زمان همه چیز است:آسیب شناسی روانی رشدی از دیدگاه سیستم های دینامیکی

This article begins by comparing general systems views that have already been appropriated by developmental psychopathologists to the dynamic systems (DS) approach and the advantages of the latter perspective are detailed. It is argued that the DS framework provides a more rigorous set of principles that can be applied to the diverse disciplines and multiple levels of analyses that are so well-represented in developmental psychopathology. The ways in which DS principles can address five overarching goals that have previously been identified for the field of developmental psychopathology are discussed. In addition, the DS approach offers a wide array of methodological tools that can move the field from abstractions to concrete research designs and analytic strategies. Several of the most relevant DS concepts are explained and recent empirical studies that have applied these concepts fruitfully are reviewed.

From the inception of the field, developmental psychopathologists have adopted an organismic, holistic, transactional framework for conceptualizing individual differences in normal and atypical development (e.g., Cicchetti, 1993, Cicchetti and Cohen, 1995, Cummings et al., 2000, Garmezy and Rutter, 1983, Sameroff, 1983, Sameroff, 1995 and Sroufe and Rutter, 1984). These scholars often frame their models in terms of organizational principles and systems language which resonate strongly with dynamic systems (DS) principles in general and principles of self-organization in particular. The systems theories that inform models in developmental psychopathology include: General Systems Theory (Sameroff, 1983, Sameroff, 1995 and von Bertalanffy, 1968), Developmental Systems Theory (Ford & Lerner, 1992), the ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), contextualism (Dixon & Lerner, 1988), the transactional perspective (Dumas, LaFrenier, & Serketich, 1995), the organizational approach (Cicchetti and Schneider-Rosen, 1986, Garmezy, 1974 and Sroufe and Rutter, 1984), the holistic-interactionistic view (Bergman & Magnusson, 1997), and the epigenetic view (Gottlieb, 1991 and Gottlieb, 1992). As a class of models, these approaches focus on process-level accounts of human behavior and on the context dependence and heterogeneity of developmental phenomena. They are concerned with the equi- and multifinality of development, the hierarchically embedded nature of intrapersonal (e.g., neurochemical activity, cognitive, and emotional processes), interpersonal (e.g., parent–child relationships; peer networks), and higher order social systems (e.g., communities, cultures). They are also fundamentally concerned with the mechanisms that underlie change and novelty (as well as stability) in normal and clinically significant trajectories. Because of their long-standing familiarity with systems concepts in general, many developmental psychopathologists are already familiar with at least some DS concepts. For the sake of clarity, however, it is important to delineate the DS framework from the systems approaches mentioned previously (Lewis, 2000). Formally, a dynamical system is a set of mathematical equations that specify how a system changes over time. The various patterns and processes that emerge from this set of equations rely on a technical language originally developed in the fields of mathematics and physics. The concepts derived from this mathematical framework comprise the principles of DS. Thus, what I refer to as dynamic systems principles is a meta-theoretical framework that encompasses a set of abstract concepts that have been applied in different disciplines (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology) and to various phenomena (e.g., lasers, ant colonies, and brain dynamics) at vastly different scales of analysis (from cells to economic trends and from milliseconds to millenia). DS principles provide a framework for describing how novel forms emerge and stabilize through a system’s own internal feedback activities (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984 and von Bertalanffy, 1968). This process is known as self-organization and refers to the spontaneously generated (i.e., emergent) order in complex, adaptive systems. I follow other developmentalists (e.g., Fogel and Thelen, 1987, Keating, 1990, Lewis, 1995, Thelen and Smith, 1994 and van Geert, 1991) who find that DS concepts—especially notions of self-organization, attractors on a state space, feedback, and phase transitions—carry compelling explanatory power that can help us model the processes that give rise to, and maintain, normative and idiosyncratic developmental pathways.

For over a decade, developmental psychopathologists have incorporated general systems views in much of their thinking. However, this work has been largely metaphorical and has generally remained at the theoretical modeling stage. The DS framework may provide a more rigorous set of principles that can be applied to the diverse disciplines and multiple levels of analyses that are well represented in developmental psychopathology. In addition, the DS approach offers a wide array of methodological tools that can move the field from abstractions to concrete research designs and analytic strategies. The small handful of studies that were reviewed here represent preliminary but promising avenues of inquiry. This new wave of studies suggests that developmental psychopathologists are indeed beginning to recognize the potential benefits of the DS perspective. Although DS ideas have been around for a couple of decades, the current special issue, as well as a recent special issue on DS perspectives in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology (2004), seem to suggest that the field is poised to apply these principles in new and exciting ways—and timing is everything.