In June 2026, I had the privilege of presenting at the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) Annual Conference in Osaka, Japan — one of the most stimulating gatherings in the field of psychotherapy research. This year’s conference brought together researchers, clinicians, and theorists from around the world to explore the frontiers of psychological treatment and its mechanisms of change.

I contributed two sessions, each approaching a shared question from different angles: What if the way we think about mental health and psychotherapy has been fundamentally incomplete — and what would change if we adopted a dynamical systems perspective?

Panel Presentation: Restoring Flexible Functional Synchrony

The first session was a panel presentation titled “Restoring Flexible Functional Synchrony: A Dynamical Systems Approach to Complex Emotional Needs.” The central argument: mental health conditions are not best understood as discrete symptom clusters, but as disorders of coordination flexibility — the capacity of the human system to synchronise, desynchronise, and transition between states in a context-appropriate way.

The focus was on Complex Emotional Needs (CEN) — a transdiagnostic presentation characterised by severe emotional dysregulation, unstable attachment, and interpersonal difficulties — as a compelling test case for this framework. These conditions show coordination dysregulation across multiple timescales: from autonomic nervous system rigidity at the millisecond scale, through affective instability across minutes, to interpersonal coordination failures across sessions and relationships.

We presented four dynamical phenotypes — distinct attractor landscape profiles that characterise different patterns of coordination failure in CEN:

• Hypervigilant — rigid over-synchronisation, deep narrow attractor basin, constant threat-monitoring
• Collapsed — reduced synchronisation, flat attractor landscape, affective numbing and withdrawal
• Chaotic — unstable coordination, multiple fragmented attractors, rapid dysregulation with low recovery
• Balanced — flexible synchrony, moderate-depth wide basin, context-sensitive regulation

These phenotypes correspond to measurable physiological signatures and guide matched clinical intervention through the IDEAS Programme (Interventive Dynamic Emotion Assessment and Skills): an 8-week, group-based intervention for young people aged 16–25 with Complex Emotional Needs. A pilot study of 48 participants showed large effect sizes across clinical outcomes, maintained at 3-month follow-up, with differential response trajectories by phenotype.

Structured Discussion: Reimagining Psychotherapy as Coordination Restoration

The second session was a structured discussion: “Reimagining Psychotherapy as a Dynamical Treatment of Synchronization and Coordination.” This broader conceptual exploration opened a conversation about what it would mean to fundamentally reconceptualise psychotherapy — not as a technique that reduces symptoms, but as a process that restores flexible functional synchronisation across neural, physiological, and interpersonal domains.

The discussion centred on three questions: What distinguishes functional from dysfunctional synchrony across clinical presentations? How can coordination dynamics be measured as mechanisms of therapeutic change? And what are the implications for training and treatment development when psychotherapy is understood as coordination restoration rather than symptom management?

A key theme was the reconceptualisation of rupture and repair in the therapeutic relationship — not merely as relational events, but as dynamical phase transitions with measurable physiological signatures. Successful repair does not simply restore the previous state, but expands the attractor landscape, building resilience and flexibility.

Looking Ahead

Both sessions generated rich discussion and a genuine sense that the field is ready for this shift. The convergence of complexity science, affective neuroscience, and psychotherapy research is opening new possibilities for how we understand, measure, and treat psychological distress. I look forward to continuing this work and to the collaborations that emerged from Osaka.