HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
COMPLEXITY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: FROM MECHANISTIC SCIENCE TO A PHYSICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE MENTAL CONDITIONS BASED ON CHAOS AND COMPLEXITY
Provisionally accepted
- 1Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- 2Faculdade Arthur Sa Earp Neto Faculdade de Medicina de Petropolis, Petrópolis, Brazil
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The Traditional Scientific Method (TSM), rooted in the Cartesian-Mechanistic Paradigm, is insufficient for comprehensively studying the human mind and suffering, which are complex phenomena. Thus, psychiatry can pathologise many vital, critical processes and neurodivergences when it simplifies subjectivity and diversity through its nosological models. This essay advocates for a shift towards the Complexity Paradigm (CP) to achieve a psychopathology more adequate to human singularity. The CPposits that life and mind are emergent dissipative phenomena arising from the synergy between chaos and order which enables systems to adapt through self-organisation while maintaining their internal stability. Therefore, organic complexity appears to decrease with age and pathologies. We explore Non-Extensive Statistical Mechanics (q-Statistics, qS), proposed by Tsallis (1988) to describe neural complexity from the EEG signal through the scalar parameter q. We’ve demonstrated that qS, by a q-exponential function, models the EEG non-linear behavior indicating its power for quantify the brain complexity, and also to describe modulation of the complexity by ageing or neurodivergence (attention defict/hyperactivity condition in children) in the brain as a whole, and by different functional brain states (as in oddball attention paradigm or listening a preferred piece of music) in different brain regions. We hypothesize that neural complexity could be reduced in pathological mental conditions, but not in neurodivergence, nor in mental suffering that are critical processes of transformation. Assessing neural complexity as a property of the brain through q-statistics may be a method to a more comprehensive and precise psychiatry.
Keywords: Complexity, Mechanicism, Neurodivergence, Non-extensive (Tsallis) statistics, Psychopathology, Reductionism, self-organization
Received: 10 Dec 2025; Accepted: 22 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Abramov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dimitri Marques Abramov
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