One of the founders of the general theory of systems, L. von Bertalanffy, showed that the concept of a system follows from the so-called «organismic view of the world.» This view is characterized by two provisions: a) the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; b) all parts and processes of the whole mutually influence and mutually condition each other.
The position “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” in the systems theory forms the basis of the principle of totality, or non-summation. The laws of functioning of the system are not reduced to the sum of the laws of functioning of its subsystems (elements, objects). The system qualitatively differs from its elements and their totality.
Water is different from its constituent hydrogen and oxygen. The forest is not the sum of the trees. New properties arise that obey other laws.
The system cannot be described through the properties of its elements. No human system—family, organization—can be described in terms of the sum of its individual personalities.
A dysfunctional family is well recognizable: the husband and wife individually are wonderful, sensitive, tactful people. Together they show the world a senselessly scandalous couple. This is because their beautiful human qualities are secondary to the laws of the functioning of their dysfunctional family system.
The second position of the «organismic» view: all parts and processes of the whole mutually influence and mutually condition each other.
A person describes himself through simple binary oppositions: top — bottom, left — right, bad — good, cause — effect, etc. Perhaps the ease and naturalness of binary thinking is connected with the concept of symmetry. All plants, animals, people have an axis of symmetry. So all living things have adapted to the phenomenon of gravity of the earth. Being in this symmetrical world, it is easy to rely on binary oppositions. They «work» in describing and understanding the static, mechanical world, but are useless in cases where it is necessary to understand and describe multi-level interactions and interdependencies. The systems approach involves a special way of perceiving reality, different from the one to which we are all accustomed. Originating in the XNUMXth century ideas about the determinism of the world, about the possibility of isolating cause and effect, finding one true root cause, make it difficult to understand that in reality causes and effects can change places. There can be many truths in the world that are true in different conditions and with a certain degree of probability.
The concept of the binarity of the world creates a linear causal relationship, with the help of which processes or events are described. In this picture of the world, the main question is “Why?”
In a systematic approach, such a linear causal-causal logic cannot exist. It is replaced by circular logic, in which the main question is “Why?” In order to reveal the psychodynamics of family life, it is necessary to move to systems thinking. Why is little Hans terrified of horses and does not leave the house? Because he is erotically attached to his mother, afraid of his father’s anger for it, represses the «criminal attraction» and projects his fear onto the horses in the harness, because it is this kind of horse face that reminds him of his father’s face with glasses. This is a linear logical chain representing the psychotherapist’s reasoning, which places the cause of symptomatic behavior inside the person. In accordance with systemic logic, the reason for the symptomatic behavior of a particular person lies in the mechanisms of homeostatic regulation of the functioning of the system of which this person is an element. That is why the system logic does not answer the question «Why?», It answers the question «Why?» You can offer many versions of «why» little Hans was afraid to leave the house:
- so that mom takes less time with her sister, so that the system does not move to the next stage of the life cycle;
- so that parents have something to talk about with each other, instead of: swearing, having sex, touching, looking at their daughter;
- so that the father had a subject for discussion with Z. Freud, his mentor and consultant.
System logic is difficult to learn and practice also because it must overcome the laws of generation of statements, the laws of verbal interaction. In a family, many things happen at the same time. Everything that happens in the family is information, a message for all family members. These messages come to people both verbally and non-verbally. Mom is washing dishes in the kitchen and rattling them more than usual, because she says she is angry with dad, who came home from work later than usual. Dad is watching TV at this time, but does not close the door of the room, showing that he wants to put up. The son, who usually does his homework himself, now, feeling the tension in the atmosphere, asks his father to help with the solution of the problem. The father helps, but speaks loudly, humiliates, demonstrates that without him the son is an empty place, that the family needs a father. Mom stands up for her son, reproaches dad for not doing enough with the child. However, albeit through a scandal, the parents begin to communicate and eventually reconcile.
The most interesting thing is that they tell about this episode in a completely different way than it was in reality: the story is carried out in words, the simultaneity and multimodality of the flow of information from everyone to everyone disappears from it. It is impossible to convey these processes by means of the language, because the language is linear. One word in one unit of time, the sounds of speech and the letters of the letter line up one after the other. Language conveys events in the same way that the projection of the movement of a wheel on paper (a straight line) reflects its actual circular movement. For the development of systems thinking, it is necessary to overcome the «tyranny of language», as the creators of the Milan school of systemic family psychotherapy believe.
Any changes that occur in any of the subsystems will be reflected in all other subsystems and the system as a whole.
The family system is an open system, it is in constant interchange of information and matter with the environment. The family system is a self-organizing system, i.e. the behavior of the system is reasonable. The people who make up the family act in one way or another under the influence of the rules of the functioning of this family system, and not under the influence of their own needs and motives. Elements of the family system (family members) are in constant interaction with each other, topological and dynamic relationships are formed between them. Topological relationships are proximity-remote relationships. The structure of the family, the composition of its coalitions: mother and children, and the father on the periphery, or a father-daughter coalition against a mother-son coalition, or a marital subsystem and a children’s subsystem — all these are different variants of the topological relations of elements.
Dynamic relationships are relationships of influence, dependence, interaction and communication (Varga, Budinaite, 2005).
Classical systemic psychotherapy is focused on the information and communication functioning of social groups, the family in the first place. The elements of the system are connected with each other through interaction of any kind, and any interaction carries information to the system both about individual elements and about the entire system as a whole. In the latter case, this is the feedback, which was described above. Interaction is a complex and multi-level process. It has a number of regularities and features, the study of which began in America, in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The research team was led by the famous philosopher and anthropologist Gregory Bateson. The main results of this research project were described in the works of G. Bateson (2000), P. Watzlawick, D. Bivin, D. Jackson (2000).
Any social system is permeated with communications, literally flooded with them. The fact is that in a human group, communication is identical to behavior. Behavior is always there, there is no ignorance. According to systems theory, all behavior carries information. In fact, the elements of the social system are immersed in interaction and communication, whether they like it or not. This position was formulated by the Bateson group as follows: all behavioral manifestations of people can be considered as communication. Avoiding communication is impossible (Waclavik et al., 2000, p. 57). Thus, being in a group, a person is in the information field. He constantly gives messages and receives them. Refusal to communicate is also a message. The person does not answer questions, is silent, turns away, etc. and thereby announces its refusal. It happens that a person «receives» messages even in those cases when no one sends them. It seems to insecure teenagers that people, for example, in a subway car look at them with condemnation or ridicule. The more closely connected people are in a group, the more information they exchange. Not only words, tone of voice, gestures and facial expressions are significant, but also any change. For example, the husband usually came home from work at eight, and recently he began to linger; the wife used to organize family leisure, but now she does not. In a functional family, changes are discussed; in a dysfunctional family, changes are often not discussed. There are zones of silence, people prefer not to check their versions of what is happening, but to accept them as the truth.
For example, dysfunctional couple X. is on her way to the grocery store. On this day, they are pleased with each other, communicate relaxed and easy, talk about subjects that are not particularly important. When the purchases are made, the wife offers to drive the car. The husband agrees. The wife gets behind the wheel, they drive, the height of the steering wheel is inconvenient for the wife. She stops the car, adjusts the steering wheel. The husband leans back comfortably in the passenger seat, the ride continues, and the conversation falls silent. It seems to the wife that her husband is dissatisfied with her ride. She is silent and begins to sulk, but does not ask her husband why he was silent. She thinks she already knows it. They come home in tense silence. The husband believes that his wife is offended by him for something, as he believes, for some kind of nonsense, most likely for not helping to lower the steering wheel, and is offended in turn, but does not ask questions why the wife is silent. The evening is spoiled, again the conflict.
It is clear that people attribute meanings to any behavioral manifestation. They can be adequately understood only in the context of a certain communicative situation. For example, the symptoms of diseases carry certain messages and make sense in a communicative context.
Everyone knows the stories about how the wife has a headache «in order not to have sex.» My head really hurts, perhaps because of the tension and anxiety associated with the fact that, according to some signs, the wife “understood” that the husband intended to make love today, the wife does not want this, but is afraid to say so, because the husband may be offended , but I don’t want a conflict and I don’t want sex either, it’s not clear what to do, that’s where my head hurts. You can take a headache pill and start a difficult conversation with your husband about how to reorganize this same sex so that your wife wants it more often. Or you can not take a pill, complain about a headache, get a portion of sympathy from your husband, and, mind you, no sex. And by the way, no hard conversations about it. And the husband is happy, because he didn’t really want to. So the headache becomes a meaningful message in a particular communication system.
In systems theory, it is believed that mental illnesses are also messages. Symptomatic behavior corresponds to the communicative system in which it is carried out. As soon as the rules of communication are changed, symptomatic behavior changes up to its complete disappearance.
All family systems are open systems; they constantly carry out subject and information exchange with the environment. The complexity and organized orderliness of such systems increase due to the destruction of the environment. An example of such destruction of the environment is a successful separation process. When an element is separated from its system, it irreversibly changes its structure and, in a sense, becomes a new system. The old system ceases to exist. The released element creates a new young family, and the parent system becomes external to this new nuclear system.