Notes PYC4808 Ecosystemic
Psychology NOTES: Some Q and
A\'s from Past Papers
ECOSYSTEMIC PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER ONE – TWO DIFFERENT WORLD VIEWS
1. Individual Psychology VS. Family Systems Theory
INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
- Westernized roots
- Western, Lockean, scientiic tradition
- Socialised in this way of thinking – consistent with our communities + our culture
- Lockean – Modernism = linear causality (A causes B)
- Reality is out there, outside our minds and the truth is to be discovered
- OBJECTIVE reality – break down into smaller components and uncover laws according to
which the world operates
- Pursue knowledge by means of OBSERVATION + EXPERIMENTATION
- These results = measurable + objective
- The subject (observing) remain separate from object and be value free
SYSTEMIC FAMILY THERAPY
- ‘’Counter-cultural’’ – contradicts traditional ways of thinking
- Directs attention away from the individual and from problems viewed in isolation and directs
our focus to relationships and relationship issues between individuals
- Kantian tradition
- Observer = attention
- Subjectivity is inevitable = exitinng in the mind and not the external world of the client
- Observer acts on, and participates in creating his or her own reality
- “Non-causal dialectical process of mutual influence in which both have influence”
- A and B exist
- Reciprocity = give-and-take actions
INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
Asks, Why??
Linear cause and efect
Subject / object dualism
Either or dichotomies
Value-free science
Deterministic / Reactiie
Laws and law like external reality
Historical Focus
Indiiidualistic
1
,Reductionistic
Absolutistic
2
, 2. Definitions
Epistemology = A set of immanent rules used in thought by large groups of people to define reality.
How knowledge is created.
Theory = A set of connected principles serving to explain a group of phenomena of interest to the
researcher or serving as a statement of relations believed to prevail in a body of observations.
Theories are informed and specified by particular epistemologies.
Model = A projection of the substance of a less understood or developed domain onto the structure
of a more developed system. You take what you see and project it onto something else.
Technique = A rehearsed or practiced procedure or skill to achieve a particular end/ outcome in
accordance with a model used.
Cybernetics = The characteristics of the systemic / cybernetic world is theoretical relativity. We
cannot reject one theory and embrace another. Rather, cybernetics we recognize that each theory
gives meaning to the other and that each has utility relative to given context.
3
, CHAPTER TWO – THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
1930’s & 1940’s
Cybernetics – Early on = organisation, pattern, and process rather than matter, material and
content. Norbert Weiner (Mathematician) = Named the science – cybernetics
1940 = scientists started to compare inanimate machines with living organisms.
Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist = studies human cultures, traditions, origins, behaviours and societies.
Main contribution was grounds of knowledge and epistemology.
Bridging physical and behavioural science.
Bateson resolved the ancient problem posed by dualistic thinking about mind and body – he set
about translating the practice of psychiatry into a theory of human communication.
1950’s & 1960’s
Conferences called “Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems” ->
changed to CYBERNETICS
Bateson’s Double-Blind Hypothesis (1956) – toward a theory of schizophrenia
- Two or more persons, one designated “the victim”
- Repeated experiences
- A primary negative injunction (command, ruling)
- A secondary injection conflicting the 1st at a more abstract level, and like the 1st, enforced
by punishments or signals which threaten survival
- A tertiary negative injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping the field
- All ingredients are NO LONGER necessary when the victim has learned to perceive
his universe in double-blind patterns
Primarily mothers part of the problem – mother-blaming
Nathan Ackerman
Child psychiatrist – family as a social and emotional unit
Both mother and child go to therapy together not separate
1962 = published Family Process
Combination of psychodynamics and the notion of an individual’s social role to understand the
ongoing interaction between hereditary and environment and the maintenance of homeostasis
within and between the person, family, and ultimately society.
Murray Bowen
4
Psychology NOTES: Some Q and
A\'s from Past Papers
ECOSYSTEMIC PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER ONE – TWO DIFFERENT WORLD VIEWS
1. Individual Psychology VS. Family Systems Theory
INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
- Westernized roots
- Western, Lockean, scientiic tradition
- Socialised in this way of thinking – consistent with our communities + our culture
- Lockean – Modernism = linear causality (A causes B)
- Reality is out there, outside our minds and the truth is to be discovered
- OBJECTIVE reality – break down into smaller components and uncover laws according to
which the world operates
- Pursue knowledge by means of OBSERVATION + EXPERIMENTATION
- These results = measurable + objective
- The subject (observing) remain separate from object and be value free
SYSTEMIC FAMILY THERAPY
- ‘’Counter-cultural’’ – contradicts traditional ways of thinking
- Directs attention away from the individual and from problems viewed in isolation and directs
our focus to relationships and relationship issues between individuals
- Kantian tradition
- Observer = attention
- Subjectivity is inevitable = exitinng in the mind and not the external world of the client
- Observer acts on, and participates in creating his or her own reality
- “Non-causal dialectical process of mutual influence in which both have influence”
- A and B exist
- Reciprocity = give-and-take actions
INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
Asks, Why??
Linear cause and efect
Subject / object dualism
Either or dichotomies
Value-free science
Deterministic / Reactiie
Laws and law like external reality
Historical Focus
Indiiidualistic
1
,Reductionistic
Absolutistic
2
, 2. Definitions
Epistemology = A set of immanent rules used in thought by large groups of people to define reality.
How knowledge is created.
Theory = A set of connected principles serving to explain a group of phenomena of interest to the
researcher or serving as a statement of relations believed to prevail in a body of observations.
Theories are informed and specified by particular epistemologies.
Model = A projection of the substance of a less understood or developed domain onto the structure
of a more developed system. You take what you see and project it onto something else.
Technique = A rehearsed or practiced procedure or skill to achieve a particular end/ outcome in
accordance with a model used.
Cybernetics = The characteristics of the systemic / cybernetic world is theoretical relativity. We
cannot reject one theory and embrace another. Rather, cybernetics we recognize that each theory
gives meaning to the other and that each has utility relative to given context.
3
, CHAPTER TWO – THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
1930’s & 1940’s
Cybernetics – Early on = organisation, pattern, and process rather than matter, material and
content. Norbert Weiner (Mathematician) = Named the science – cybernetics
1940 = scientists started to compare inanimate machines with living organisms.
Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist = studies human cultures, traditions, origins, behaviours and societies.
Main contribution was grounds of knowledge and epistemology.
Bridging physical and behavioural science.
Bateson resolved the ancient problem posed by dualistic thinking about mind and body – he set
about translating the practice of psychiatry into a theory of human communication.
1950’s & 1960’s
Conferences called “Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems” ->
changed to CYBERNETICS
Bateson’s Double-Blind Hypothesis (1956) – toward a theory of schizophrenia
- Two or more persons, one designated “the victim”
- Repeated experiences
- A primary negative injunction (command, ruling)
- A secondary injection conflicting the 1st at a more abstract level, and like the 1st, enforced
by punishments or signals which threaten survival
- A tertiary negative injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping the field
- All ingredients are NO LONGER necessary when the victim has learned to perceive
his universe in double-blind patterns
Primarily mothers part of the problem – mother-blaming
Nathan Ackerman
Child psychiatrist – family as a social and emotional unit
Both mother and child go to therapy together not separate
1962 = published Family Process
Combination of psychodynamics and the notion of an individual’s social role to understand the
ongoing interaction between hereditary and environment and the maintenance of homeostasis
within and between the person, family, and ultimately society.
Murray Bowen
4
