Conference description--Society for Chaos theory in...

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Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences

10th Annual International Conference
"Future Trajectories in Nonlinear Dynamics"

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, July 20-23, 2000

	This year's Summer Conference planning is well underway.  Several
Special Sessions and an impressive list of state-of-the-art workshops will
provide a wealth of choices for attendees.  In addition, the East Coast
location is likely to attract many presenters, from a variety of fields.

Invited Guest Speakers:

Mark A. Cane, Ph.D.,
G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences,
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY

Nonlinear Dynamics of Weather

One of the classical examples of the potential importance of nonlinear, chaotic
systems is Lorenz's work on weather.  The Lorenz Attractor, Butterfly Effect,
and other popular concepts in nonlinear science are traced to that work.
Professor Cane is internationally known for his investigations and modeling
of the nonlinear dynamics of weather and his insights have application in
many other areas of interest to SCTPLS members.  We are honored to have him
agree to join us for the first conference of the Millennium.

Allan Combs, Ph.D.
University of North Carolina, Asheville

Math, Metaphors, and Butterflies: The Peculiar Past and Probable Future of
Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences.

An informal discussion of historical trends and potential futures in chaos
theory and the sciences of complexity, with a few illustrative examples
from the speaker's own work on dreaming and the brain. Allan Combs is the
noted author of Radiance of Being; co-author of Synchronicity; editor of
Cooperation; co-editor of Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences and
Nonlinear Dynamics and Human Behavior, and author/editor of numerous other
works.

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP
Intermediate Chaos Theory

What Do Nonlinear Systems Do?
Understanding Real Nonlinear Systems.

Robert J. Porter, Ph.D.

	This limited enrollment (N=20) full-day workshop is designed to
explore how research problems can be conceptualized in nonlinear/chaos theory
terms.  The objective is to introduce the participants to both classical and
more recent approaches that may not be part of their existing ways of
approaching research.  A basic understanding of nonlinear and chaos theory
concepts is expected, but a tutorial review will be provided at
the beginning of the workshop.
	This workshop will touch upon methods but will emphasize conceptual and
philosophical issues that underlie the use of nonlinear concepts in several
areas of psychology and life sciences.  These conceptual underpinnings are,
in some cases, fundamentally different from those upon which more classical
research approaches are built. Examples will be reviewed and a Workshop
Notebook and software, will be provided to participants.
	Time will be allotted for participants to informally explore
questions, and possible answers, pertaining to those areas of their expertise.
Participants who wish to share some of their work and thought in a more formal
fashion are invited to bring 20 copies of a representative paper (punched for
a three-ring binder) to add to a collection for other participants to take
with them.

Topical Outline

I. Review and Tutorial:  Nonlinear Systems and Chaos

	The logistic equation
	A more complex equation
	Attractors, strange and otherwise
	A bit about fractals
	A note on time and space.

II. What nonlinear systems do and what functions nonlinear systems fulfill.

	The concept of dynamic control and feedback
	The problem of adaptation of systems
	The concept of system states:  Self-Organization, Synergetics, and
		Related Ideas

III.  Examples of Real Systems

Nonlinear systems that produce regularities of structure
Nonlinear systems whose behavior looks random, but isn't.
Nonlinear systems that change states in peculiar ways.

IV.  Studying Real Systems:  How do we know or find out:

	If a nonlinear system is involved in the processes we are interested in?
	The smallest number of independent variables that will describe a
		system's state space?
	What regularity is present in the structure of a nonlinear system?
	If a system is a strange or chaotic attractor?

V.  General Discussion and Questions

Biography: Robert J. Porter, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Psychology,
University of New Orleans; Clinical Professor Emeritus, Otorhinolaryngology
and Biocommunication, LSU Medical School; and President, Lambda Consulting.
Bob is currently in his second term as President of the Society and has over
25 years of experience teaching and consulting in laboratory and field
research in diverse areas of psychology. He specializes in difficult problems
in research design and data interpretation in the behavioral and social
sciences.  Bob is currently in private practice in Florida, providing
research-consultation services and nonlinear-system-informed psychotherapy.
He can be reached at rjporter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx if more information about the
workshop is desired.

FEATURED DURING THE CONFERENCE

	One of several special sessions will be one lead by  President-Elect
Kevin Dooley entitled: A "BRAINSTORM" SESSION:  Future Trajectories  This
special afternoon session will provide an overview of the exciting new
developments and challenges in nonlinear science.  Representatives from
several areas of theory and application of chaos theory will be invited to
present their views and engage in brainstorming regarding the future
trajectories of nonlinear science.  If you have suggestions for Kevin,
contact him at: kevin.dooley@xxxxxxx
	Jeffrey Goldstein will chair a Symposium on Self-Reference. He
writes: Many critical scientific and mathematical discoveries of the past
100 years have included self-reference as an essential component. For example,
Godel, Tarksi, Church, and Turing not only utilized self-reference in terms of
recursive functions, but, in the case of Godel and Turing, directly employed
self-referential paradox in the core of their discoveries. In a similar vein,
John von Neumann's insights into self-replicating automata, the fore-runner
of today's cellular automata relied upon self-referential dynamics. Moreover,
self-referential functional iteration is at the heart of insights provided by
nonlinear dynamical systems theory. Self-reference is also crucial to the
influential theory of autopoeisis. This symposium will look at self-reference
from clinical, philosophical, and mathematical perspectives. Scheduled
participants include Terry Marks-Tarlow, Matthijs Koopmans, Robin Robertson,
and more TBA.

A complete schedule of paper and symposium titles, presenters,
and time slots will be available approximately June 15 on the
Society's web site:

 http://www.vanderbilt.edu
/AnS/psychology/cogsci
/chaos/Conf00/Conf00.html

POST-CONFERENCE
WORKSHOPS


CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY  WORKSHOP
The sequential flow of psychotherapy

PD Dr. Wolfgang Tschacher
and guest discussants

	This workshop addresses the need for a coherent dynamical theory of
psychotherapy. My starting point is a truism: psychotherapy develops in and
from a complex psychological system made up of (at least) client and therapist
variables. Psychological disorder is characterized by the processing of a
system as well (rather than being simply a sum of dysfunctions). Thus, one
major avenue to study psychotherapy is to analyze these systems with methods
that focus on processes, i.e. on the sequential flow of psychotherapy.
Regrettably, this is not a major approach in traditional psychotherapy
research. Various quantitative approaches and empirical evaluations of this
sequential flow will be presented.
	In my view, self-organizing dynamics is at the heart of psychotherapy:
the reduction of complexity of therapy systems is empirically found to be
beneficial. Moreover, modeling the course of disorder points to nonlinear
components (e.g. in schizophrenia), so 'chaos' may play a role in some
dynamical diseases. But I will also show the potential of linear time series
methods that allow evaluation of the causal structure in therapy process. In
addition to elaborating this dynamical platform for investigations into
psychotherapy, I will examine a more fundamental problem, namely how therapy
mechanisms may be derived from a dynamical systems view of cognition. From
this theoretical perspective, a deeper understanding of how psychotherapy works
may result.
	I believe that psychotherapy is effective because one finds new ways
of acting rather than because one becomes informed of the causes of one's
problems - cognition is embodied and situated. Ideas for the planning and
analysis of psychotherapy studies (both univariate and multivariate time
series, single case study and studies of panels) will be included in the
workshop.
	A hand-out of the main points of the workshop including software for
nonlinear bootstrap analyses will be distributed. Some of the specific content
of the workshop are the following:
	Evidence from a large number of psychotherapy courses using various
therapeutic modalities is cited showing that most therapy systems become
'simpler' in the course of treatment. I present this finding as indicating
self-organization dynamics. The association of this phenomenon with therapy
outcome is significant. I will present a case study from a systemic couples-
therapy that visualizes how this simplification emerges. A bootstrap approach
for nonlinear modeling of long time series is introduced, then applied
to empirical time series data as well as appropriately generated surrogate
data, permitting to estimate which kind of dynamics underlie the empirical
observations. Findings indicate the nonlinear nature of the trajectories of
psychosis.
	The potential of process research using vector autoregression will be
demonstrated in a sample of 91 courses of dyadic psychotherapy of different
treatment modalities. The process data consisted of therapist and patient
session reports; therapy outcome was evaluated by pre-post questionnaires
and direct measures of change. The decisive dimensions of therapy were
analyzed as sequential models for each therapy course. These modeling
parameters describe the prototypical dynamical patterns of the sample and of
the modalities (client-centered psychotherapy and cognitive-behavioral
therapy). In this way, the sequentially dominant factor(s) can be determined
(in the whole sample, 'Patient's sense of self-efficacy / morale' dominated
the other dimensions). It seems that self-efficacy governs the therapeutic
bond (not vice versa).
	In an open discussion segment of the workshop, I would like to address
the more speculative aspects of a dynamical systems view of psychotherapy,
such as the role of constructivism for systems-oriented therapy, and the
conclusions derived from the notion of cognition as self-organized patterns:
if the self as a causal agent is an illusion, what does 'self-efficacy' refer
to?

Biography: Prof. Tschacher completed doctoral studies in psychology at
Tuebingen University, with emphasis in Family therapy. His  present position
is Head of Research, Social and Community Psychiatric Department, Bern
University, Switzerland. He writes that he is married and father to three
sons (who display lots of dynamics indeed). For more information check the
Department homepage: http://www.upd.unibe.ch
References:
Tschacher W & Dauwalder J-P (eds.) (1999). Dynamics, Synergetics, Autonomous
	Agents - Nonlinear Systems Approaches to Cognitive Psychology and
	Cognitive Science. Singapore: World Scientific.
Tschacher W & Roessler O (1996). The Self: A Processual Gestalt. Chaos,
	Solitons & Fractals, 7, 1011-1022.
Tschacher W, Scheier C, & Hashimoto Y (1997). Dynamical Analysis of
	Schizophrenia Courses. Biological Psychiatry, 41, 428-437.
Tschacher W, Scheier C, & Grawe K (1998). Order and Pattern Formation in
	Psychotherapy. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology and Life Sciences, 2,
	195-215.
Address for Correspondence: Wolfgang Tschacher University of Bern Psychiatric
Services, Laupenstrasse 49 3010 Bern, Switzerland. tschacher@xxxxxxxxxxxx
	

ORGANIZATIONS AND ECONOMICS WORKSHOP
Organizations and Economics: New Developments

Stephen J. Guastello, Ph.D.

The workshop will explore several new developments in nonlinear dynamics for
explaining organizational change and technological evolution, strategic
decision making, the formation of groups and networks, the performance of
groups and hierarchies, and events in the economic environment.  The
organization is a complex adaptive system that responds to events, and
generates events, at the individual, group, and organizational levels of the
system. A combination of nonlinear processes -- fixed attractors, chaos,
bifurcations, catastrophes, and self-organizing processes -- are involved. The
evolving theoretical explanations contain substantial psychological components
of cognition, motivation, creativity, personality, and group dynamics.
	Portions of the workshop will be conducted in lecture-discussion
format. Portions will involve experiential demonstrations of practical
principles. Games such as Mad Hatter's Tea Party, Island Commission, 2000
Bricks, Intersection, and the Chaos Exercise illustrate combinations of
dynamical principles, as they occur in processes of entropy building,
creative problem solving, analysis of a complex system, leadership
emergence, and self-organization phenomena for task execution  that occur
both with and without the presence of hierarchies.  Participants will acquire
content knowledge and experiential models in form that can be conveyed to
others with whom they interact professionally outside the workshop arena.
	The selection of topics for the workshop emphasizes those ideas about
organizational behavior that have the strongest empirical support currently,
and which have known practical value. 1. Revolutionary and evolutionary change
in organizations; the role of technologies; the role of individual cognitive
processes. 2. Motivation; game theory, and the dynamical flow of intrinsic
motivation. 3. Creativity, the role of environment; chaotic flow; group-level
phenomena in real and virtual environments. 4. Social networks; individual
and organizational examples; coordination; leadership emergence. 5. Events
that only happen in hierarchies. 6. Economic flows; markets for products and
securities; markets for labor and money; markets for information; markets
for natural resources. 7. Summary of means by which decision makers induce or
control dynamical events in business.
	Biography: Stephen J. Guastello, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of at
Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, where he teaches courses in industrial-
organizational psychology and human factors engineering. Stephen's current
research centers on empirical applications of nonlinear dynamics to work-
related topics. He is also a consultant to multinational, entrepreneurial,
governmental, and social service organizations. He is a Past President of
SCTPLS, and a member of the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology,
American Psychological Association, and American Psychological Society. He is
the author of Chaos, Catastrophe, and Human Affairs. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum,
1995, and  numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.


PHYSIOLOGY WORKSHOP
Nonlinear Dynamics in Health and Disease

Susan Mirow, Ph.D., M.D.
Larry Liebovitch, Ph.D.

The dynamical nature of psychological and physiological states provides new
scientific understandings of health and disease. We will introduce the concept
of non-linear systems and show how nonlinear approaches are leading to fresh
insights in the healing arts. We will provide Introduction to Fractals and
Chaos: methods from dynamical systems, which describe the patterns that
evolve in time of systems driven by themselves and their environment. Fractal
geometry: self-similarity, scaling, and dimension, has provided new language
(statistical properties) to describe and analyze complex forms in nature.
Chaos theory: phase space, sensitivity to initial conditions and bifurcation,
gives a way of seeing the order underlying phenomena that look as if they
were driven by chance.
	These new tools show great promise for providing a conceptual
framework and understanding of the complex interactions of mind and body. We
will give examples of Chaos and Fractals, in the brain (EEG) and in the heart
(heart rate variability), with their strange attractors and self-organization
and how they manifest in healthy and pathological states.
	As the body adapts to physical or psychological stress, its biorhythms
shorter than 24 hours: ultradian rhythms, show stress-induced changes
resulting in altered synchronization of timed biological processes. Our
discussion of biorhythms will include: relationship of ultradian to circadian
cycles, synchronization of rhythms: self-organizing systems, hierarchical
organization, organizational complexity, rhythms in space/time.  We will show
how stress-induced changes in ultradian rhythms lead to sensitization and
kindling.
	The implications of chaos theory in understanding psychiatric
disorders with their physical manifestations will be explored. We will present
the concept of disease as of a loss of organizational complexity of
synchronized function.  This loss of complexity, also seen in normal aging,
leads to a reduced adaptation to a changing environment.  Impaired adaptation
to change manifests on both the micro and macro level (within and between
cells, tissues, organs and people). We will give clinical examples using mood,
attentional and hormonal disorders, as well as disorders of the sleep/wake
cycle and other psychiatric conditions.
	Biological systems show chaotic time series for certain critical
behaviors. We will present information from psychological and animal studies
showing how non-linear analysis may broaden our understanding of healthy and
abnormal attachment and attunement processes.
	Research on circadian rhythms and industrial production has led to
understanding of continuity between neat, smooth cycles and discrete
oscillation.  Using interactive internet sites, we will show the usefulness of
catastrophe theory to describe alternating biphasic states with a bifurcation
variable.  We will conclude with examples of psychological, medical and
physical treatments, (non-verbal therapy, pharmacotherapy, transcranial
magnetic stimulation) employing understandings derived from nonlinear systems.
The Workshop Leaders:
Susan Mirow, Ph.D., M.D., is Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry,
University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT.  Psychiatric
Consultant, Division of Youth Corrections, State of Utah.
Larry Liebovitch, Ph.D. is Professor, Center for Complex Systems and Brain
Sciences, Center for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Dept. of Psychology,
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.

Bibliography
Guastello S. Chaos, Catastrophe, and Human Affairs: Applications of Nonlinear
	Dynamics to Work, Organizations and Social Evolution. Lawrence Erlbaum
	Associates, NJ. 1995
Liebovitch L. Fractals and Chaos: Simplified for the Life Sciences. Oxford
	University Press, NY. 1998
Lloyd D. & Rossi E.L. (Eds.). Ultradian Rhythms in Life Processes. An Inquiry
	into Fundamental Principles of Chronobiology and Psychobiology.  New
	York: Springer-Verlag. 1992.

INVITATION TO ALL PRESENTERS for SCTPLS 2000.

All speakers at SCTPLS 2000 are invited to submit a
copy of their papers for review for publication in NDPLS.
Please prepare one complete copy and place a written
notice "FOR NDPLS REVIEW" on the cover page. This
copy can be given to the Editor at the conference. All
other papers are also welcome after the conference by
s-mail  in quadruplicate to the Editorial Office. For
format, reviewing, and related information please see
the inside back cover of NDPLS or the Instructions for
Authors on the SCTPLS web site.

CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS AVAILABLE.
All workshops for the 2000 SCTPLS Conference can be used
for Continuing Education Credits, which are being offered
through Marquette University. (CE Credits are required for
many Phd-holding professionals in order to meet licensing
requirement in many States of the US). An additional
administrative charge is needed for this option; see obverse
side of this registration form.