Language systems and therapy: An evolving idea.

Abstract

of theory, clinical intuition was relied on for direction in this totally unchartered area. However, it was probably the absence of theory that permitted the many brilliant and creative variations in practice that marked the early days of family therapy. The Promises of Early Systems TheoryThe systems thinking that we now know as family therapy became energized after Bateson and his colleagues (Bateson et al., 1956) developed the concept of the double bind. The double bind, and the related assumption of symptom functionality, led to the invention of the concept of family homeostasis (Jackson, 1957). These concepts were a major breakthrough in psychotherapeutic theory. The family could now be described as a system that had characteristics and organizing principles that were independent of the psychic structures of the individuals comprising the family.These early theories represented a unique contribution toward the application of cybernetic, or control systems, theory in the study of human communication and interaction. The work of Talcott Parsons (1951) in applying cybernetic theory to social systems was not yet well known in the family field. Initially, the concepts focused on dyadic interaction. This quickly gave way to multiperson, triangular interactions following the publication of Weakland's (1960) paper on threeparty interaction.As a result of this early work, problem behaviors or symptoms were conceptualized as serving a function: conserving stability or family homeostasis. The symptom was described as feedback in a cybernetic loop of mutual causality and circularity. The symptom, as feedback into the family, was required by the family in order to preserve the family's equilibrium. In this sense the symptom served a stability function. Symptoms were now defined in terms of what people were doing in the context of ongoing human relationships. This theoretical position moved the field of psychotherapy well beyond the limits of individual psy- 529This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

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