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Between Rigidity and Entropy
Systemic Therapy in the Golden Mean
Systemic therapy is built upon systems theory and cybernetics, two meta-frameworks that conceptualize the world in terms of context and relation. Cybernetics envisioned self-organizing agents, from machine learning to missile guidance; systems theory thought of organisms maintaining themselves and their relations through a balance of autonomy and adaptation, homeostasis and feedback mechanisms. Both frameworks leant themselves to the burgeoning world of family therapy, such as in Don Jackson’s early theoretical work on “family homeostasis,” and systemic therapy more generally.
Intriguingly, the early systemic therapists worked largely with patients (and their families) who would today likely be diagnosed with something within the schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders section of the DSM-5. At that time, however, these patients were largely subsumed under the term “schizophrenia” in a much broader sense than today. From working with these patients and their families, these early systemic thinkers (Jackson, John Weakland, Murray Bowen, Salvador Minuchin, etc.) devised models of therapy and theoretical frameworks that built upon, called into question, and branched away from those of their contemporaries. Even so, the emergence of family therapy and systemic therapy generally coincided roughly with the behaviorist era in psychology, which placed a strong emphasis on the observable, empirically measurable actions of clients rather than their internal states — content that could be reasonably disregarded as material for the “black box” of the human mind, less necessary than the box’s more obvious inputs and outputs.
Today, it’s not uncommon for more classically systemic therapists to feel a just a touch annoyed with more modern models of therapy — Emotionally Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, etc. — as either intrusions upon systemic thought or even needless attempts to “reinvent the wheel,” so to speak. However, rather than take one position or the other — hold staunchly to classical systemic orthodoxy or progress into a new era of social constructionism, emotionality, and experiential treatment — one may find an intriguing alternative. Not an amalgam of these two camps, but — in a dialectic and systemic spirit — an emergent product.
