The unbearable dynamicity of psychological processes: Highlights of the psychodynamic theories

Within the psychoanalytically oriented tradition, the term dynamic has been traditionally used with regard of the conflictual nature of intra- and inter-individual psychological processes. In the present work, we make use of a broader meaning of the term dynamic, i.e., as indicating a phenomena which unfolds over time. Following this, a phenomena is dynamic when its is explicitly dependent on time, i.e., the state of the phenomena at t(n+1) is dependent on the previous state of the phenomena at t(n). We refer to dynamic systems (DS) theory as a theoretical and methodological framework which allows to model dynamic phenomena by taking explicitly into account their time-dependent nature as a necessary descriptive/explicative dimension. Our aim is to suggest that the domain of dynamic psychology can be legitimately extended to all psychological phenomena which are studied from a (DS) perspective. The DS approach is first described by providing a definition of dynamic systems and outlining their main properties. Then, the dynamical nature of some psychological process is described. Finally, the specific example of how psychological processes may be studied from the perspective of DS theory is provided.