Wolfgang Tschacher

Universität Bern | UniBe · Universitätsklink für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie

Arts experts are commonly skeptical of applying scientific methods to aesthetic experiencing, which remains a field of study predominantly for the humanities. Laboratory research has however indicated that artworks may elicit emotional and physiological responses. Yet, this line of aesthetics research has previously suffered from insufficient exter...

The psychological self is often treated as a mental structure which enables a person to act individually and consciously. In our view, the self can only be kept non-paradoxical if it is seen as a process with homeostatic attributes. We therefore discuss a self concept derived from the theory of complex dynamical systems. The dynamical perspective m...

Zusammenfassung. Während die Wirksamkeit von Psychotherapie nicht mehr zur Debatte steht, bleibt die Frage nach ihrer Wirkungsweise weitgehend unbeantwortet. Vor dem Hintergrund der Kontroverse über die unterschiedliche Wirksamkeit verschiedener Psychotherapieansätze haben sich zwei vermeintlich gegensätzliche Vorstellungen darüber entwickelt, was...

Objective: Processes occurring in the course of psychotherapy are characterized by the simple fact that they unfold in time and that the multiple factors engaged in change processes vary highly between individuals (idiographic phenomena). Previous research, however, has neglected the temporal perspective by its traditional focus on static phenomen...

In an experiment on dyadic social interaction, we invited participants to verbal interactions in cooperative, competitive, and 'fun task' conditions. We focused on the link between interactants' affectivity and their nonverbal synchrony, and explored which further variables contributed to affectivity: interactants' personality traits, sex, and the...

Digital Concert Experience (DCE) is a research project designed and conducted to contribute to a better understanding of audience experience in online streams of Western classical music in ecologically valid settings. Based on an online survey, a latent profile analysis identified three different audience segments of classical concert streams. Thes...

A study of 132 audience members of three classical public concerts (all three staged the same chamber music pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, Brett Dean, and Johannes Brahms) had the goal of analyzing the physiological and motor responses of audiences. It was assumed that the music would induce synchronous physiology and movement in listeners (induct...

Music transports and induces emotions (Evans & Schubert, 2008). To measure emotions induced by music, researchers often rely on self-report methods or collect physiological signals (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2013). However, those methods can be biased or hinder a natural listening situation (Kayser, 2017). For continuous and non-intrusive measurement of...

In this theoretical essay a novel modelling approach for describing people’s art experiences is introduced. The aim is to build a framework that is able to capture the context-sensitive and dynamic nature of such experiences. The notion of ‘flux of art experience’ is introduced to emphasise that it is an emergent phenomenon which remains in a conti...

Teachers are among the occupational groups with the highest sick leave rates due to workplace stress and burnout symptoms. A substantial body of research has suggested social isolation and neuroticism to be related to physiological stress activity. However, the relationship between such characteristics and stress experiences has rarely been studied...

Objective: A large body of literature discusses change mechanisms underlying psychotherapy with an emphasis on common factors. The present study examined how different comprehensive common factors change over the course of therapy and whether this change was associated with clinical outcome at discharge. Method: Three hundred forty-eight adults...

Objectives Although mindfulness has been studied for multiple decades, psychometric research has yet to agree upon the optimal way to measure the mindfulness construct. Prior research has identified eight distinct aspects of mindfulness that were not adequately captured by any of the available measures. Hence, the Comprehensive Inventory of Mindful...

A common assumption of psychological theories of humor is that experienced funniness results from an incongruity between stimuli provided by a verbal joke or visual pun, followed by a sudden, surprising resolution of incongruity. In the perspective of complexity science, this characteristic incongruity-resolution sequence is modeled by a phase tran...

Introduction: Workaholism in teachers is characterized by the willingness to work until exhausted and may be associated with various adverse health outcomes as well as high economic costs. The present study examines the association between workaholism, vital exhaustion (VE), and hair cortisol concentration (HCC) as indicators of chronic stress. In...

Complexity and entropy prevail in human behavior and social interaction because the systems underlying behavior and interaction are, without a doubt, highly complex [...]

The results of our study are divided into two parts: first, the analysis of the questionnaires in this chapter and, second, the analysis of the interviews (Chap. 4).

Background: Several algorithms have been proposed to quantify synchronization. However, little is known about their convergent and predictive validity. Methods: The sample included 30 persons who completed a manualized interview focusing on psychosomatic symptoms. The intensity of body motions was measured using motion-energy analysis. We comput...

Nonverbal interpersonal synchronization has been established as an important factor in therapeutic relationships, and the differentiation of who leads the interaction appears to provide further important information. We investigated nonverbal synchrony – quantified as the coordination of body movement between patient and therapist. This was observe...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund In Psychologie, Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften ist ein Trend hin zur Anerkennung der Rolle des Körpers bei kognitiven Prozessen (Embodiment) zu beobachten. Fragestellung Implikationen des Embodiment-Ansatzes werden dargestellt sowie auf soziale und therapeutische Interaktion erweitert. Welche Folgerungen müssen für...

Objective: Due to the coronavirus pandemic and crisis, psychotherapists around the world were forced to switch to video- or tele-based treatments overnight. To date, only a few studies on the effectiveness of video-based psychodynamic psychotherapy via the Internet exist. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to examine symptom improvement,...

Work-related stress appears to be especially high among teachers. However, most research on teacher stress relies exclusively on teachers' self-reports. Little is known about the physiological correlates of affective stress in teachers. This longitudinal study investigates the relationship between core self-evaluation and adverse psychological and...

Reduced physical activity is considered a key feature of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, research directly comparing non-depressed controls and patients yielded mixed findings. In contrast to most previous research, this study compared objective as well as subjective activity levels of individuals with MDD with non-depressed controls and...

Zusammenfassung Ziel der Studie Das Zusammenhangsmuster 26 allgemeiner Wirkfaktoren wurde mit dem Ziel untersucht, die Debatte um Wirkmechanismen der Psychotherapie mit empirisch abgeleiteten Sekundärfaktoren (globale allgemeine Wirkfaktoren) konzeptuell zu erweitern und gleichzeitig Aspekte der Reliabilität und Validität eines neuen Instruments zu...

Background Previous laboratory findings suggest deviant gait characteristics in depressed individuals (i.e., reduced walking speed and vertical up-and-down movements, larger lateral swaying movements, slumped posture). However, since most studies to date assessed gait in the laboratory, it is largely an open question whether this association also h...

This theoretical paper explores the affect-logic approach to schizophrenia in light of the general complexity theories of cognition: embodied cognition, Haken’s synergetics, and Friston’s free energy principle. According to affect-logic, the mental apparatus is an embodied system open to its environment, driven by bioenergetic inputs of emotions. E...

Nonverbal synchrony between individuals has a robust relation to the positive aspects of relationships. In psychotherapy, where talking is the cure, nonverbal synchrony has been related to a positive outcome of therapy and to a stronger therapeutic alliance between therapist and client in dyadic settings. Only a few studies have focused on nonverba...

Measuring interpersonal synchrony is a promising approach to assess the complexity of social interaction, which however has been mostly limited to dyads. In this study, we introduce multivariate Surrogate Synchrony (mv-SUSY) to extend the current set of computational methods. Methods: mv-SUSY was applied to eight datasets consisting of 10 time seri...

Entrainment and synchronization play major roles in understanding the emotional effects of music, thus we were interested in synchronized responses of concert audiences listening to music. A series of three separate public live concerts of the same three pieces (chamber music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Brett Dean, Johannes Brahms) was organized. Base...

This study examined how patient characteristics concerning processing of emotions interact with common factors in psychotherapy. We focused on common factors of emotional processing in psychotherapy with regard to depression outcome. A total of 93 psychiatric outpatients were included. Patients completed preassessments and postassessments regarding...

Theoretischer Hintergrund: Störungen der Emotionsverarbeitung gelten als transdiagnostisches Merkmal psychischer Probleme. Mit dem Modell „Emotionale Offenheit“ liegt ein Konzept vor, das therapierelevante Komponenten der Emotionsverarbeitung operationalisiert und mit Hilfe eines validierten Instruments (Dimensionen der Offenheit für Emotionen, DOE...

Reliably diagnosing autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in adulthood poses a challenge to clinicians due to the absence of specific diagnostic markers. This study investigated the potential of interpersonal synchrony (IPS), which has been found to be reduced in ASD, to augment the diagnostic process. IPS was objectively assessed in videos of diagnostic...

Gaze behavior represents a complex phenomenon in social inter-action. We focus here on dyadic face-to-face interaction during naturally occurring verbal exchanges, where shared attention can be operationalized by joint gazes and eye contact. A multi-step methodology for the analysis of eye synchrony is presented, exemplified by a single case. The d...

Objectives An increasing number of findings indicate associations between mindfulness and affect as well as mindfulness and stress. Most studies have conceptualized and measured these variables on a trait level, often in student samples or clinical contexts. Methods We adopted an experience-sampling approach to measure mindfulness, affect, and str...

Performing and listening to music occurs in specific situations, requiring specific media. Empirical research on music listening and appreciation, however, tends to overlook the effects these situations and media may have on the listening experience. This article uses the sociological concept of the frame to develop a theory of an aesthetic experie...

Zusammenfassung Die Kognitionswissenschaften betonen die Zusammenhänge und Wechselwirkungen zwischen geistigen und körperlichen Prozessen und deren Einbettung in die soziale und physikalische Umwelt („Embodiment“). Dieser Ansatz erbringt Implikationen für das Verständnis von sozialer Interaktion, die durch körperliche Synchronie und allgemeine Wirk...

Resonanzprozesse entstehen sowohl im Konzertsaal, zwischen MusikerInnen und Publikum, als auch in der psychotherapeutischen Beziehung. Doch wie lassen sich diese Schwingungen, gleichzeitig allgegenwärtig und schwer zu fassen, einfangen? Die BeiträgerInnen widmen sich dieser faszinierenden Schnittstelle zwischen Musik und Psychoanalyse aus interdisz...

Resonanzprozesse entstehen sowohl im Konzertsaal, zwischen MusikerInnen und Publikum, als auch in der psychotherapeutischen Beziehung. Doch wie lassen sich diese Schwingungen, gleichzeitig allgegenwärtig und schwer zu fassen, einfangen? Die BeiträgerInnen widmen sich dieser faszinierenden Schnittstelle zwischen Musik und Psychoanalyse aus interdisz...

The degree to which romantic partners' autonomic responses are coordinated, represented by their pattern of physiological synchrony, seems to capture important aspects of the reciprocal influence and co‐regulation between spouses. In this study, we analyzed couple's cardiac synchrony as measured by heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV)....

Objective One of the promises of the experience sampling methodology (ESM) is that a statistical analysis of an individual's emotions, cognitions and behaviors in everyday-life could be used to identify relevant treatment targets. A requisite for clinical implementation is that outcomes of such person-specific time-series analyses are not wholly co...

Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Störungen der Emotionsverarbeitung gelten als transdiagnostisches Merkmal psychischer Probleme. Mit dem Modell „Emotionale Offenheit“ liegt ein Konzept vor, das therapierelevante Komponenten der Emotionsverarbeitung operationalisiert und mit Hilfe eines validierten Instruments (Dimensionen der Offenheit f...

The present moment, or “nowness,” has been studied in the psychology of time. Here, we are interested in the duration of shared nowness, an expansion of individual nowness: this social present is defined by the nonverbal synchrony of two individuals. Therapeutic presence means a therapist is fully attuned and “present” in the session, an important...

Objective Teachers are affected by high levels of job stress, leading to one of the highest rates of burnout. The purpose of our pilot study was to investigate the diurnal course of teachers’ psychological and physiological stress responses [cortisol levels, alpha-amylase, heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV)]. Another aim of the proje...

Background: One of the main diagnostic features of individuals with autism spectrum disorders is nonverbal behaviour difficulties during naturalistic social interactions. The 'Interactional Heterogeneity Hypothesis' of ASD proposes that the degree to which individuals share a common ground substantially influences their ability to achieve smooth s...

A novel methodology for the empirical analysis of processes in psychotherapy was developed and tested. This method is based on the Fokker-Planck equation (FPE), a probabilistic model that detects the deterministic and stochastic components of a process. The deterministic component is given by the potential function underlying the process. The FPE a...

Objectives: Interpersonal dysfunction is a central feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD), and the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been shown to impact patients' behaviour in numerous ways. Nonverbal signals such as the coordination of body movement (nonverbal synchrony) are associated with the success of interpersonal exchanges and could...

Der Begriff der „Selbststeuerung“, ganz grundsätzlich betrachtet, ist paradox: Wenn ich der Gegenstand der Steuerung bin, wer steuert dann? Steuern ist ein intentionaler Akt, bei dem das Subjekt nicht identisch mit dem Objekt sein kann. Zur Umgehung dieser problematischen Selbstreferenz wenden wir uns einer Formulierung von Intentionalität zu, die...

The social benefits of interpersonal synchrony are widely recognized. Yet, little is known about its impact on the self. According to enactive cognitive science, the human self for its stability and regulation needs to balance social attunement with disengagement from others. Too much interpersonal synchrony is considered detrimental for a person’s...

There is a growing consensus among psychotherapy theoreticians and researchers that psychotherapy processes are an interpersonal phenomenon that can be studied as a dynamic system. The aim of this special section is to highlight the importance of exploring the complex processes that emerge over time from interactions and feedback loops amongst sub-...

Monism or plurality as a theoretical foundation of psychology? Traditionally, the sciences have been divided into the natural sciences on the one hand and the humanities on the other. Natural sciences consider objective, i. e. thirdperson entities, whereas the humanities concern subjective intentional processes that depend on first-person interpret...

The working relationship between patient and therapist is a core aspect of psychotherapy. In This chapter, the authors consider how the therapeutic relationship may be explained by the basic social-psychological mechanism of interpersonal synchrony, defined as the temporal coordination of patient’s and therapist’s mutual behavioral, physiological,...

Integration of methods is an option for interdisciplinary research settings, allowing insights into the fleeting moments of aesthetic experience. This chapter aims to exemplify such research settings by introducing two research projects: eMotion: MappingMuseum Experience and ECR—Experimental Concert Research. eMotion concerned aesthetic experiences...

Die Ergebnisse unserer Studie gliedern sich in zwei Teile: erstens in die Aus-wertung der Fragebögen in diesem Kapitel, und zweitens in die Analyse der Interviews (Kapitel 4). Die Fragebogenerhebung fand im Oktober 2017 an der Universität Potsdam, der Humboldt-Universität, der Universität der Künste und der Technischen Universität Berlin statt. Ins...

free copies: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KfafnPTGI8sS4FxsRtJt/full?target=10.1080/10503307.2019.1612114 _______________________________________________________________________Objective: In this proof-of-principle study, a convenience sample of 55 dyadic psychotherapy sessions conducted by one therapist was analyzed. This study aimed at expl...

In this outlook chapter we discuss what was accomplished by the Fokker–Planck modeling of psychotherapy processes, and suggest directions for future research. We emphasize that psychotherapy research should focus on the dynamics, preferably using time series with high resolution which delivers insight into the dynamics even within the range of a fe...

Modeling psychotherapy implies that we also have to deal with the reasons why treatment is demanded. Commonly, the client enters psychotherapy because of a psychopathological condition in need of cure and remediation. There are two major classification systems of psychopathology, the “International Classification of Diseases” (ICD) and the “Diagnos...

The Fokker-Planck model of psychotherapy integrates stochastic with deterministic interventions. In a case example of a client with a severe depressive episode, we computer-simulate how the underlying attractor landscape (three point attractors located at different values of depression) can be changed by stochastic and deterministic simulated “inte...

In this chapter we derive the one-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation, which defines the change of the probability of a state variable x in dependence of time, i.e., \( \frac{dP\left(x;t\right)}{dt} \). Starting from the Gaussian normal distribution, we formulate the deterministic drift term of the equation, which can be illustrated by the potential...

We describe qualitatively how the Fokker-Planck equation can be applied to modeling the dynamics of psychotherapy. In this chapter, we focus on the deterministic term of the equation exclusively, i.e., on how the gradient of the potential function (the slope of the attractor) can be modified and/or how an attractor can be shifted to a different loc...

This chapter is dedicated to the stochastic term of the Fokker-Planck equation in the modeling of dynamics in psychotherapy. We define stochastic interventions as ways to utilize sources of random fluctuations, either by augmenting or reducing stochastic inputs. We find that on top of the intrinsic stochasticity of state variables, a major source o...

The relevant parameters of the one-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation can be estimated from empirical time series of the state variable x. The deterministic forces that derive from attractors in state space and the production of stochasticity are represented by the functions K(x) and Q(x), respectively, which express how force k and diffusion Q var...

The Fokker-Planck model of psychotherapy can be developed in one or two dimensions. We put forward minimal models for both cases. In the one-dimensional minimal model, we formalize how the therapist can influence client states. We use the slaving principle of synergetics, which claims that slow variables entrain (i.e., “enslave”) the behavior of th...

We view psychotherapy from an explicitly process-based perspective. The general goal of the book is to model the process of psychotherapy as an interplay of chance and causation. This means that deterministic interventions as well as random fluctuations must be considered, both as functions of time. Fluctuations can be influenced by means of stocha...

Analogous to the hierarchy of dimensional variables in psychopathology, we postulate that there is also a hierarchical system of psychotherapeutic interventions. Therapeutic techniques (specific factors of intervention) make up the bottom level of this hierarchy; at an upper level, we place the common (unspecific) factors, and classes of common fac...

Dies ist eine Buchbesprechung. In "Erfolgsgeheimnisse" beschreibt Hermann Haken, um was es bei der Synergetik geht. Die Buchbesprechung eignet sich daher als Kurzabriss dieser bedeutenden Theorie selbstorganisierender Systeme, die auf Psychotherapie angewandt wurde.

One of the promises of the experience sampling methodology (ESM) is that it could be used to identify relevant targets for treatment, based on a statistical analysis of an individual's emotions, cognitions and behaviors in everyday-life. A requisite for clinical implementation is that outcomes of person-centered analyses are not wholly contingent o...

Die Praxis der Musikrezeption im Rahmen klassischer Konzerte ist von restriktiven Verhaltenskonventionen geprägt. Aktuelle kognitionswissenschaftliche und philosophische Ansätze, welche Musik-Erleben als verkörpert oder als über mehrere Individuen verteilt konzeptualisieren, scheinen daher für die Erklärung des Musik-Erlebens in klassischen Konzert...

This is a book of 180 pages and our contract with the publisher rules out open access distribution of the work. Thus please do not request pdfs from me, but use the library system instead or consider buying the book. Thank you. _____________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ The b...

The present moment, or "nowness", has been studied with various methods in the context of a psychology of time. It is the temporal duration of William James introduced the term' “specious present”, which is experienced as the now. Here, we are interested in the duration of nowness that It can be derived from a variety of temporal estimation tasks i...

Background. We have diagnosed and treated schizophrenia for over a century but have not come very far in alleviating its burden [see e.g. 1]. This may be due to a simple, but essential aspect, widely ignored in conventional diagnostics, treatment and research: the moving body [2]. Evidently, there is no mental illness that does not affect the (movi...

Research on interpersonal synchronization deals with the coordination of behavior, cognition and affect within interacting individuals. The phenomenon of synchronization has been explored in many settings and numerous definitions have emerged. The purpose of this study was to compare nonverbal synchrony (based on overall body movement) with the con...

Synchrony between interacting systems is an important area of nonlinear dynamics in physical systems. Recently psychological researchers from multiple areas of psychology have become interested in nonverbal synchrony (i.e., coordinated motion between two individuals engaged in dyadic information exchange such as communication or dance) as a predict...

Mind-body reciprocity is a fundamental property of a person’s cognition, with emphasis on the role of the body in embodied communication and embodied social cognition.

Embodiment bedeutet wörtlich übersetzt Verkörperung. Im wissenschaftlichen Kontext ist eine zentrale Annahme des Embodiment-Ansatzes die Wechselwirkung (Bidirektionalität) von körperlichem und psychischem Geschehen. Unsere Handlungen und Gedanken, unser Urteilsvermögen, die Art und Weise, wie und was wir entscheiden, die Stimmungslage und die Gefüh...

Embodiment has become a major area of interest in many academic fields (e.g., phenomenology and cognitive sciences). Recently, this development has been extended to issues of aesthetic perception and performance: On the one hand, people bodily resonate with aesthetic objects when appreciating art; on the other hand, in art-making, people may experi...

For the first time, a 60-person team of internationally renowned editors and authors presents a textbook of osteopathic medicine that is oriented towards clinical symptoms. Introductory chapters on history, philosophy and the spread of osteopathy are followed by a presentation of its scientific basis that clearly demonstrates how firmly osteopathy...

Background Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) exhibit dysregulated emotion sequences in daily life compared to healthy controls (HC). Empirical evidence regarding the specificity of these findings is currently lacking. Methods To replicate dysregulated emotion sequences in patients with BPD and to investigate the specificity of th...

Video-based measurement methods are new to psychotherapy research and provide new opportunities to investigate mechanisms of psychotherapeutic change related to nonverbal synchrony (movement coordination between patient and therapist). In this study, we validated the applied video-based procedures and evaluated nonverbal synchrony in association wi...

Anlässlich seines 90. Geburtstages im Juli dieses Jahres 2017 scheint es angebracht, ein kurzes Portrait von Hermann Haken zu zeichnen, um die Leser der Familiendynamik auf das Werk dieses Systemtheoretikers von Weltrang und auf seine Relevanz auch für unser Feld, die systemische Praxis und Forschung, hinzuweisen. (...)