Like every field, psychotherapy has its new paradigm visionaries and one of them has written a ground breaking book for therapists, clients and anyone interested in learning about a new more expansive exploration of the therapist-client relationship and of mental health in general. Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ph.D., is the author of Psyche’s Veil: Psychotherapy, Fractals and Complexity and works in private practice in Santa Monica, California. Her website is www.markstarlow.com.

Having explored therapy several times in my life including the last time a few years ago when the therapist told me he should be paying me for the sessions, I have been disappointed with the process. So when I saw a new book on psychotherapy by a therapist, artist, and yoga practitioner who integrated fractals and complexity, I was cautiously optimistic. After finishing the book yesterday, I feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that if enough therapists read and put into practice the ideas in Psyche’s Veil, that the field will take a quantum leap forward.

I offer several quotes from the book that stand on their own as entry points into the brilliant mind of Marks-Tarlow and the contents of her book. She studied this field for thirty years and serves as a Research Associate at the Institute for Fractal Research in Kassel, Germany.

I became uncertain about the utility of a straightforward medical model. I deepened my sensabilities to consider the transference triangle between psychiatrist/father, psychologist/mother, Sabina/child…ultimate success required a more complex picture based on my continued openness to indirect feedback signals surrounding what I did not know.

What this tells me is that here is a wise woman who is open to moving beyond the medical model she has been taught to discover something deeper, more meaningful and richer that she can embody and transmit to her clients.

Mental health conceived as the delicate but resiliant edge of chaos provides enough order for stable, integrated foundations, plus sufficient disorder to keep things flexible, fluid and creative. This stands in contrast to derailed or pathological conditions characterized either by too much stagnant order or overly destructive disorder.

Here we see a movement away from linear, Newtonian and Cartesian thinking and into the more organic and fluid dynamics of a nature based system of thinking and the astute observations of a curious mind probing the old order’s blindfolds.

Clinical competence comes out of accruing knowledge from books and experience in service of maintaining an open, flexible, relational stance. After twenty odd years of voracious study and practice, my professional doubts ar still with me.  Happily feelings of uncertainty no longer automatically signal my deficiencies to me. I now readily accept them as part of the work, harbpring no grand illusions about their disappearance. Paradoxically my certainty about uncertainty leads me to feel more secure as a clinician. No matter how experienced I become, no matter what my talent level, contemporary non-linear science assures me that not-knowing will continue to punctuate, penetrate, hound, if not haunt my work.

In this quote, Marks-Tarlow advises her peers not to seek to become the “expert authority” who diagnoses quickly, produce a surefire treatment plan and deliver rapid results which historically has certainly been more the rule than the exception in psychotherapy and medicine in general. By suggesting that her fellow therapists consider the powerful transformational role uncertainty and chaos can play in their practices, she opens the field of possibility and serves herself, her clients and her profession in a profound way.

At the edge of chaos, there is variability and flexibility for adaption and change, yet the capacity for great stability as well. This view addresses deficiencies of a negativistic definition of mental health by providing an affirmative framework for understanding health that guides clinical work toward more concrete, yet open, individualized goals, plus the presence of creativity and growth, rather than the absence of disease.

One can only say Bravo at this new definition of mental health and the colors it brings to the therapist’s emotional palette.

Psyche’s Veil provides a glimpse at the leading edge and behind the veil of a profession in transition that is moving toward a more inclusive and thereby soul satisfying destination for therapists and clients alike.  Psyche’s Veil is filled with wonderful case examples that illuminate the applied theory that Marks-Tarlow’s work is steeped in. And, her insightful interpretation of the myth of Psyche and Eros, her wonderful drawings and the extraordinary fractal photographs that beautifully illustrate many of her important points are additional reasons why anyone with an interest in expanding their understanding of psychotherapy’s potential should read this amazing book. I am hopeful that Psyche’s Veil may one day become a classic and standard college textbook informing the next generation of Psychotherapists and Psychologists that another, far richer, worldview is now available that can deepen their relationship with themselves, others and the world.