how the therapist's openness to novelty shapes outcomes.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper reviews biophysical models of psychotherapeutic change based on synergetics and the free energy principle. These models suggest that introducing sensory surprise into the patient-therapist system can lead to self-organization and the formation of new attractor states, disrupting entrenched patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. We propose that the therapist can facilitate this process by cultivating epistemic trust and modulating embodied attention to allow surprising affective states to enter shared awareness. Transient increases in free energy enable the update of generative models, expanding the range of experiences available within the patient-therapist phenomenal field. We hypothesize that patterns of disorganization at behavioural and physiological levels, indexed by increased entropy, complexity, and lower determinism, are key markers and predictors of psychotherapeutic gains. Future research should investigate how the therapist's openness to novelty shapes therapeutic outcomes.