Emotion, Development, and Self-Organization: Dynamic Systems Approaches to Emotional Development (Cambridge Studies in Social and Emotional Development)

Presented here for the first time is the idea that emotional development is "self-organizing." It replaces older ideas that genes or environments "control" the process of development. Self-organization is one aspect of a revolutionary approach to science that embraces "chaos theory" and the new "science of complexity." Physicists, chemists, biologists, and other scientists see self-organization as a significant way of explaining patterns in nature.

Recently, principles of self-organizing dynamic systems have been imported into psychology, and especially developmental psychology, where they have helped us reconceptualize basic processes of motor and cognitive development. Emotion, Development, and Self-Organization is the first book to apply these principles to emotional development. The contributors address such fundamental issues as the biological bases of emotion and emotional development, relations between cognition and emotion in real time and development, personality development and individual differences, interpersonal processes, and clinical implications. The result is a comprehensive and innovative volume that includes the most recent work of recognized leaders in the field as well as a new generation of theorists who take principles of self-organization as their starting point.