Pursuing A Unifying Paradigm For Psychotherapy

Pursuing a Unifying Paradigm for Psychotherapy:
Tasks, Dialectical Considerations, and

Biopsychosocial Systems Metatheory
Jack C. Anchin
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
This article focuses on salient issues and directions in pursuing a unifying

paradigm for psychotherapy. This endeavor is placed in historical context,
followed by discussion of the author’s definition of unification and of
benefits that can accrue from this pursuit. Subsequently, attention is devoted
to the core challenge of reconciling the quest for unity with the enormous,
functionally invaluable plurality of knowledge elements deriving from the
multiple paradigms guiding psychotherapy theory, research, and practice.
Based on Staats (1991, 1999), three tasks necessary for addressing this
tension are delineated: undertaking unifying theory analysis to reduce con-
ceptual redundancy; developing bridging theory to unify divergencies, facil-
itated by dialectical thinking and formulation; and unifying research meth-
odologies in psychotherapy. Discussion then turns to biopsychosocial
systems metatheory as a framework for a unifying psychotherapeutic para-
digm. In this context, the author examines interrelationship and process as
fundamental unifying principles; insights from cybernetics, chaos theory,
and their synthesis; and implications of the systems paradigm for unification-
oriented scientific inquiry.
Keywords: psychotherapy, plurality and unity, dialectical, biopsychosocial, systems meta-
theory
Over the course of its history within the natural and social sciences, the
provocative concept of unification has acquired variable meanings. For
example, for Otto Neurath, one of the principal figures in the Vienna Circle
Jack C. Anchin, Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, State University of

New York.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the symposium The Evolution of
Psychotherapy: Is Unification in Reach? at the 19th Annual Conference of the Society for the
Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, New York City, May 4, 2003.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jack C. Anchin, 4444
Main Street, Snyder, NY 14226. E-mail: anchin@buffalo.edu
310
Journal of Psychotherapy Integration Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association
2008, Vol. 18, No. 3, 310 –349 1053-0479/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0013557
Symposium: Pursuing a Unifying Paradigm for Psychotherapy 311
and the Unity of Science movement, unification was holistic, referring to a

“coordinated aggregation” (Cat, Cartwright, & Chang, 1996, p. 352) of all
of the sciences necessitated by the fact that the prediction and control of
concrete events and phenomena in natural settings requires “the different
scientific disciplines and theories to work together” (Cat et al., 1996, p.
352). As vividly explained in Neurath’s words:
Certainly different kinds of laws can be distinguished from each other; for example,
chemical, biological, or sociological laws. However, it can not be said of a prediction
of a concrete individual process that it depend [sic] on one definite kind of law only.
For example, whether a forest will burn down at a certain location on earth depends
as much on the weather as on whether human intervention takes place or not. This
intervention, however, can only be predicted if one knows the laws of human
behavior. That is, under certain circumstances, it must be possible to connect all kinds
of laws with each other. Therefore all laws, whether chemical, climatological, or
sociological, must be conceived as parts of a system, namely of unified science.
(Neurath, cited by Cat et al., 1996, p. 352)
In marked contrast, Oppenheim and Putnam (1958) viewed the proper

direction of unification to be reductive. As succinctly described by Galison
(1996), for these philosophers of science “the Unity of Science meant, quite
explicitly, the pyramidal hierarchy that reduced one domain of science to
another. The great ‘natural’ span of the sciences built solidly one layer
upon the next, from the laws of elementary particle physics up through the
atomic, molecular, cellular, multicellular, psychological, and social sci-
ences” (p. 5). Oppenheim and Putnam (1958) stated with equal and com-
pelling explicitness the ultimate implication of their conception, namely
“the possibility that all science may one day be reduced to microphys-
ics . . .” (p. 27).
The notable diversity that has characterized meanings of unity across
all of the sciences (cf. Galison, 1996; Wilson, 1998) is no less evident in the
field of study that can be properly called unification psychology, a rich and
still evolving domain of inquiry centered on the more restricted yet intrigu-
ing—and certainly contended— goal of unifying the discipline of psychol-
ogy as a whole (see, e.g., Anchin, in press-b; Chao, 2002; de Groot, 1989;
Gilgen, 1987; Henriques, 2003, 2004, in press; Kendler, 1987, 2002; Koch,
1981; Royce, 1987; Staats, 1987, 1991, 1999; Sternberg, 2004; Sternberg &
Grigorenko, 2001; Viney, 1989; Wertheimer, 1988; Yanchar & Slife, 1997;
Yela, 1987). These considerations of definitional variability underscore the
importance of explicitly defining what one has in mind when using such
terms as unification and unifying in any scientific context. In addition to
reducing confusion and facilitating communication, articulating these ref-
erents also provides a critical frame of reference for interpreting and
appraising ensuing assertions, elaborations, and recommendations. I there-
fore turn next to this definitional step, providing the context for the
principal aim of this article, which is to delineate some salient issues and
312 Anchin
directions in pursuing a unifying paradigm for one field within psychology:

theory, research, and practice in psychotherapy.
DEFINING UNIFICATION IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
My conception of unification in psychotherapy draws significantly on

the aforementioned literature on unification psychology. Theorists in that
domain have presented a compelling body of analyses articulating an array
of critical issues and directions pertaining to efforts at unifying psycholog-
ical phenomena, and rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I believe that
we would be wise indeed to draw upon the benefits of their numerous
insights and extrapolate them to the project of developing a unifying
psychotherapy paradigm. In this vein, to my way of thinking, unification in
psychotherapy means the development of a singular paradigm that pulls
together and interrelates, in one organizing theoretical framework, all of
the major accumulating elements of knowledge pertaining to personality,
psychopathology, and psychotherapy. Moreover, such a framework, oper-
ating as a unifying paradigm, would fundamentally guide how we think
about and conceptualize the wealth of phenomena pertinent to psycho-
therapy, how we scientifically study those phenomena, and how, in the
domain of practice, we apply the products of those efforts and synthesize
them with the principles, procedures, and processes of psychotherapy.
No small task! Indeed, a project of enormously challenging propor-
tions, Staats’s (1987) contention about pursuing unification in the discipline
of psychology as a whole is equally applicable to pursuit of a unifying
psychotherapeutic paradigm: “This is not work for an individual but for a
multitude—theoreticians, philosophers, methodologists, experimentalists,
and practitioners” (p. 14). Yet, the overarching justification for this array of
individuals collaboratively devoting concerted time and effort to the am-
bitious project of unifying psychotherapeutically related knowledge lies in
the opportunities it offers to advance conceptualizations and investigations
of psychopathology and psychotherapy, and intimately related, to develop
therapeutic principles, procedures, and processes that can progressively
heighten psychotherapeutic efficacy. As Wampold (2001) cogently demon-
strated, the absolute efficacy of psychotherapy has been established:
From the various meta-analyses conducted over the years, the effect size related to
absolute efficacy appears to fall within the range of .75 to .85. A reasonable and
defensible point estimate for the efficacy of psychotherapy would be .80, a value
used in this book. This effect would be classified as a large effect in the social
sciences, which means that the average client receiving therapy would be better
than 79% of untreated clients, that psychotherapy accounts for about 14% of the
variance in outcomes, and that the success rate would change from 31% for the
control group to 69% for the treatment group. (pp. 70 –71)
However, is it a given that psychotherapy’s absolute efficacy has

reached its apex? Or, from the vital standpoint of continuing to advance
our field, can we indeed push the effect size for absolute efficacy even
beyond this already impressive level? Theoretically and operationally tack-
ling these questions and their implications constitute inviting challenges for
our field as we make our contribution to advancing the art and science of
psychotherapy in the 21st century. Forging a paradigm that cohesively
unifies our accumulating knowledge, our investigative techniques and our
principles of therapeutic application may well provide a principal route
toward achieving this salutary goal of further heightening therapy’s abso-
lute efficacy. Along the way, and of significant value in its own right, the
very process of reflecting on and dialoguing about a unifying paradigm
dramatically surfaces and thereby offers the field opportunities to construc-
tively wrestle with core issues in psychotherapeutic science and practice
(compare, e.g., Fisch, 2001, and Wolfe, 2001)—and to do so within a
context that is itself unifying.
RECONCILING PLURALITY AND UNITY: TASKS IN

DEVELOPING A UNIFYING PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC
PARADIGM
Foremost among those issues is the fact that, most fundamentally, we

are dealing with a staggering number and variety of knowledge elements
emanating from the pluralism characterizing the field of psychotherapy and
behavior change. The five major paradigms that dominate our era—the
biological, psychoanalytic/psychodynamic, cognitive– behavioral, humanis-
tic/experiential, and systems paradigms—are themselves each composed of
different models and conceptualizations. When we then lay out from each
of those models all of the key theoretical terms, concepts, propositions, and
empirical findings that pertain to the structure and function of personality,
the nature of psychopathology, and the principles, methods, processes, and
outcomes of psychotherapy, we have before us a diversity of knowledge
elements that is absolutely mind-boggling. How do we reconcile, on the
one hand, the goal of bringing order to all of this dissimilarity to form a
comprehensive, systematically interrelated, and coherent body of knowl-
edge about personality, psychopathology, and psychotherapy with, on the
other hand, a pluralism that is pragmatically and functionally invaluable,
given the ineffable complexities of our subject matter?
In the words of William James (1907/1992), the critical issue here is
how to hit the balance between “the one and the many” (p. 71). In
addressing this intriguing tension between plurality and unity as it pertains
314 Anchin
to psychotherapy, theorists interested in unification psychology partly point

the way. Here I highlight three particular directions of such work, espe-
cially drawing on the comprehensive conceptions of Arthur Staats and
developing his perspectives in their specific application to the domain of
psychotherapy.
Addressing Conceptual Redundancy and Similarity Through Unifying

Theory Analysis
To illustrate, one of the essential tasks we need to undertake is what

Staats (1991) has referred to as unifying theory analysis. The idea here is
that some degree of the diversity in our vast collectivity of knowledge
elements in the field of psychotherapy and behavior change is artificial, in
that we are dealing with marked similarities, if not outright redundancies.
As Staats (1991) stated, “there are many common concepts and principles
and findings in which commonality is not recognized because they are
described in different languages and are parts of different theories” (p.
905). Or, as Yanchar and Slife (1997) succinctly encapsulated this issue,
“the same fundamental phenomena are described using different terms
(with perhaps subtly different meanings)” (p. 243). The upshot is that
significant domains of consensus that may simply be awaiting discovery—
for example, essential psychological structures composing personality, key
psychosocial processes that sustain psychopathology, and principles of
effective psychotherapy— continue to elude us.
Characterized by Hishinuma (1987) as one of the foundational direc-
tions of work toward constructing a unified body of psychotherapeutically
related knowledge, unified theory analyses require incisive theoretical
studies that identify and explicate significant similarities and redundancies
in specific conceptual elements and principles composing different theo-
retical conceptions of personality, psychopathology, and therapeutic pro-
cess and intervention. In thereby “abstract[ing] the resemblances between
the theories treated.. . .a body of principles, concepts, and analyses could
be formulated that would be consensual in nature, that would be accepted
as recognized knowledge, and that would serve to draw separate empirical-
theoretical endeavors together” (Staats, 1987, p. 41).
Hishinuma (1987) presented an elaborate unifying theory analysis in
his penetrating study of commonalities between psychoanalytic theory and
cognitive dissonance theory, and the method he deploys, as he rightfully
suggests, can also serve as a prototype for the nature of such comparative
analyses. Another exemplar of this high level of cross-theory similarity
in concepts and principles may be found in core facets of relational
psychoanalysis (e.g., Frank, 1999, 2002) and Kiesler’s (1996) interpersonal

communications approach to psychotherapy. For example, as discussed in
greater detail elsewhere (Anchin, 2002), despite differences in language,
striking similarities are clearly evident in the relational analytic concept of
countertransference and the interpersonal communications concept of im-
pact messages, as well as in certain relational analytic perspectives on
therapist self-disclosure and principles of therapist metacommunication in
interpersonal communications therapy. Still other domains of conceptual
similarity of acute pertinence to the therapeutic arena inviting unified
theory analysis are evident. For example, mapping a significant realm of
covert interpersonally related structure and processes are the parallel
formulations encompassed by Horowitz’s (1991; Baccus & Horowitz, 2005)
role relationships model, Benjamin’s (1996, 2003) internal working models
in terms of important persons and their internalized representations
(IPIRs), Safran’s (Safran & Segal, 1990; Scarvalone, Fox, & Safran, 2005)
interpersonal schemas construct, and Frank’s (2002) concept of internal-
ized relational patterns. Still more global are an array of “circular process
conceptions of psychopathology” (Anchin, 2002, p. 307), specifically
Andrews’s (1991) self-confirmation model, Carson’s (1982) self-fulfilling
expectancy model, Frank’s (2002) enactment concept, Kiesler’s (1996)
maladaptive transaction cycle, Strupp and Binder’s (1984; cf. Levenson,
1995, 2003) cyclical maladaptive pattern, and Wachtel’s (Wachtel, Kruk, &
McKinney, 2005) cyclical psychodynamics conception.
In addition to these content domains, innumerable other clinically
centered conceptual similarities or redundancies await discerning theoret-
ical analysis. For those whose interest is piqued by this direction of unifying
work, a challenging exercise containing both analytic and synthetic ele-
ments is to reflect on different bodies of theory pertaining to personality,
psychopathology, and psychotherapy and to glean concepts and principles
that, while linguistically different, nevertheless encompass highly overlap-
ping and in some instances virtually redundant phenomena. As in the
countertransference/impact message commonality, such points of theoret-
ical similarity may also provide an expedient entree into effecting substan-
tive integrations between some of the related conceptions and principles
surrounding the common concepts.
Bridging Theory to Unify Divergencies and the Potency of Dialectical

Thinking
We also need to sharply crystallize fundamental areas of divergence in

different conceptions of personality, psychopathology, and psychothera-
316 Anchin
peutic processes, including posited mechanisms of change. As Staats (1987,

1991) made clear, not infrequently such divergencies can be of such mag-
nitude that they constitute schisms, wherein “the positions are polar, [and
therefore] the research and theory developments they inspire are also in
opposition” (Staats, 1987, p. 42). Nevertheless, rather than viewing, a
priori, these principal differences as immutable (Staats, 1987) and incom-
mensurable (Kuhn, 1970, 2000) because of underlying philosophical differ-
ences or metatheoretical incompatibilities, we have the highly potent op-
tion of instead seeing any such dissimilarity as “a problem to be solved”
(Staats, 1991, p. 907; cf. Anchin, in press-b). Adopting this perspective, we
can in turn take up the challenge of developing what has been designated
as bridging theory (Staats, 1987, 1991, 1999), “whereby disparate bodies of
psychological knowledge can be integrated into a coherent whole, or at
least connected in a theoretically meaningful, rather than merely an eclec-
tic, manner” (Yanchar & Slife, 1997, p. 243). In its broadest outlines,
necessary—though not necessarily sufficient—aspects of constructing a
bridging theory include (a) sectioning off a meaningful content area or
issue in relation to which two theories significantly deviate, (b) relative to
those different positions, meticulously analyzing the respective theoretical
concepts, propositions, and findings that constitute that separation in order
to sharply crystallize the points of difference, as well as any similarities, and
then, (c) armed with this detailed understanding of the composition and
bases of these different positions in relation to the issue at hand, construct-
ing a theory that shows how these two discrepant theoretical perspectives
can in fact be put together, thereby productively interrelating the knowl-
edge encompassed by each.
Given that constructing bridging theory is fundamentally a process of
theory development and that this process by definition centers on interre-
lating essentially divergent positions on a given issue, an especially valuable
facilitator of the conceptual bridging process may lie in dialectical modes of
thinking and formulation. Neimeyer and Mahoney (1995) spoke to the
underlying rationale: “Dialectics honors the dynamic role of contrast in
generating development” (p. 404). This contrast-rooted dialectical dynamic
permeates developmental change processes in multiple domains, including
not only individual personality (e.g., Linehan, 1993), interpersonal rela-
tionships (e.g., Baxter & Montgomery, 1998), and society (e.g., Buss, 1979),
but also ideas themselves (cf. Dunning, 1997; Hanna, 1994). Indeed,
Rychlak’s (1976b) passionate call for appreciating the singular relevance
and heuristic power of dialectical thinking for the social and human sci-
ences warrants reiteration. Alluding to “social scientists who have so
readily patterned their conceptual models on the paradigms of natural
science (Kuhn, 1970)” (p. 1), Rychlak (1976b) sought
to show how this naive acceptance of natural-science description has eclipsed a vital
side of human nature, one that must be captured if social science is ever to achieve
credibility. This side has to do with the dialectic or dialectical description of
behaviors, events, societies, and so on. Here is an ancient conception so pervasive
in human affairs, so pregnant with meaning for analysis, so useful as heuristic aid
that to have ignored it these many decades into the century almost constitutes an
act of irresponsibility on the part of “modern” social science. (p. 1)
While multiple meanings have come to define a dialectic, Rychlak

(1976b) crystallized that the “core meaning” (p. 14) is that of bipolarity,
wherein two elements stand in direct and dynamic opposition or contra-
diction to one another. Prototypically embodied in Hegel’s classic “thesis–
antithesis” duality, others have depicted this configuration in terms of
“binary oppositions” (Dunning, 1997, p. 4), “internal opposing forces”
(Linehan, 1993, p. 32), and “unified opposites” (Baxter & Montgomery,
1998, p. 4). Downing (2000), contributing an important elaboration that
further underpins dialecticism’s direct pertinence to bridging theory, dis-
tinguished between dialectic as an ontology and as a method. With regard
to the former, “[a]s an ontology [dialectic] assumes that the oppositions
which we see are inherent in nature . . .” (Downing, 2000, p. 258), or as
Linehan (1993) stated it, “reality is not static, but is comprised of internal
opposing forces. . . . [W]ithin each one thing or system, no matter how
small, there is polarity . . .” (p. 32). The inverse of this conception, hence an
inextricably related facet of a dialectical ontology, is that of “interrelated-
ness and wholeness. Dialectics assumes a systems perspective on reality”
(Linehan, 1993, p. 31), thereby emphasizing holism and totality but at the
same time “the splitting of a totality into its contradictory parts and the
examination of the parts as they relate to each other (Lenin, 1915/1977)”
(Greenberg & Pascual-Leone, 1995, p. 169). Erbes (2004) succinctly inte-
grated these various ideas: “Rather than focus on one idea, issue, or pole
of a dialectic, dialectical thought suggests that we understand the world by
looking at both sides of any dialectic. Only by studying their dynamic
interplay as a whole can a phenomenon be understood” (p. 205).
Erbes’s remarks also reflect the unification-relevant cross-over from
dialectics as an ontology to dialectics as a method. As Downing (2000, p.
258) and Buss (1979, p. 76) explained, in applying a dialectical method, one
seeks to understand a given phenomenon or process through essentially
undertaking a “dialogue”— or in Radnitzky’s (1970) terms, “a tacking
procedure” (p. 23)— between the opposing sides of the bipolarity, recog-
nizing that each, being an integral part of the whole, contains distinctly
valid elements of knowledge about the phenomenon or process under
consideration. This type of conceptual analysis and interactional investiga-
tion, “a kind of inquiry which is rigorous and disciplined without being rigid
and dogmatic” (Hanna, 1994, p. 129), can deepen understanding of a
phenomenon or process and offers the potentiality for formulating ex-
318 Anchin
panded, more encompassing conceptualizations—a sine qua non of bridg-

ing theory.
In words that resonate with the language of bridging theory, Fosha
(2004) encapsulated what many discussions of dialecticism emphasize as
the characteristic advancement in knowledge that derives from the dialec-
tical tacking process: “the apparent contradiction can be resolved at a
different level, wherein the two seemingly mutually exclusive positions can
be interrelated. The new understanding that comes from weaving them
together is deeper and more comprehensive than the understanding cap-
tured by either side of the dichotomy” (p. 83). An approximation to this
type of higher-order synthesis is well illustrated by Frank’s (1999, 2002)
integrative relational psychoanalytic approach. Through methodical anal-
ysis and weaving together of the opposed poles constituting different
dualities stemming from various analytic approaches, for example, “the
individual and the social, one- and two-person models, the intrapsychic and
the interpersonal, self-representations and object representations” (Anchin,
2002, p. 303), Frank forged a higher-order theoretical synthesis that ad-
vances the understanding of personality and psychopathology in ways that
are indeed deeper and more comprehensive than the understandings pro-
vided by either pole considered alone in relation to any of the aforemen-
tioned dualities.
However, the fine-grained complexity of theories of psychotherapy
necessitates mindfulness of the particular challenges of constructing bridg-
ing theories in the therapeutic domain. In this regard, it is essential to
recognize that the resolution of opposites through synthesis is not the sole
direction that dialectical reasoning and formulation must take. “Too many
people think that dialectic means the Hegelian formula of ‘thesis–
antithesis–synthesis’ and nothing else” (Rychlak, 1976a, pp. 134 –135).
Thus, in a different form of dialectically based bridging, opposing poles are
intentionally maintained as separate and yet coexistent in the service of
needing and benefiting from one another through a dynamic movement of
continuous reciprocity. Downing (2004) provided an excellent example of
this alternative to resolution-through-synthesis in his discussion of the need
for therapists
to embody a movement between conviction and uncertainty in their daily work with
clients (Downing, 2000). This dialectic would recognize that psychotherapists can-
not function without theory, which provides coherence and conviction, and that
psychotherapists must strive to remain uncertain of the truth, comprehensiveness,
and usefulness of theory . . . . Uncertainty needs to be checked by conviction, just
as conviction needs to be upset by uncertainty. (p. 139)
The upshot of the bridge between conviction and uncertainty drawn by

this alternative form of dialectical conceptualization is a therapeutic pro-
cess that is more comprehensive, advanced, and potentially beneficial to

the patient’s treatment than either pole taken alone.
Bridging theories within the field of psychotherapy would be intended
to unify knowledge through the ongoing process of interrelating disparate
concepts, findings, positions, and research methodologies pertaining to
such core domains as the description and explanation of personality de-
velopment and functioning, the nature of psychological health and disor-
der, and principles, procedures, and processes that constitute effective
treatment. Given that different models of psychotherapy continue to dis-
agree on an array of key issues encompassed by these domains, opportu-
nities to construct bridging theories are enormous.1 Taking the lead from
Staats’s (1996) observation that “Bridging theory and how to construct it
needs specialized consideration” (p. 29), it is submitted here that in view of
the singular manner in which it ontologically embraces and methodologi-
cally tackles opposition and contradiction, dialectical thinking constitutes
an approach to inquiry and formulation strikingly suited to the formulation
of unifying bridging theories.
And while dialecticism can by no means be expected to be the sole
pathway towards theoretical bridging, it is interesting to consider that each
instance of bridging theory achieved through a dialectical conceptualiza-
tion constitutes, in microcosmic fashion, a bridging of the superordinate
dialectic between plurality and unity—perhaps a fractal representation of
the unifying process. Thus, drawing on but two of innumerable possible
examples, whether interest lies in developing bridging theory between the
holistic emphasis of the existential approach in contrast to the microana-
lytic, reductionistic thrust of many cognitive– behavioral approaches
(Staats, 1987), or in constructing a theoretical bridge between a “focus on
health and the patient’s resourcefulness versus [a] focus on pathology and
the patient’s disturbance” (Fosha, 2004, p. 83), it seems to me that we
advance the sophistication of our understanding and of the clinical prac-
tices that follow far more by addressing these and other principal dichot-
omies through the frame of “both/and” rather than that of “either/or” (see
Derrida, 1978). And it is precisely this “both/and” framework that conjoins
bridging theory and dialectical thinking.
1
For multiple examples of marked divergencies between paradigms in theoretical con-
cepts and positions having direct pertinence for personality, psychopathology, and psycho-
therapy, see Staats’s (1987) Table 1, “The Humanistic and Experimental-Behavioristic
Schism” (p. 17), Mahoney’s (1991) Table 8.4, “Views of Emotion in Different Metatheories”
(pp. 205–207), and Fosha’s (2004) delineation of eight distinct “dialectical (process, oscillating,
dual focus) common factors” (p. 80) that pertain to different dimensions of “the therapist’s
stance vis-a-vis the patient and the clinical material” (p. 83) derived from four contemporary
approaches to brief integrative psychotherapy.
320 Anchin
Unifying Methodological Paradigms
In addition to extracting commonalities residing within conceptual

similarities and redundancies obscured by dissimilar theoretical languages,
and constructing meaningful theory that creatively bridges disparate con-
cepts and principles, the quest for a unifying paradigm in psychotherapy
must confront head-on the fact that personality, psychopathological phe-
nomena, and psychotherapeutic processes and outcomes are investigated
with widely varying methods of inquiry. Substitute the word psychotherapy
for the word psychology in the following observation, and its pertinence to
our field of study is evident: “There are various methods of research in
psychology that produce observations that underlie divided positions, and
the methods themselves become the basis for division, opposition, and
mutual ignorance, even when related or complementary phenomena are
involved” (Staats, 1991, p. 906). Indeed, over the decades of the 20th
century and into the present one, a remarkably diverse collection of
approaches for studying psychotherapy and the correlative domains of
personality and psychopathology has evolved, yet these have been charac-
teristically dichotomized into two very different methodological paradigms,
each spawned by a distinctly different set of traditions (see Anchin, 2008).
Although different designations have been used to capture these two
methodological frameworks, the most incorporative linguistic differentia-
tion may lie in distinguishing between the empiricist-quantitative and the
hermeneutic-qualitative paradigms, respectively (see, e.g., Anchin, 2008;
Messer, 1992; Packer & Addison, 1989; Woolfolk, Sass, & Messer, 1988).
While the brief treatment offered here cannot possibly do justice to the
diversity of methods and complexity of issues associated with each of these
paradigms (e.g., Anchin, 2005, 2006, 2008; Frommer, Langenbach, &
Streeck, 2004; Krippner, 2001; Mahajan, 1997; Messer, 1992; Mahoney,
1991; Packer & Addison, 1989; Polkinghorne, 1983; Ray, 2000; Rennie,
2004; Slife & Williams, 1995, 1997; Staats, 1987; Turner, 1967; von Wright,
1971; Wertz, 2001; Woolfolk et al., 1988; Woolfolk & Richardson, 2008),
incorporating elements of analysis offered by the latter theorists and
investigators allows for certain distinguishing, prototypic features to be
noted. Thus, methodologies encompassed by the empiricist-quantitative
paradigm, steeped in the tradition of modernism and the natural sciences,
have been characterized as positivistic, detached, acontextual, objective,
atomistic, reductionistic, experimental, deterministic, nomothetic, and fo-
cused on explanation through discovering causal laws that are universal
and hence generalizable. Methodologies encompassed by the hermeneutic-
qualitative paradigm, fed by the twin tributaries of humanistic psychology
and postmodernism, have been depicted as postpositivistic, participatory,
contextual, subjective, constructive, holistic, agentive, experiential, phe-

nomenological, idiographic, and focused on understanding through inter-
preting personal meanings embedded in actual lived experiences of being-
in-the-world.
A unifying psychotherapeutic paradigm, to be considered at all viable,
would need to include among its foundational bases a framework that
values as equally legitimate and important the distinctly different “ways of
knowing” (Messer, 1992, p. 149) afforded by these divergent methodolog-
ical paradigms. At one level this clearly points to the practical solution of
methodological pluralism, which has frequently been proposed by others
with an interest in creating greater unification among diverse approaches to
psychological science (e.g., Downing, 2000; Messer, 1992; Polkinghorne,
1983; Safran & Messer, 1997; Yanchar & Slife, 1997). Though not always
characterized as such, this solution to the issue of methodological diversity
represents another vivid application of the dialectical method.
Yanchar and Slife (1997) presented a beautifully clear explanation of
the rationale for and benefits of methodological pluralism:
methodological pluralism would allow for more comprehensive understandings of

psychological phenomena. Many contend that the use of a single investigative
method fails to provide a full account of psychological life. This is because all
methods presumably come attuned to certain aspects of reality, while being blind to
other aspects of reality (Howard, 1983; Polkinghorne, 1983; Slife & Williams, 1995).
For example, a qualitative method, which captures people’s phenomenological
experience, cannot provide detailed information regarding the biological correlates
of such experience. At least two distinct types of method would be required to
provide an account that incorporated both phenomenology and biology. In this
sense, scientists who use a methodological pluralism could provide a more com-
prehensive account of psychological phenomena by using a set of diverse methods
that provide multiple profiles of psychological life. A more comprehensive account
could presumably be rendered as different profiles were combined into a coherent
picture that did not omit crucial details. Therefore, the value of methodological
pluralism—indeed, the genuine strength of methodological pluralism—lies in its
ability to provide such diverse profiles of psychological life and to join them into an
integrated whole (Polkinghorne, 1983; see also Bryman, 1984; Denzin, 1978). (p. 246)
Recently, Sternberg and Grigorenko (2001) articulated an approach to

the unification of psychology in which methodological pluralism lies at the
very core. Referred to as “unified psychology” (p. 1069), the latter entails
“the multiparadigmatic, multidisciplinary, and integrated study of psycho-
logical phenomena through converging operations” (p. 1069). In turn, the
concept of “converging operations refers to the use of multiple methodol-
ogies for studying a single psychological phenomenon or problem” (p.
1071). In elaborating this concept, Sternberg and Grigorenko (2001) ech-
oed facets of Yanchar and Slife’s (1997) characterization of methodological
pluralism cited above, but in terms that bring another important nuance of
understanding to the value of this methodological strategy:
322 Anchin
The basic idea is that any one operation is, in all likelihood, inadequate for the
comprehensive study of any psychological phenomenon. The reason is that any
methodology introduces biases of one kind or another, often of multiple kinds.
By using multiple converging methodologies (i.e., converging operations) for the
study of a single psychological phenomenon or problem, one averages over sources
of bias. (p. 1071)
Deploying methods associated with both empiricist-quantitative and

hermeneutic-qualitative paradigms as converging operations in order to
develop more comprehensive and unified understandings is but one level of
a solution to methodological diversity. Equally—and perhaps even more—
challenging to a broadening endorsement of methodological pluralism are
fundamental epistemological issues (see, e.g., Anchin, 2008; Downing,
2000, 2004; Polkinghorne, 1983; Safran & Messer, 1997; Yanchar & Slife,
1997). Intricately tied to distinctly different ontological positions, the em-
piricist-quantitative and hermeneutic-qualitative paradigms, apart from the
specifics and intricacies of their respective sets of methodologies, embody
opposed foundational assumptions as to what constitutes legitimate and
meaningful knowledge about human beings and different criteria for eval-
uating the scientific admissibility of any given knowledge claim. The pros-
pects of cohesively interrelating the very diverse kinds of knowledge
produced by empiricist-quantitative and hermeneutic-qualitative method-
ologies is enhanced to the extent that these significant epistemological
differences are reconciled.
Different pathways to such reconciliation have in fact been proposed.
For example, as summarized by Yanchar and Slife (1997), one direction
suggested by some entails development of an indigenous epistemology
that, tailored to the distinct nature of psychological phenomena and knowl-
edge, would “offer a metalevel set of rules for evaluating all knowledge
claims, eventually allowing for the accumulation, and perhaps integration,
of data collected with different methods (Polkinghorne, 1983)” (p. 247).
While a compelling direction of epistemological development, Yanchar
and Slife (1997) pointed out that advances in this direction have not been
particularly strong and “in fact, some argue that this work will never be
brought to fruition (e.g., Koch, 1993; Sugarman, 1992; Wertheimer, 1987)”
(p. 247). Moreover, “others contend that the development of an indigenous
epistemology will not be possible without more fundamental and, in some
cases, extratheoretical, considerations (e.g., Yanchar & Kristensen,
1996b)” (p. 247). An alternative direction is that of epistemological plu-
ralism intimately tied to dialectical thinking (Anchin, 2008; Downing, 2000,
2004), wherein an investigator of psychotherapy and its related fields
approaches those domains of study and makes methodological decisions
and choices undergirded by a dialectical epistemic position that recognizes
the merits and the blindspots of each paradigm’s premises as to what
constitutes legitimate, meaningful, and valid knowledge. However, this

rationally appealing alternative, as Downing (2000) pointed out, is coun-
terposed by “formidable obstacles” (p. 269) of a cognitive, emotional, and
experiential nature, issues that he goes on to address in a most thought-
provoking manner.
A highly creative analysis by R. Elliott (2008) provided epistemic
justification for methodological pluralism through a uniquely different
approach to bringing together the distinct contributions offered by empir-
icist-quantitative and hermeneutic-qualitative ways of knowing. Using
various methods of conceptual analysis (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson’s
linguistic metaphor analysis), Elliott carefully deconstructed and delin-
eated the meanings of several key epistemological verbs—that is, “verbs of
Knowing” (p. 43)—specifically “describing,” “interpreting,” “explaining,”
and “understanding.” Elliott’s findings with regard to the latter two verbs
are highlighted here because of their particular centrality in differentiating
between empiricism and hermeneutics; his summarization only hints at the
illuminating nature of his analyses: “[A]re Explaining and Understanding
fundamentally different ways of Knowing? Yes, they differ in structure
(mediated vs. direct knowledge), direction (toward general simplicity vs.
unique complexity), and effect (constructing a conceptual model vs. creat-
ing a relationship)” (p. 40). As Elliott made explicitly clear in his discus-
sion, more deeply understanding and appreciating the richness and com-
plexity of meanings actually encompassed by the verbs explaining and
understanding makes it abundantly clear that both ways of knowing are
essential to, and so can play complementary roles in, psychotherapy
research.
Whatever shape it may take, a more coalescent epistemology seems
instrumental to the methodological pluralism that would be integral to the
development of a unifying psychotherapy paradigm. Groundedness in an
epistemic position that embraces the value of empiricist-quantitative and
hermeneutic-qualitative ways of knowing provides a solid foundation for then
drawing, at an operational level, from both methodological paradigms within
the context of pragmatic assessment of the research project—for example, the
specific purposes of the investigation, the questions therefore being asked, and
the context within which the inquiry is being undertaken (see, e.g., Fishman,
1999; Martin, 2000; Polkinghorne, 1983). In the fully liberated investigative
climate intrinsic to methodological pluralism, researchers could thus under-
take the creative development of different ways of combining specific empir-
icist and hermeneutic methodologies or components of each in the service of
developing more comprehensive and unified understandings.
R. Elliott’s (2001, 2002) hermeneutic single-case efficacy design
(HSCED) is one such illustration of a methodological synthesis of herme-
neutic and empiricist ways of thinking and knowing. As summarized by R.
324 Anchin
Elliott (2001), “HSCED uses a mixture of quantitative and qualitative

information to create a rich case record that provides positive and negative
evidence for the causal influence of therapy on client outcome” (p. 317).
Hill and colleagues’ (Kasper, Hill, & Kivlighan, in press; Hill et al., in
press) two case studies of therapist immediacy, a metacommunicative
intervention entailing client–therapist discussion and processing of their
here-and-now relationship, provide additional illustrations of combining
empiricist and hermeneutic methodologies—specifically as a scientific ap-
proach to shedding more comprehensive light than either methodology
alone on a singular intervention’s processes, outcomes, and their interre-
lationships (see Anchin, in press-a). Integrating single-case research, ele-
ments of change process research, and both quantitative and qualitative
methods, the investigators undertake highly intensive analysis and concep-
tual crystallization of both in-session client changes effected by different
types of therapist immediacy and how these changes may influence differ-
entially assessed outcomes at postsession, termination, and follow-up.
These studies by Elliott and by Hill and her colleagues demonstrate that
unification, at the level of methods, is a process of weaving together
otherwise disparate epistemological and methodological elements, creating
a picture of what a more holistic clinical science and the nature of findings
it produces can entail, not least of which is an expansion and deepening of
the field’s evidentiary knowledge base about a given intervention’s ef-
fects—and effectiveness (Anchin, in press-a).
BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL SYSTEMS METATHEORY: A

FRAMEWORK FOR A UNIFYING PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC
PARADIGM
These are but three of the inviting tasks, patterned after those of Staats
(1991), necessary for developing an increasingly unified body of therapeu-
tically related psychological knowledge, and from my perspective, these
directions respect plurality while trying to consolidate it in ways that
enhance its value and impact. Looking down the road and thinking of these
and other routes as converging pathways, I offer some speculations as to
the shape that this emerging unifying paradigm may take and bring into
sharper detail certain of its major defining features and their implications.
For a number of reasons, I believe that over time a paradigm that
emerges as unifying the field of psychotherapy will partially incorporate
some variation or descendant of general systems theory (von Bertalanffy,
1968) integrated with the biopsychosocial model of human health and
illness (cf. Anchin, 2003a; Engel, 1980; Kiesler, 1999; Magnavita, 2005;
Millon & Davis, 1996; Schwartz, 1988). This projection is anchored in the
view that unifying knowledge in any field of endeavor requires metatheory
comprising a conceptual scaffolding that is sufficiently broad to encompass
all of the specific knowledge domains distinctly pertinent to the field under
consideration, that can serve as a coherent framework for systematically
interrelating the essential knowledge elements within and among those
domains, and that extends conceptual tendrils into other fields of study.
Henriques (2003) stressed these points in discussing the insufficiency of
recent approaches to unifying psychology as a whole:
[C]urrent unified approaches have failed not because they have been too general
but because they have not been general enough. What is needed is a metatheo-
retical framework that crisply defines the subject matter of psychology, demon-
strates how psychology exists in relationship to the other sciences, and allows one
to systematically integrate the key insights from the major perspectives in a manner
that results in cumulative knowledge. (p. 152)
For the field of psychotherapy, systems theory integrated with the

biopsychosocial model forges a metatheoretical paradigm containing
highly heuristic capacities for serving these unifying functions (cf.
Schwartz, 1988), and in the context of those unifying processes, for giving
rise to ever more potent strategies, principles, and methods of therapeutic
intervention (see Anchin & Magnavita, 2006).
As discussed elsewhere (Anchin, 2002, 2003a), foundational to systems
theory is an all-inclusive, holistic conception of the human being that at one
and the same time embraces the multilevel structural complexity of human
personality and yet the inherently unified manner in which this structure
functions within the contextual circumstances at hand. The biopsychosocial
model of health and illness comprehensively defines the composition of this
integrated complexity. It encompasses and delineates the multiple and
intricately constituted subsystems, from microlevels to macrolevels, that in
thoroughly interdependent fashion comprise the individual qua living sys-
tem: in the biological domain, genetic, anatomical, physiological, and bio-
chemical subsystems; in the psychological domain, cognitive, affective, and
motivational subsystems, each of whose constitutive processes occur along
a continuum of awareness ranging from acute consciousness to thorough-
going unconsciousness; and in the social domain, the verbal/linguistic sub-
system of speech and the overt behavioral subsystem, which is itself com-
posed of multiple nonverbal channels. Further, the social domain of the
biopsychosocial model underscores that events occurring within and
among all of the aforementioned subsystems continuously spin out in
relation to and are reciprocally interpenetrated by an individual’s social
surround, a multiplex environment that is itself a domain of systems-
within-systems (e.g., dyadic, familial, community, cultural groups, society).
This biopsychosocial systems framework also integrates the vibrant domain
326 Anchin
of subjective experience, the very lifeblood of human personality in its

individual and social journey through the vicissitudes of the life span.
Providing a valuable gateway into the integrated complexity of the biopsy-
chosocial system, the experiential, phenomenological dimension is by no
means isomorphic with any of the biopsychosocial subsystems, but rather it
is the felt coalescence of simultaneously operative and interactive biologi-
cal, cognitive, affective, motivational, verbal, and behavioral subsystems as
these proceed vis-à-vis the individual’s ecological, social– environmental
circumstances.2 In thus incorporating subjective experience within its pur-
view, systems theory concurrently integrates essential phenomena that
infuse the realm of personal subjectivity, for example, intentionality, pur-
pose, and meaning (cf. Krippner, Ruttenber, Engelman, & Granger, 1985).
Interrelationship and Process as Unifying Principles
Fused with this biopsychosocial rendering of human functioning and its

continuous experiential concomitants, general systems theory’s capacity to
serve as a unifying paradigm for psychotherapy is ontologically and epis-
temologically undergirded by two key principles: the irreducibility of in-
terrelationship and its manifestation in process.
A core postulate of systems theory is the interrelatedness that exists
among all of the subsystems comprising any given living system, such that
the prodigious array of variables comprising the human organism’s biopsy-
chosocial matrix is viewed as thoroughly interconnected and reciprocally
interactive through a highly complex “network of relationships” (Capra,
1996, p. 37). Inextricably related, the qualities that manifest “at the level of
the whole (the system level)” (Schwartz, 1988, p. 308) emerge, not from the
properties of the individual subsystems themselves, but rather from the
“patterns of organization (also called “structures”)” (Polkinghorne, 1983,
p. 144) that characterize this network of interrelationships. Schwartz
(1988), pointing out that these emergent properties “are ubiquitous in
nature (Miller, 1978)” (p. 308), illustrated their interrelational foundations:
The classic example of emergent properties concerns the individual properties of
hydrogen and oxygen as atoms versus the unique properties that emerge when
hydrogen and oxygen unite and become the molecular system we call water. The
unique properties of water expressed as a liquid at room temperature cannot be
predicted by studying the behavior of hydrogen and oxygen independently (i.e.,
2
Anticipating the key systems concept of emergence discussed in the next section, recent
formulations of consciousness as an emergent property are highly convergent with this
conception of one’s experiential phenomenology as a felt coalescence (see, e.g., Silberstein,
2001).
ununited) as separate gases at room temperature. The unique behaviors of water

only emerge when hydrogen and oxygen interact in such a way as to become a
unified, organized chemical system. (pp. 308 –309)
Extrapolating to the psychotherapeutic context, the manner in which

phenomena emerge holistically from patterns of interaction among sub-
systems and their specific properties can be clinically illustrated by the
highly unpleasant subjective impact experienced by a therapist vis-à-vis an
enraged borderline patient. Experienced at a particular moment in a
session, that felt reaction is a rapidly emergent phenomenon that emanates,
not from the separate and independent qualities of the patient’s accusatory
content at the verbal subsystem level, excessively high volume and shrill
tone at the paralinguistic level, piercing gaze, or the patient’s hand abruptly
slapping the desk, but rather from the commixture of all of these properties
within the form of a unified enactment (Anchin, 2002; Frank, 2002).
Similarly, the rage fueling this enactment is an emergent property arising
from rapid-fire interaction between the patient’s biochemically linked af-
fective irritability, a series of statements just made in a certain tone of voice
by the therapist, the patient’s cognitive construal of and consequent mean-
ings attributed to those statements, and within these mutually interactive
contexts, the patient’s self-defensive interpersonal motivations. Each of
these events is necessary, but not sufficient, to trigger rage; it takes the
multiple interactions among them to spark the experience and expression
of that volatile emotional state. From a biopsychosocial systemic perspec-
tive, then, comprehensively understanding events and properties charac-
terizing a given subsystem during a given segment of time (e.g., content and
features characterizing an individual’s cognitive or affective or behavioral
subsystem) necessitates grasping the nature of its dynamic interrelation-
ships with events characterizing other subsystems comprising the biopsy-
chosocial matrix. In turn, networks of interaction among all of these
subsystems give rise to the qualities expressed at the level of the whole.
Characteristics of both any selected subsystem of the biopsychosocial
system and of the system as a whole can thus also be seen to be thoroughly
contextual in nature. Capra (1996) pointed out that such “contextual
thinking” (p. 37) is one of the “great strand[s] of systems thinking” (p. 42).
However, the latter goes on to indicate that “there is another strand of
equal importance . . . . [T]his second strand is process thinking” (Capra,
1996, p. 42). Thus, while, as noted above by Polkinghorne (1983), patterns
of organized interrelationship among subsystems can be conceptualized as
structures, it is important to also bear in mind that “in systems thinking
every structure is seen as the manifestation of underlying processes”
(Capra, 1996, p. 42). That is, the organized configuration of relationships
among subsystems and their specific features (e.g., a particular, integrated
configuration of self-referential beliefs, mood, and overt interpersonal
328 Anchin
actions) that can be mapped as having a particular structure unfolds, in real

time, as a fluid process of interwoven multivariate activity. This principal
dimension of systemic understanding is well expressed in the form of a
recommendation offered by Fay (1996) as one among 12 theses summing
up his compelling “multicultural philosophy of science” (p. 241):
Think processurally, not substantively (that is, think in terms of verbs, not nouns).
Include time as a fundamental element in all social entities. See movement—
transformation, evolution, change— everywhere. Much social thought reifies activi-
ties and processes, turning them into things with fixed identities: “the” self or “this”
society or culture are treated as objects with definitive boundaries and essential
structure . . . . But social and psychological entities are activities, not things. Con-
sequently, they are better described by means of verbs rather than nouns. We talk
of human beings as if they were entities like stones, and not continuous processes
of activity—forgetting that “being” is a gerund, and that it refers to an ongoing
process. (p. 242)
These conceptions underscore the enormous network of multivariate

interrelationships and processes encompassed by the biopsychosocial sys-
tems paradigm, which in its integrated-subsystems composition has suffi-
cient metaconceptual breadth to encompass the vast plurality of phenom-
ena, ranging from microlevels to macrolevels, differentially mapped—and
to varying degrees empirically substantiated— by current theoretical mod-
els. Importantly, however, the biopsychosocial systems framework does not
specify in an a priori way the specific terminology and concepts for map-
ping those subsystems, operating instead as a metatheoretical framework
that serves an organizing function. To the extent that an increasingly
interconnected body of psychotherapeutically related knowledge develops,
casting this within a biopsychosocial systemic framework thus seems all the
more logical. The latter provides this unifying framework without the
exclusionary processes that place constraints on the ontology of psycho-
therapy. Moreover, in spotlighting as a core postulate the intrinsic inter-
relatedness of phenomena that in real time is manifested in processural
fashion, the biopsychosocial systems paradigm, in its basic epistemology, is
isomorphic with the philosophy of unification, which fundamentally re-
volves around showing that phenomena are interwoven.
Biopsychosocial Interrelationships and Processes: Insights From

Cybernetics, Chaos Theory and Their Synthesis
A paradigm explicitly constructed out of the fusion of the biopsycho-

social model with specific concepts and principles of systems theory not
only creates an organizing framework for systematically interrelating ac-
cumulating knowledge about biological, psychological, and social sub-
systems in relation to personality, psychopathology, and psychotherapy. It
also points to directions for unified clinical theory and research built upon
systemically based insights into different types of dynamics characterizing
those biopsychosocial interrelationships and processes. Currently those
insights derive especially from cybernetics and chaos theory, two major
schools of systems thinking. Although each approach encompasses differ-
ent emphases, their common ground is the study of nonlinear dynamical
systems, and while these can involve nonliving natural systems (e.g.,
weather patterns), the human biopsychosocial system constitutes the most
elaborate living nonlinear dynamical system.
Most fundamentally, “a dynamical system is anything that moves,
changes, or evolves in time” (Williams, 1997, p. 11), while the “nonlinear-
ity” of such a system denotes that the latter’s variations through time and
during a demarcated segment of time emerge from the unfolding of com-
plex nonlinear interconnections and processes among its components or
subsystems. Nonlinearity as it pertains to interrelationships and processes
is characterized by several dimensions. Among these is magnitude of effect,
wherein, in a nonlinear interconnection, “the relationship between two
things is not always proportional (e.g., an increase in X does not necessarily
mean a proportional increase or decrease in Y)” (Goerner, 1995, p. 5); so,
for instance, a very small increase in X (e.g., the dosage level of a psych-
otropic) may produce a very large increase in Y (e.g., degree of improve-
ment in the patient’s mood). In contrast, linearity is marked by propor-
tionality in the magnitude of effect: A small change in X produces a
proportionately small change in Y, while a large change in X produces a
proportionately large change in Y.
Linearity and nonlinearity can also be differentiated in terms of direc-
tionality of influence. As elaborated by Lasser and Bathory (1997), a linear
relationship is characterized by a unidirectional flow of causal influence
between two variables: X (e.g., a particular motive) affects Y (e.g., enact-
ment of a specific interpersonal action), and Y may then affect Z (e.g., the
feeling engendered in the interpersonal recipient of that action), but the
direction of influence is always one way. By contrast, in a nonlinear
relationship variables are characterized by bidirectional, or mutual,
causation. Goerner (1995), using the word interdependence (p. 5) to
capture this reciprocal influence process, gave some flavor for the types
of interdependence that can transpire in a nonlinear dynamical system;
by extrapolation, her depiction also begins to sketch out the diverse
kinds of interrelationships within, between, and among specific biolog-
ical, psychological, and social subsystems, however conceptually typolo-
gized, that a unifying body of psychotherapeutically related knowledge
would seek to capture when guided by a nonlinear, dynamical, biopsy-
chosocial systems paradigm:
330 Anchin
Interdependence can be (1) instantaneous, as in X and Y affect each other; (2)

circular, as in X affects Y, which affects Z, which affects X; (3) self-reflexive, as in
X affects itself; or (4) networked, where X, Y, and Z have complex interrelationships.
Interdependence ties to concepts such as feedback, circular causality, recursion, and
self-reflexivity. (Goerner, 1995, p. 5)
The imposing complexity of the biopsychosocial system’s nonlinear

processes is further underlined by the fact that these different types of
interdependence, and still others that may exist, are also “all . . . happening
at the same time” (van Gelder & Port, 1995, p. 23) because of “multiple
simultaneous interactions” (p. 23).
Against this backdrop, cybernetics and chaos theory key in on partic-
ular facets of human biopsychosocial nonlinear dynamics that constitute
valuable directions for unified study and understanding that also contain
important therapeutic implications. As elaborated elsewhere (Anchin,
2003a), cybernetics concentrates on the fundamentally goal-directed and
purposive nature of living systems, and within that organic teleological
context (cf. Rychlak, 1988; Mundale & Bechtel, 1996), on how systems
regulate themselves in the service of effectively steering toward their aims,
goals, or preferred states. Broadly speaking, an individual’s goals at a given
point in time may range anywhere from achieving or maintaining a steady
state of functional and experiential equilibrium to effecting radical change,
or they may entail attaining desired states falling anywhere in between
these two poles.3 However, the point to be emphasized in the present
context is that to succeed in attaining his or her goals, whatever they may
be, it is a sine qua non that an individual must have a way of regulating
himself or herself.
Feedback loops, the prototypic embodiment of nonlinear interrelation-
ships among variables (cf. Richardson, 1991), are fundamental to this
self-regulatory process. These loops operate continuously as an individual
recursively gauges his or her current status in relation to a desired goal
state, discerns from that informational feedback differences that may exist
between the current and desired state, and institutes self-corrective actions
to the extent that deviations are occurring. Still more specifically, self-
regulation in the service of goal attainment characteristically requires an
3
Certainly a more elaborate characterization of the intentional, goal-oriented nature of
human functioning is possible. Ford and Nichols (1987), for example, presented a highly
inclusive and detailed taxonomy of human goals broadly categorized into “desired within-
person consequences” (p. 295), further differentiated into various affective, cognitive, and
subjective organization goals, and “desired person-environment consequences” (p. 295),
differentiated, in turn, into an array of social relationship and task goals. Moreover, as Winell
(1987) elaborated, goals are multidimensional (e.g., range of time/generality, active/inactive,
and rational/irrational), and they are often hierarchically organized in ways that change over
time.
interplay between negative and positive feedback loops, the former damp-
ening (i.e., reducing or diminishing) interconnected biopsychosocial sub-
system processes that have the potential to inhibit or otherwise derail the
individual’s movement toward a desired state, the latter amplifying (i.e.,
augmenting or intensifying) interrelated multisubsystem processes that
foster effective goal-directed movement. By virtue of “shifting loop dom-
inance” (Richardson, 1991, p. 34), an unfolding goal-oriented process may
at times be dominated by a positive (amplifying) feedback loop and at
other times by a negative (dampening) feedback loop, while during other
periods, variously paced oscillations between positive and negative loops
may transpire, underscoring the dynamic character of self-regulatory pro-
cesses as complex biopsychosocial systems, for example, individuals, dyads,
or families, pursue their respective teleologic agendas within changing
environments and circumstances.
The emphasis placed on self-regulation by the cybernetics branch of
systems thinking is valuable in shedding light on dynamic processes of
feedback-mediated synchronization among biological, psychological, and
social subsystems within the context of holistic human purposiveness.
However, because cybernetics is historically rooted in the study of the
structure and functioning of closed, mechanical systems, an exclusively
cybernetics systems conception of the human biopsychosocial system pre-
sents a picture of the latter skewed in the direction of well-ordered pro-
cesses and the maintenance of systemic stability, even as the system pur-
sues its goals. Chaos theory decisively balances this orderly picture of the
human biopsychosocial system. A field that has exploded across the scien-
tific landscape over the past 20 –25 years, “chaos theory teaches that
instability and disorder are. . .widespread in nature” (E. Elliott & Kiel,
1996, p. 2) and indeed intrinsic to natural nonlinear dynamical systems.
However, as chaos theory also emphasizes, within such irregularity and
disequilibrium lie the potent seeds of highly formative transformational
processes that increase complexity and thereby systemic adaptability,
growth, and development (see, e.g., Barton, 1994; Mahoney, 1991;
Mahoney & Moes, 1997).
Applied specifically to the human biopsychosocial system, chaos the-
ory takes as its starting point the limited but persistent fluctuation that
occurs in the familiar and more or less predictable patterns of interrela-
tionship among biopsychosocial subsystems and the environment that char-
acterize personality structure and functioning during steady states. Phe-
nomenologically, steady states are “those periods in our lives where we feel
that we ‘know ourselves’” (Butz & Chamberlain, 1998, p. 24), an emergent
experience spawned by the prevailing stability in our biopsychosocial
structural integrity, functional capacities, and subjectivity. Steady states,
however, are not static. At any given moment in time, a steady state is also
332 Anchin
characterized by variation and flux; for example, neurotransmitter levels,

moods, intensity of motivations, thoughts about self and others, social
system events, actions relative to those social contexts, and subjective
experience vary, shift, and change. There is, as Gleick (1987) put it,
“a delicate balance between the forces of stability and the forces of
instability” (p. 309). Mahoney (1991) conveyed a parallel idea in different
terms: “Living systems like ourselves exist as dynamic tensions of equili-
brating (“balancing” or “ordering”) and disequilibrating (“unbalancing” or
“disordering”) processes” (p. 419). To no small extent, this is an organic
dialectical process hardwired into the very stuff of the human biopsycho-
social system.
The insights of chaos theory sharply illuminate developments when
this delicate balance and dynamic tension is upset. The triggering precip-
itant may be one or more of the endogenous subsystem fluctuations alluded
to above, for example, steady intensification of a certain affective state
fostered by an interrelated and recurring self-referential cognitive thread,
which may itself be tied to the individual’s transition into a particular
developmental stage. Or particular perturbations in the system may be
kicked off or exacerbated by exogenous factors, for example, a psychoso-
cial stressor of sudden onset or one that has been ongoing but whose
intensity is now rapidly increasing. Whatever the initiating source or
sources, the essentially stable biopsychosocial patterning that characterizes
a steady state may become disrupted and the individual can shift into the
pivotal, increasingly disequilibrial phase denoted by the concept of chaos.
Providing a pivotal link between cybernetics thinking and chaos the-
ory, Richardson (1991, pp. 308 –313) speculated as to the role played by
shifting dominance of feedback loops in the development of chaos, and
Proskauer and Butz (1998) provided an explanation in precisely those
terms. Substitute the phrase biopsychosocial system for family system in the
first sentence of the following quotation, and their analysis of the powerful
effects of unimpeded dominance by positive feedback loops has resounding
pertinence for how an individual may move from order into chaos:
Positive feedback can greatly amplify the impact of small disturbances on system
behavior, but this effect is highly dependent on the relative strength of the negative
feedback elements that maintain the stability of the family system. More precisely,
the deviation-amplifying effects of positive feedback create an accelerating change
process whenever a critical variable (or combination of variables) deviates beyond
a threshold defined by the limits of the system’s capacity to maintain its steady state.
Once positive feedback becomes relatively strong, the stability of a system is fragile.
After a critical threshold is crossed, the accelerating change process can quickly
proliferate throughout the system, drastically altering its usual characteristics . . . .
(Proskauer and Butz, 1998, p. 195)
These drastic alterations in “usual characteristics”—that is, in the

steady state of stable personality structure and functioning—may entail
disturbances of varying intensities, frequencies, and durations in any com-

bination of biological, cognitive, affective, motivational, behavioral, or
social–interpersonal processes, including the nature of impacts on and
reciprocal overt reactions of others. Collectively, however, this period of
distinct upheaval in the biopsychosocial system defines a chaotic phase:
“disruption, disorder, confusion, and irregularity” (Chamberlain, 1998, p.
11). Importantly, however, and essential to the technical meaning of chaos,
within this structural, functional, and phenomenological disorder in the
biopsychosocial system, patterning emerges, giving what we construe to be
different psychopathologies their distinct form, shape, and character. And
yet, with the individual in a phase of marked flux, the door to significant
change has also opened. As well depicted by Perna and Masterpasqua
(1997), “systems in chaos are in a phase of ‘maximum probability,’ meaning
that basic structural change in the system is more likely here and that
development could follow any one of many trajectories. To anthropomor-
phize, a system in chaos takes the stance ‘I don’t know.’ It is thus open to
any number of evolutionary paths” (p. 9).
For a given individual, the prospective paths emerging from a chaotic
phase are not wholly predictable, but among them, chaos theory highlights
a living system’s inherent, adaptive capacity to engage in self-restructuring
processes to create a new, more differentiated and hence complex pattern
of organization. “Indeed, self-organization has emerged as perhaps the
central concept in the systems view of life, and like the concepts of
feedback and self-regulation, it is linked closely to networks” (Capra, 1996,
p. 83). Self-generating new order out of chaos, reorganization of the
biopsychosocial system is a holistic process of personality growth and
development, entailing intertwined structural changes throughout the web
of relationships that bind biological, psychological, and social subsystems
into a coherent unity. And as these interrelated changes and their more
constructive consequences transpire, different subjective states are surely
experienced. When this process of unified restructuring occurs in optimal
directions, a healthier, more adaptive and resilient individual emerges,
entering a new steady state in which he or she is “capable of assimilating
perturbations like the ones that initiated [his or her] transformation (as
well as others not yet encountered)” (Mahoney, 1991, p. 419). However,
Mahoney (1991) also made the vital point that emerging from a chaotic
phase with a healthier personality structure is not inevitable: “[S]ome
systems will settle into a less viable structure and suffer the consequences . . . .
Some systems will lack the capacities, resources, or good fortune to sustain
a successful transformation, in which case they will struggle (chronically)
and/or degenerate in the process” (p. 419).
Chaos theory deploys a number of specific concepts that capture with
greater detail the intricacies of these nonlinear dynamical processes that
334 Anchin
characterize a living system’s progression from a steady state encompassing

persistent fluctuation amid stability, the movement into chaos, the nature of
the chaotic phase itself, the transition out of chaos through self-organizational
processes that optimally breed new, higher-order structures and system-
wide organizational patterning, through settling into a new steady state
characterized by greater complexity and adaptability. Illustrative key in-
terrelational concepts include sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
far-from-equilibrium conditions, transitional states, unpredictability,
strange attractors, bifurcations, structural coupling, and irreversibility (see,
e.g., Barton, 1994; Chamberlain, 1998; Kossman & Bullrich, 1997). The
point that I underscore here is that, applied to the human biopsychosocial
system, the consistent referents for all of these highly heuristic concepts are
differential types of nonlinear interactive dynamics within and among
biological, psychological, and social structures and processes during par-
ticular segments of time, thus mapping nonlinear systemic processes
through which an individual develops, grows, and changes in a holistic,
unified way.
In my view, insights and principles of cybernetics and chaos theory
constitute complementary branches of systems thinking. When synthe-
sized, they encompass essential phases of a comprehensive unifying frame-
work for understanding human structure, functioning, and process during
periods of psychological health, disorder, and transitions between them.
Briefly, during the essential stability characterizing steady states, an indi-
vidual engaging in the day-to-day business of life is not just functioning, but
functioning with intentionality, moving his or her life on a daily basis in
directions oriented by pursuing immediate, short-term, and long-term de-
sired states and consequences and experiencing in the process the varying
degrees of gratification, purpose, and meaning in life that derive therefrom
(Anchin, 2003a; Yalom, 1980). Integral to such periods, the individual is
engaging, on the whole, in effective self-regulation. That is, despite con-
tinuous fluctuations of varying magnitudes in the dynamic biopsychosocial
matrix, processes within and among different subsystem domains are being
sufficiently well managed and synchronized through the interplay of posi-
tive and negative feedback loops, the former promoting interconnected
biological, psychological, and social processes that facilitate effective
movement toward attaining desired states and goals, and the latter inhib-
iting or reducing processes that tend to derail and otherwise impede
effective goal pursuit.
But alas, during the course of a given period of steady state function-
ing, there inevitably arise stronger-than-usual impediments or disruptions
to effectively regulating varying combinations of biopsychosocial processes
essential to goal attainment, whether due to principally endogenous factors
or due to exogenous factors—although, given the nature of nonlinear
causality, the emergence of either type of disturbance is likely derivative

from complex interactions. This process of disturbance, stimulating grow-
ing turbulence in heretofore stable biopsychosocial structuralization,
functioning, and experience, heightens the difficulty of effective self-
regulation and in turn effective pursuit of desired states and consequences.
This configuration may mark the beginning of movement into a chaotic
state. If the individual is unable to sufficiently generate dampening nega-
tive feedback processes, whether from within (e.g., coping self-statements;
psychological defenses; mindfulness; methods of relaxation) or through
drawing on external resources (e.g., input and support from significant
others; medication), the amplifications stemming from insufficiently op-
posed positive feedback loops may escalate, progressively moving the
individual into the more intensified biopsychosocial disorder, symptom-
atology, and subjective pain that compose a chaotic phase. From there,
individual transformation may move in any number of directions, ranging
from personal growth and development spawned by self-restructuring
processes that create a more differentiated, complex, and resilient biopsy-
chosocial structure, to sustaining structural impairments that result in
compromised levels of functioning, negatively toned experiential concom-
itants, and potentially more chronic sequelea.
It is during this critical time, when the individual is in the state of
“maximum probability” noted above, that psychotherapeutic processes and
interventions may wield their greatest potency for facilitating the move-
ment of biopsychosocial restructuring in salutary directions. In develop-
mental terms, the individual may be in what Vygotzky referred to as “the
zone of proximal development” (see, e.g., Young, 1997, chaps. 5 & 6),
interpretable as the accelerated pace or heightened level of development
that an individual is capable of when a developmental process is under-
taken with the guidance and collaboration of a capable other, as opposed
to the pace and level when undertaken independently. This timely inter-
section within the zone of proximal development between a high level of
individual biopsychosocial “disorder and disequilibrium” (Mahoney &
Moes, 1997, p. 186) and growth-promoting relational and interventional
processes may also constitute a unifying explanation for the robust finding
by outcome research that the major positive effects of psychotherapy occur
in the first six to eight sessions (Anchin, 2003b; Budman & Gurman, 1988).
Viewed through still a broader lens, such a rather rapid period of
significant growth and change may represent the therapeutic equivalent of
Eldredge and Gould’s (1972; Gould, 1989; Gould & Eldredge, 1979) sem-
inal, evolutionarily tied concept of punctuated equilibrium. Complementing
(see, e.g., Mahoney, 1991, pp. 127–128) the gradualism of Darwinian the-
ory, which held that evolution occurs through a process of exceedingly
slow, continuous change, Eldredge and Gould’s now widely accepted con-
336 Anchin
ception asserted that evolution can also occur through sudden, discontin-
uous episodes of rapid transformation that punctuate prolonged periods of
equilibrium and stability. Chaos theoreticians within the psychological and
clinical sciences (e.g., Chamberlain, 1998; Goerner, 1995; Masterpasqua,
1997) have discussed the pertinence of this concept for human develop-
ment, growth, and change. Extrapolated specifically to the realm of psy-
chotherapy, the latter may be construed as a process wherein patient and
therapist expeditiously capitalize on a naturalistically precipitated punc-
tuation in the patient’s prior biopsychosocial equilibrium through ac-
tive, collaborative work within the zone of proximal development to
rapidly effect healthier biopsychosocial restructuralization, functioning,
and experience.
Implications of The Systems Paradigm For Unification-Oriented

Scientific Inquiry and Methodology
In key respects, scientific inquiry into personality, psychopathology,

and psychotherapy guided by a systemic framework offers a sharp contrast
to investigations embedded in the unidirectional causational model that
has long dominated psychological science. And in these differences lie
highly pertinent methodological implications for the evolution of a unifying
psychotherapeutic paradigm. Philosophical considerations provide a foun-
dation for elaborating these differences.
In a discussion of metaphysical models that guide theory construction and
the nature of research across diverse areas of inquiry, Overton and Reese
(1973) pointed out that application of a unidirectional model of causation is
embedded in a mechanistic world view that, when applied to psychology,
results in a “reactive organism model of man [sic]” (p. 69). In this view, persons
and machines are analogous: As with a machine, the individual is inherently at
rest, becoming activated only when impinged upon by triggering forces. Ex-
planations of human behavior thus adhere to the linearity concept: Since the
person is inherently inactive and a “recipient” of mobilizing forces, emitted
behaviors are equivalent to dependent variable “effects” that are explicable by
linking them to their independent variable “causes.” More specifically, the
isolation of reliable cause– effect relationships is accepted as the necessary and
sufficient form of causal explanation (cf. Bowers, 1973). Further, it is impor-
tant to note that while the mechanistic/reactive model is equipped to meta-
theoretically handle the complexities of human behavior through interaction
effects uncovered by analysis of variance data approaches, “the interaction is
not between cause and effect, but between causes . . . [and therefore] is
consistent with the mechanistic position” (Overton & Reese, 1973, p. 78).
Overton (1985) succinctly encapsulated key elements of the approach to

scientific inquiry that derive from the mechanistic/reactive model: “The . . .
research policy of this program— or what Overton and Reese earlier re-
ferred to as corollary model issues— encourages practitioners of the pro-
gram to work within a framework of elementaristic or reductionistic anal-
ysis, to consider all change and organization as the product of contingent
antecedent factors, and to represent all change as strictly additive or
continuous in nature” (p. 287).
It would be ludicrous to suggest that the mechanistic/reactive model
and its related research paradigm has been of limited value in our efforts
to understand the vast complexities of psychotherapy and its intimately
related domains of personality and psychopathology. In the same respect,
it would be thoroughly unrealistic to suggest that clinical researchers curtail
application of traditional experimental methods in favor of newer meth-
odological techniques. By the same token, it would be exceedingly impru-
dent to deny what Cronbach (1957) recognized a half-century ago, namely
that methodology constrains both the kinds of questions that can be asked
and the kinds of answers that can be provided. I know of no one who has
stated this issue more eloquently than Bowers (1973) in his assertion that
the “wedding of method and metaphysics can conspire against the very
reality of phenomena that might otherwise have some claim to scientific
objectivity” (p. 331).
It is precisely in this respect that the systems paradigm calls into
question the continued dominance of the linear, mechanistic/reactive
model and its attendant research program. Features and properties of the
systems approach correspond to an alternative metaphysical model, which
Overton and Reese (1973) referred to as the organismic model (cf.
Schwartz, 1988, pp. 298 –299). In this model, “the basic metaphor . . . is the
living organism, an organized whole. The whole is organic rather than
mechanical . . .” (p. 69). Reflected in psychology in “the active organism
model of man [sic]” (p. 70), the individual is conceptualized as inherently
and spontaneously active, the source of behaviors as opposed to being
merely activated by triggering forces. Further, the organism and the envi-
ronment—an environment far more often than not highly social in com-
position—stand in a reciprocal relationship to one another, a conception
that implicitly embodies feedback and its processes of bidirectional, as
opposed to unidirectional, causality. Accordingly, the term interaction
assumes vitally different meaning in this alternative metaphysical model,
referring not to the interdependency of causes but rather to mutual inter-
dependence “between various parts or subsystems of the organism or
between the organism, its subsystems, and the environment” (p. 79). Trans-
lated into its implications for scientific inquiry, the organismic model gives
rise to a far different research program, one that “encourages its practitio-
338 Anchin
ners to work within a holistic-analytic framework, to consider change and

organization as necessary and consequently open to a structure-function
analysis, and to represent change as both continuous and discontinuous”
(Overton, 1985, p. 288).
The organismic model calls for expansion of the traditional linear
research paradigm, which is not fully adequate to capture the interrela-
tional, processural complexities of the human organism in its inherently
unified biopsychosocial structuralization and functioning. Systemically ori-
ented approaches to investigation are highly coordinate with this expanded
research approach. For example Krippner (2001), indicating that “chaotic
systems inquiry offers a fresh approach that is both process oriented and
steeped in evolutionary thought” (p. 298), went on to explain that “chaos
methodology shifts emphasis from linear relationships of cause and effect
to more interactive approaches that stress the importance of defining
patterns, form, self-organization, and adaptive qualities of complex pro-
cesses” (p. 298). Gilgen (1995) explicitly articulated the unifying implica-
tions that he envisioned as residing in this alternative methodology:
[R]ather than reducing the intricacies of a complex situation via experimental

restrictions or statistical manipulations, one could design research projects that
revealed the patterns of change that define the system. The thought occurred to me
that psychologists could now study the whole elephant rather than mere bits and
pieces. Such an approach to psychological inquiry is, of course, intrinsically inte-
grative and may offer strategies for generating a truly comprehensive body of
psychological knowledge. (pp. xv–xvi)
Systemic methodologies by no means obviate the value and impor-

tance of the traditional reductionistic linear approach to scientific inquiry,
including its vital contributions to developing a unifying paradigm for
psychotherapy. As Barton (1994) crucially pointed out, “the various meth-
odologies, both linear and nonlinear, are mutually compatible, not contra-
dictory. They can be used to study different aspects of a system, depending
on which is most appropriate for addressing the specific question at hand”
(pp. 12–13). As in other contexts discussed above, there is a distinctly
dialectical flavor to this perspective.
Scientific investigation of the psychotherapy relationship provides a
compelling context for illustrating this interplay. As valuably detailed in
Norcross’s (2002b) comprehensive volume, the American Psychological
Association’s Division of Psychotherapy Task Force on Empirically Sup-
ported Therapy Relationships was established with two objectives in mind:
to specify general elements of the psychotherapy relationship that contrib-
ute positively to outcome and to determine methods of tailoring the
relationship to the individual patient on the basis of the latter’s nondiag-
nostic characteristics. As Norcross’s (2002a) discussion makes clear, a
reductionistic strategy was fundamentally necessary to this endeavor:
[W]e opted to divide the research reviews into smaller chunks so that the research
conclusions were more specific and the practice implications more concrete. In our
deliberations, several members of the Steering Committee advanced a favorite
analogy: the therapy relationship is like a diamond, a diamond composed of
multiple, interconnected facets. The diamond is a complex, reciprocal, and multi-
dimensional entity. The Task Force endeavored to separate and examine many of
these facets in the therapy relationship. (p. 8)
Clearly, this “division of the therapy relationship into manageable

elements” (Norcross, 2002a, p. 8) as a modus operandi was essential to
organizing reviews of the enormous literature in the service of parceling
out specific effective elements of the therapeutic relationship. In addition,
studies comprising the research pertaining to a given relationship element
were themselves by definition reductionistic in nature, far more often than
not necessarily entailing correlational methodologies targeting the circum-
scribed variable or variables of interest (e.g., therapist empathy) in order to
ascertain degrees of relationship to therapeutic outcome. For illustrative
purposes, I focus here on the findings pertaining to the first objective. As
summarized by the Steering Committee (2002), “general elements of the
therapy relationship” (p. 441) indicated by empirical evidence to be
“demonstrably effective” (p. 441) in influencing individual therapy out-
come were the therapeutic alliance, empathy, and goal consensus and
collaboration, while general elements of the relationship demonstrated
to be “promising and probably effective” (p. 441) in affecting outcome
were positive regard, congruence/genuineness, feedback, repair of rup-
ture alliances, therapist self-disclosure, management of countertransfer-
ence, and the quality of relational interpretations.
In line with the Task Force’s overarching goal, these findings, along
with those pertaining to patient characteristics and behaviors to be taken
into account in individually tailoring the relationship, are invaluable in
providing practitioners with evidence-based guidelines for facilitating de-
velopment of effective therapeutic relationships. However, from the non-
linear systems perspective, these findings provide only partial answers to
our efforts to fully comprehend the intricate architecture of the therapeutic
relationship and the processes through which it becomes linked to mean-
ingful therapeutic change. Nonlinearity raises a next set of questions about
relationships uncovered by linear methodologies. To illustrate, as the live,
ongoing process of psychotherapy temporally unfolds with a given patient,
how do the array of relationship elements found to exert a positive influ-
ence on outcome actually interact with one another to steadily build a
therapy relationship that works, and once established, what are the inter-
active processes between patient and therapist through which that rela-
tionship is maintained? To the extent that positive outcomes emerge as the
treatment process progresses, how do these “effects” feed back into and
thereby exert reciprocal influence on elements of the therapeutic relation-
340 Anchin
ship? On the other hand, if treatment bogs down and no positive changes
are occurring for a sustained period, are certain relationship elements more
susceptible than others to being reciprocally influenced in negative ways,
and in turn, how might a decline in the level of a given relationship element
actually perpetuate that stasis in patient movement? The complexity of
answers to these illustrative nonlinearity-based questions is heightened all
the more by specificity considerations. Norcross (2002a) touched on this
issue: “As with research on specific treatments, it may no longer suffice to
ask ‘Does the relationship work?’ but ‘How does the relationship work for
this disorder and this therapy?’” (p. 11).
These types of questions about the very real complexities of interaction
among effective relationship elements and among the latter, patient and
therapist variables, and outcome are implicated by the findings of linear
methods, and in turn these questions constitute grist for the mill of non-
linear, systemic methodologies. Indeed, among the Task Force’s six re-
search recommendations was the following: “Researchers are encouraged
to progress beyond experimental designs that correlate frequency of rela-
tionship behaviors and outcome measures to methodologies capable of
examining the complex associations among patient qualities, clinician be-
haviors, and therapy outcome” (Steering Committee, 2002, p. 441). Such
systemic methodologies as sequential analysis techniques (e.g., Gottman &
Roy, 1990) and nonlinear dynamic modeling (e.g., Gottman, Murray,
Swanson, Tyson, & Swanson, 2002) are precisely the types of investigative
tools capable of examining these complex multivariate associations as they
temporally unfold in nonlinear ways in the naturalistic psychotherapeutic
dyad. The challenges posed by such methodologies are notable, for exam-
ple, the need to collect a great deal of time-series data and mathematics
that can be daunting (see, e.g., Barton, 1994; Burlingame, Fuhriman, &
Barnum, 1995; Reidbord & Redington, 1995). However, such approaches
are essential to empirically investigating the web of interconnective pro-
cesses and patterns targeted by the aforementioned Task Force recommen-
dation, and in turn to developing a truly unified body of knowledge about
both the psychotherapy relationship and its relationship to outcome.
Such complementary interplay between linear and nonlinear method-
ologies in the scientific study of interconnections between the psychother-
apy relationship and outcome illustrates a potent form of methodological
pluralism that can also clearly be brought to bear on investigating multi-
variate processes characterizing the human biopsychosocial system in its
healthy and dysfunctional states, including the nature of continuous and
discontinuous processes that connect such states. Indeed, given that inter-
relating knowledge elements is fundamental to unification and that the
study of interrelationship is intrinsic to nonlinear methods of inquiry,
methodological pluralism that draws upon both linear and nonlinear in-
vestigative approaches is essential to the pursuit of unification through

psychological science. As Chamberlain (1998) pointed out, “关i兴mportant
information and research will continue to be generated using the estab-
lished experimental, linear model. Chaos science simply offers a means of
looking beyond the confines of empiricism” (pp. xii–xiii). I would modify
this to suggest that chaos science, and nonlinear methodologies more
generally, rather than looking beyond empiricism, offer a vital expansion of
empiricism beyond its traditional conceptual and methodological dimen-
sions. A more comprehensive empiricisim than that which derives solely
from the traditional linearity-based experimental method is thereby cre-
ated, enhancing development of more unified understandings.
In this regard, linear relationships between and among biopsychosocial
variables initially uncovered through traditional experimental methods can
also provide a basis for ensuing bridging theory that posits ways in which
those variables may also be interrelated in still more complex nonlinear
ways, creating hypotheses that may then be subjected to testing through
nonlinear research methods (see Barton, 1994, p. 12). Hermeneutic-
qualitative methods also retain their distinct value in this unified approach
to inquiry. While in tandem linear and nonlinear empirical-quantitative
methods can enable investigators to uncover the structure and processes
characterizing networks of interrelationships within the biopsychosocial
matrix, hermeneutic-qualitative methodologies are essential for captur-
ing their phenomenological emergence, that is, subjective experiences
and meanings that characterize those interrelationships as unified, lived
phenomena.
More generally, the vast multidimensional complexity of the human
being encompassed by a biopsychosocial systems paradigm provides a
coherent unifying framework for a methodological pluralism that places
empirical-quantitative linear and nonlinear methods, and hermeneutic-
qualitative methodologies, on firm and equal ontological and epistemolog-
ical footing. The diverse kinds of knowledge yielded by these different
methodologies can thereby be fully accommodated and integrated, a fun-
damental necessity if we are to develop truly comprehensive and unified
explanations and understandings of the complex biopsychosocial compo-
sition, dynamics, and experience of psychological health, disorder, and the
transitional processes that connect them.
CONCLUSION
At every turn, the pursuit of unifying conceptions within the psycho-

therapeutic domain runs headlong into a seemingly everpresent opponent,
342 Anchin
plurality. And yet it can be no other way. Rychlak (1976b), identifying what
“is in many ways the most important usage [of dialectic] for psychology”
(p. 11), explained that “since the earliest days of philosophical discourse it
has been mentioned as the ‘many in one’ or ‘one in many’ thesis—with
variations stated as one and many, many among one, and so forth” (p. 11).
As briefly alluded to earlier and as elaborated by Viney (1989), within the
discipline of psychology, William James was already grappling with this
issue a century ago and the debate has not abated since. Whether ad-
dressed at the level of psychology as a whole or at the level of any specific
field within psychology, as in the psychotherapeutic domain, the persistent
core challenge confronting efforts at unification is coming to grips with a
multiplicity of theoretical perspectives and the vast array of knowledge
elements and modes of methodologically and clinically operating to which
those perspectives collectively give rise. Nevertheless, once it is explicitly
recognized that this apparent opposition between plurality and unity is in
point of fact an overarching dialectic, the way is opened toward forging
highly productive resolutions. The key is remembering that
on a dialectical view, alternatives, while genuinely competing, only appear to be
completely “other” to each other. They are in fact deeply interconnected, and the
confrontation between them reveals how these differences can be comprehended
and transcended (transcended not in the sense of being obliterated but in the sense
of being held in tension within a larger framework). (Fay, 1996, p. 224)
For the field of psychotherapy, a biopsychosocial systems paradigm

may provide this “larger framework” for reconciling the dynamic tension
between plurality and unity. In broadly conceptualizing mental health and
disorder in a manner that encompasses the numerous elaborate subsystems
composing the biological, psychological, and social domains, it actively
embraces plurality, yet it also embodies unity in positing that the massive
array of events and processes within, between, and among all of these
subsystems are thoroughly interrelated in highly complex ways.
Within the context of this larger metatheoretical framework, the pro-
cess of unifying bodies of knowledge through unifying theory analyses and
constructing bridging theories can examine conceptual plurality at local
levels by focusing on specific subsystem elements as well as their intercon-
nections with other precisely identified biopsychosocial elements. Through
ensuing theoretical procedures discussed above and in greater detail else-
where (see, e.g., Staats, 1987, 1991), unifying theory analyses can fashion
bodies of “consensual knowledge” (Staats, 1987, p. 41) about different
subsystem elements and their interconnections with other subsystem ele-
ments, while bridging theories, among their different functions (see, e.g.,
Staats, 1996, pp. 29 –30; Yanchar & Slife, 1997, pp. 243–244), can mean-
ingfully interrelate divergent conceptualizations about given subsystem
elements and/or their interconnections with other elements.
Given the particularly pervasive nature of distinctly contradictory

conceptions in psychotherapy theory, research, and practice, the dialectical
method may provide an especially potent tool in pursuing unification in
those different psychotherapeutic spheres. For example, bringing a dialec-
tical perspective to the methodological sphere, it was asserted that one
does not have to choose between the empiricist-quantitative and the her-
meneutic-qualitative paradigm of inquiry and their respective ways of
knowing. In the same methodological vein, within the realm of quantita-
tive, empirical methods, one need not choose between linear methodolo-
gies and nonlinear research techniques. And in a more conceptual context
that also carries significant implications for psychotherapeutic practice
informed by conceptions tied to cybernetics and chaos theory (Anchin,
2003a; Kossman & Bullrich, 1997; Mahoney & Moes, 1997), there is no
choice that has to be made between viewing the human biopsychosocial
system as either fundamentally equilibrial, stable, and dominated by order,
or as principally disequilibrial, unstable, and dominated by disorder. In
each of these cases, more complete and richer solutions are cultivated
through embracing each side of the antinomy, thoroughly understanding
their respective make-up, and drawing upon their reciprocal interplay.
At the same time, the dialectical perspective provides but one embod-
iment of the more general leitmotif that I have sought to weave throughout
this analysis and discussion of a unifying paradigm for psychotherapeutic
science and practice: Through persistently pursuing, probing, and promot-
ing processes of interrelationship between and among multiple elements,
more fine-grained and yet unified theoretical formulations, scientific meth-
odologies, explanations and understandings, and clinical practices inevita-
bly and invaluably emerge.
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Pursuing a Unifying Paradigm for Psychotherapy:

Tasks, Dialectical Considerations, and

This article focuses on salient issues and directions in pursuing a unifying

Jack C. Anchin, Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, State University of

and the Unity of Science movement, unification was holistic, referring to a

In marked contrast, Oppenheim and Putnam (1958) viewed the proper

directions in pursuing a unifying paradigm for one field within psychology:

DEFINING UNIFICATION IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

My conception of unification in psychotherapy draws significantly on

However, is it a given that psychotherapy’s absolute efficacy has

RECONCILING PLURALITY AND UNITY: TASKS IN

Foremost among those issues is the fact that, most fundamentally, we

to psychotherapy, theorists interested in unification psychology partly point

Addressing Conceptual Redundancy and Similarity Through Unifying

To illustrate, one of the essential tasks we need to undertake is what

psychoanalysis (e.g., Frank, 1999, 2002) and Kiesler’s (1996) interpersonal

Bridging Theory to Unify Divergencies and the Potency of Dialectical

We also need to sharply crystallize fundamental areas of divergence in

peutic processes, including posited mechanisms of change. As Staats (1987,

While multiple meanings have come to define a dialectic, Rychlak

panded, more encompassing conceptualizations—a sine qua non of bridg-

The upshot of the bridge between conviction and uncertainty drawn by

cess that is more comprehensive, advanced, and potentially beneficial to

Unifying Methodological Paradigms

In addition to extracting commonalities residing within conceptual

contextual, subjective, constructive, holistic, agentive, experiential, phe-

methodological pluralism would allow for more comprehensive understandings of

Recently, Sternberg and Grigorenko (2001) articulated an approach to

Deploying methods associated with both empiricist-quantitative and

constitutes legitimate, meaningful, and valid knowledge. However, this

Elliott (2001), “HSCED uses a mixture of quantitative and qualitative

BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL SYSTEMS METATHEORY: A

For the field of psychotherapy, systems theory integrated with the

of subjective experience, the very lifeblood of human personality in its

Interrelationship and Process as Unifying Principles

Fused with this biopsychosocial rendering of human functioning and its

ununited) as separate gases at room temperature. The unique behaviors of water

Extrapolating to the psychotherapeutic context, the manner in which

actions) that can be mapped as having a particular structure unfolds, in real

These conceptions underscore the enormous network of multivariate

Biopsychosocial Interrelationships and Processes: Insights From

A paradigm explicitly constructed out of the fusion of the biopsycho-

Interdependence can be (1) instantaneous, as in X and Y affect each other; (2)

The imposing complexity of the biopsychosocial system’s nonlinear

characterized by variation and flux; for example, neurotransmitter levels,

These drastic alterations in “usual characteristics”—that is, in the

disturbances of varying intensities, frequencies, and durations in any com-

characterize a living system’s progression from a steady state encompassing

causality, the emergence of either type of disturbance is likely derivative

Implications of The Systems Paradigm For Unification-Oriented

In key respects, scientific inquiry into personality, psychopathology,

Overton (1985) succinctly encapsulated key elements of the approach to

ners to work within a holistic-analytic framework, to consider change and

[R]ather than reducing the intricacies of a complex situation via experimental

Systemic methodologies by no means obviate the value and impor-

Clearly, this “division of the therapy relationship into manageable

vestigative approaches is essential to the pursuit of unification through

At every turn, the pursuit of unifying conceptions within the psycho-

For the field of psychotherapy, a biopsychosocial systems paradigm

Given the particularly pervasive nature of distinctly contradictory

Anchin, J. C. (2002). Relational psychoanalytic enactments and psychotherapy integration:

Anchin, J. C. (2008). Contextualizing discourse on a philosophy of science for psychotherapy

Downing, J. N. (2004). Psychotherapy practice in a pluralistic world: Philosophical and moral