The system and I

When I first encountered General Systems Theory in the late 1960’s I was captivated. Here was a theory that appeared to match the complexity of human beings whilst being almost mathematical in its elegance! I quickly identified myself as being a systemic therapist – that is, a therapist who bases his work on something called systems theory. Today I am uncertain about the theory, and less clear about my professional identity.

One example that reveals the development of my thinking about systems theory concerns the term “theory”. Many years ago, reading the biography of von Bertalanffy, the father of the modern system perspective, I learned that he himself was apologetic about the term: in his German textbook, he used the term Allgemeine Systemlehre. Thus, instead of “theory”, he thought that the words “systems approach” might have been more appropriate. So, I came to think of his approach as a systems perspective rather than a systems theory. For me, this new distinction came as a relief, as it affirmed my realisation that a general theory of all systems (of which the family is but one example), simply did not exist - and still does not. This same point is emphasised, for example, by the editors in their introduction to the latest edition of “General Systems Theory”, published in 2015.

I have found it helpful to keep distinguishing between “perspective” and “theory”. One way to think of a theory is that it describes how a part of the world seems to function (a kind of model) based on the data that we have accumulated. A perspective, on the other hand, defines a point or position from which we can describe what we see, without having a preformed idea of what that might be. For example, we might ask: what do we find out if we choose to think of an atom as a system, or a cell as a system, or a person as a system, or a society as a system?

A core principle in a systems perspective is that of organization. One of von Bertalanffy’s starting points as a philosopher of biology was that while identification of the specific components of any living system provides us with important information, this knowledge alone cannot account for the fact that a living system (or any other dynamic system for that matter) is not an inert collection of elements, – instead the parts act in relation to each other, displaying patterns of activity. So, while the components are the physical elements out of which a dynamic system is constructed, it is the ways in which they relate to each other (how they are organized) that define their function and reveal the nature of the system that they constitute.

A systemic perspective does not limit us to look at only social systems such as the couple or the family. It can also be used to consider the individual as a psychological system, and to ask for example, what are her components, how are they organised and how does she relate to other individuals/ systems? Personally, in my role as therapist, I find it helpful to think of the components or “parts” of the individual as a vast number of interrelated skills, all of which have been learned in a relationship with someone (including self). As individuals, we have learned who we are (or rather how we have learned how to think about who we are), to contextualise our thinking and our behaviour (by adapting them to different circumstances), to understand our feelings and how to regulate them, to problem solve, to conduct a relationship, a set of ethical considerations, and so on. There are so many skills, learned in so many different contexts, that one complication is that they sometimes appear to be in disagreement with each other, and we experience various forms of dissonance or internal conflict. However, as we journey through our personal space-time, we can only hope that these skills will be sufficient to help us to manage the challenges that fate often throws our way (or that we can learn new skills – for example by going to therapy).

Such learnings are also idiosyncratic. In the case of couples, for example, person A will have learned how to relate to others, as has her partner B, but probably in different ways. Each will have a different idea of what being a couple means. For many, these differences create challenges over time.

Couple and Family Therapy (CFT) seems to me to have one core idea: the age-old knowledge that relationships can have a positive or a negative effect (usually both, over time) on the health and development of the individual, depending upon their nature - just as each individual can be a constructive or destructive force in relationships. This is why CFT therapists learn early in their training to identify interactional patterns that reveal how family members cooperate with and support each other, or alternatively make life difficult for each other (whether intentionally or not). They also learn how to work with these patterns to try and achieve the goals of the therapy.

For me, the value of a systems perspective is that it continually informs me about the presence of variety and complexity. Variety exists on two levels: firstly, there are many kinds of systems, and secondly, the more complex any given system is, the greater the possibility that developmental pathways will result in the creation of unique adaptions. This can be seen clearly in how different people react to crisis, for example. We human beings are complex, dynamic systems: the combination of our biological, psychological and social systems allow us to both adapt to, and even create, a seemingly infinite number of different ecological niches. This awareness advises me in advance that I may not be able to rely on past learning to understand the next client system that I meet.

So now, thinking of myself as a systemic therapist who does not have access to a general systems theory, each time I start a new therapy I find myself facing a wonderfully complicated world waiting to be explored. When I believed that there was such a theory, I assumed it privileged me to know in advance why people developed problems. Removing the theory and replacing it with a perspective means that I cannot assume to have such a priori knowledge, only experience accumulated from myself and others.

For me at least, this means that the first challenge of therapy is to try and understand the nature of the presented problem as it is experienced by each specific “system” that I meet – whether individual, or couple, or family. Only when I think that I understand the problem can I begin to think about a specific and appropriate theory that might be of help. So, while always a systemic therapist, sometimes I am a behaviourist, sometimes a CBT therapist, sometimes a psychodynamic therapist, and so on. And when I think about it, it is not at all confusing for my identity - in fact, it is rather liberating.