While reading the book 'Systems Thinking for Social Change', I got reminded of an example I encountered in Salvador Minuchin's book 'Family and Family Therapy'.

Before diving into the example, I would like to reflect on my previous learnings. This reflection of how Systems Thinking is deployed in the domain of Psychotherapy might help me to understand Systems Thinking from another perspective.

To set the context... Family Therapy was a part of the curriculum during my PostGrad in Psychological Counseling. We learnt 2 different types of Intervention Strategies : Linear and Systemic.

Linear Therapy is what we commonly observe during the one-on-one sessions with psychotherapists. However, Systemic Therapy is all together different from Linear Therapy. The intervention techniques, analysis as well as how to interact with clients are totally different.

We learnt that competent psychotherapists know to delay judgement unless they identify the appropriate method of intervention.

Suppose Raju has come for a psychotherapy session. While listening, we would get to know all the symptoms caused by his problems. But, if we start thinking of the root cause only with those symptoms as guides, we might be able to get surface-level insights. When we look at the symptoms only from the individual's point of view, it is called Linear Therapy.

However, Systemic Therapy is when we probe into the system the individual is connected with. For this, we can get to know about the support structure and connections of Raju, and how Raju is influenced by and how he influences other parts of the system he is in.

But how do we identify whether we have chosen the wrong intervention strategy? That is, if we chose Linear Intervention, when actually what we needed to do was Systemic Intervention?

Oftentimes, it is observed that Raju's symptoms will keep coming back in different forms and the problem will persist.

If as psychotherapists, we are not aware of Systemic Therapy, it is highly likely that we will never be able to empower Raju to come out of his vicious cycle, because we ourselves will not be aware of the root cause. This is because we haven't observed and probed the system yet.

So, what is Systemic Intervention in this context? It is also known as Family Therapy, or the Cybernetics Theory of Family Therapy.

Here, an individual is seen from the context of the family. The family is seen as a system - with a structure and a script. Structure is the nature of bonding between different family members, and the script is the manner in which a family functions. The script consists of the rules, beliefs and traditions of the family, as well as the manner in which a family reacts to situations and the outer world.

Why is Systemic Family Therapy also referred to as 'Cybernetics Theory of Family Therapy'?

Because here, the way a family is considered as a system is very similar to a computer system. It consists of hardware and software. The system breaks down if there are weak links in the hardware or loose connections. It also breaks down if there are bugs in the software.

Lastly, why do we consider Raju as a part of the family, and not just as an individual?

The symptoms might actually come from the system. If we can't find out the weak links or bugs in the system, we might not understand why the symptoms keep coming back.

We can probe deeper into the way Raju's family influences Raju and vice versa. We can also try to understand how the family influences the outer world and the outer world influences his family. The outer world encompasses aspects like society, economy, politics etc.

Now, the example which the Systems Thinking book reminded me about....

It was one of my Eureka Moments 3 years back. In his book (mentioned above), Minuchin said -

When we do Linear Intervention, we might want to see a person go from point A (South) to point B (in North). Even when the person has reached point B, we might still fail to reach the objective, if the person is on an iceberg and the whole block of ice is floating at a much faster pace towards South.

The apparent success (shift from point A to B) might actually be an illusion, and the problem might worsen in the coming days due to the shift of the whole system further down South.