Presented here for the first time is the idea that emotional development is "self-organizing." It replaces older ideas that genes or environments "control" the process of development. Self-organization is one aspect of a revolutionary approach to science that embraces "chaos theory" and the new "science of complexity." Physicists, chemists, biologists, and other scientists see self-organization as a significant way of explaining patterns in nature.
Marc Lewis is a neuroscientist and professor of developmental psychology, recently at the University of Toronto, where he taught and conducted research from 1989 to 2010, and presently at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He is the author or co-author of over 50 journal publications in psychology and neuroscience, editor of an academic book on developmental psychology, and co-author of a book for parents. More recently he has written two books concerning addiction.