This volume unites for the first time two very different and major trends in modern psychotherapy. The practical approaches propagated by person-centered, humanistic psychotherapy and systemic psychotherapy may at first glance seem to be very different. Yet there are a number of commonalities to be discovered if we look closer at the respective premises. Like no other scientist JA"rgen Kriz has demonstrated the connections that exist between person-centered and systemic concepts in theory, research and practice. His so-called person-centered system theory" looks at the psychological and social reality of human beings and describes them with terms like "self-organisation," "dynamics" and "nonlinearity." For psychotherapy this means relinquishing the idea of targeting and controlling change in individuals and instead trying to design therapeutic processes such that the circumstances are conducive to constructive processes of self-organisation. This task makes great professional demands of the counselor, as the contributions to this volume graphically show."

Contributions by: JA"rgen Kriz, Hermann Haken, Wolfgang Tschacher, Siegfried Greif, Bernd Runde, Hans-JA"rgen Walter, Thomas Slunecko, Alfried LAngle, Jochen Eckert, Jochen Schweitzer-Rothert