[From the Gestaltkreis to synergetics: irreversible structural and dynamic functional couplings]

With the present contribution, we attempt to merge the work of several generations of physiology and psychosomatics. The common denominator in an array of observation levels appear in these works as the relationship between irreversible-structural and dynamic-functional couplings and synchronisations. In this context, studies on the level of the common brainstem system appear to be the base for a neuro-bio-psychic self-organisation. Studies culled from psychosomatics of Heidelberg, notably the Gestaltkreis theory, the Methodenkreis (methodological loop), the Bipersonalität (bipersonality), and the Simultandiagnostik (simultaneous diagnostics) exhibit the origin of complex functions which have been analyzed and quantified employing nonlinear methods developed in synergetics. Relevance of coupling and synchronisation, desynchronisation, resp., is, however, not limited to the scope of psychosomatic medicine. Fixed or functional, they are essential constituents to neurophysiological processes, such as association, dissociation, resp. This equally holds for evidence based medicine which is to benefit from any dynamic process analysis.