Self-organization of cognitive and interactional processes

In the last few decades new concepts have emerged in order to understand pattern formation in cognitive and interactional processes. Some of these concepts are "emergence", "attractor" and "self-organization". Many "old" phenomena, well known in psychology (for example in Gestalt Psychology) - such as "Gestalt", "tendency towards Praegnanz", "schema", stability and changes of attitudes, interaction patterns in couples and families, etc., can be understood and reconstructed within the frame of these concepts. In particular, the interdisciplinary field of "Synergetics" by H. Haken has turned out to serve as a fruitful approach and source for may research projects even in the field of psychology (to which cognitive processes belong, too). Based on the exploited pronounced analogy between pattern formation by self-organization and pattern recognition, the completion of an incomplete set of data (due to the dynamical structure of an attractive process) is of particular interest. The text will report some basic concepts and outline some questions, approaches, and experimental findings and ends with a plea for the reassessment of teleological principle in order to investigate and understand the ordering forces in the human world.