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Fam Proc 23:200-204, 1984

A MENU NOTE ON THE CYBERNETIC NETWORK

GERALD D. ERICKSON, D.PHIL.
I am pleased that Carolyn Attneave took note of the comment to family therapists in the closing section of the paper
(related to the falsifiability of theory and family therapy), for I agree that some expansion of the assertions are needed. I
propose in this response to deal with only one direction following from the "challenge," an area I had hoped to address in
the paper itself? the "cybernetic network" as a locus of family treatment.
This response has to do then with the "new epistomology" and what comes into view (and why) when employing this
epistomology.
Because this area of thought is both difficult to follow and still being developed, I assume (a) that what a therapist does
initially is systemic analysis; (b) within a special way of seeing, understanding, and deciding and proceeding from a set of
rules forming an epistemology of circularity and nonlinear causation; (c) that what is perceived by the therapist is a pattern
of forms, a cybernetic network; (d) and what is to be changed are the patterns and forms of the whole network (4, 7, 8).
If I may quote from a primary source for further clarification:
Ecosystemic epistomology defines system as a cybernetic network that processes information.... This type of
system is referred to as an ecological relationship system. [8, pp. 119-120]
For the therapist, the ecological relationship system necessarily includes what has been traditionally called the
identified patient, symptom, therapist, and larger social context. [8, p. 120]
The obvious implication for the therapist is that he should diagnose and treat the relationship network rather than
focus exclusively on any isolated part. [8, p. 121]
I believe there is a contradiction between, on the one hand, the expressed aim (including the contextual language) that
promises a breadth of view and a social context for intervention decisions and, on the other hand, the actual network
brought under scrutiny? which usually appears in the literature as a small and solitary kinship cluster. This is easily
falsifiable, but I have been unable to find any case reports (in any of the literature utilizing the "new epistemology") that
moved beyond a partial or whole elementary family. I will argue below that this limitation is inherent in the epistemology.
As a starting point, a social network mode of analysis must begin with an actual set of relationships and may include (as
an intervention) a gathering with a therapist as a discrete and purposeful activity; any "traditional" family approach begins
with a family and may be extended to include one or more network sectors. An ecosystemic approach, however, originates
in the sensibility of the therapist, with a certain way of seeing and understanding. One may speak of networks and families
without reference to the question, "Who speaks?," but ecosystemic analysis is entirely therapist-centered, and the mode of
seeing and understanding is not shared by the family.
Perhaps then it may be profitable to examine briefly what informs this sensibility, to examine some features of the
intellectual and cultural context of the new epistemology, i.e., the metacontext of cybernetic networks. I will argue that an
ecosystemic epistemology, rather than bringing the social context into view, is more likely to be related to the "vanishing"
of both network and family; the family comes to be seen as a pattern of forms, and a closure occurs around therapist and
family. Thus, I am concerned with two questions: Is this disappearance consistent with the theory, and why a closure and
not an opening to the wider context?
What appears to be an uncritical mythology, almost a fairy story, has been developed in the accounts of the origins and
progress of an ecosystemic epistemology. Above all, Gregory Bateson is taken as nearly a self-generating figure, fighting a
long battle in attempting to call attention to a new way of perceiving the Universe. He is seen as if he were out of context
from many of the main intellectual currents of the times. It is as if he were not a participant in, or influenced by, similar
ideological struggles in related fields and did not take positions similar to, or different from, for example, students of
politics, literature, and philosophy, who were concerned with the same types of problems. But it is because Bateson's work
was consistent with, and supported by, avant garde strands in other fields that ecosystemic epistemology is present and of
interest today. Connecting family therapy to a few of these strands may assist us in coming to terms with a view of the new
epistemology as part of a current (and fashionable) avant garde and bourgeois intellectual trend.

Structuralism and Antihumanism

A major area of related thought, but one little noted in family therapy writing, is antihumanist philosophy as reflected in
various applications of structuralist theoretical approaches in many disciplines. This massive area cannot be covered in a
short commentary, but I hope what follows will indicate that the new epistemology (and consequences for practice) cannot

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be understood outside the context of its wider cultural supports.

In some ways, it is unfortunate that "structural" has been identified with the "structural family therapy" of Minuchin (9);
in many ways his theory and practice are less related to structuralism (within the term's philosophical meaning) than current
ecosystemic approaches, which are antihumanist in orientation. For now, only one distinction need be made: Minuchin's
structural approach can be said to be humanistic if only because of the introduction of Koestler's concept of the "holon" into
his theory (9); that introduction seems to represent a way of "saving the person" as a social actor. It is no surprise that
ecosystemic approaches contain no similar concept, since the thrust of antihumanism is to remove the person as a social
actor.
As one example, here is Jonathan Culler (2), a literary scholar, presenting an interpretation of the theoretical base of
Roland Barthes:
Treating phenomena as the products of underlying systems of rules and distinctions, structuralism takes from
linguistics two cardinal principles: that signifying entities do not have essences but are defined by networks of
relations both internal and external, and that to account for signifying phenomena is to describe the system of norms
that makes them possible. Structural explanation does not seek historical antecedents or causes but discusses the
structure and significance of particular objects or actions by relating them to the system within which they function.
[p. 79]
Merely change a noun or two, and one has a brief account of ecosystemic theory. Barthes, among many achievements,
was known for the advancement of the idea of the "death of the Author" and a view of the reader as "no longer the consumer
but a producer of the text" (2, p. 82). Thus, an approach to literary analysis, which eliminates the author of the text (the
producer) and converts the reader to producer is akin to, and isomorphic with, the notion of the therapist as a producer of
the family text (patterns and forms) by means of ecosystemic analysis.
The disappearance of the "subject," the social actor, has been one epistemological theme in avant garde philosophy (and
related areas) for twenty years; it is what unites such disparate thinkers as Derrida (3), Faucoult (5), and Althusser (1). We
would never know, from within family therapy (where an avant garde has apparently adopted a version of the
disappearance of the subject), that the area is a contentious battleground. Objections have been made in many places to
perceiving "human conduct as a mere effect" (6, p. 131). The social historian Edward Thompson in The Poverty of Theory
(10), a lengthy assault on the political theory of Althusser, perhaps best captures the spirit of the conflict when he
comments about an area of freedom for moral and intellectual choices and whether people can remain as subjects of their
own history:
Today, structuralisms engross this area from every side: we are structured by social relations, spoken by pre-given
linguistic structures, thought by ideologies, dreamed by myths, gendered by patriarchal sexual norms, bonded by
affective obligations, cultured by mentalities and acted by history's script. None of these ideas is, in origin, absurd,
and some rest upon substantial additions to knowledge. But all slip, at a certain point, from sense to absurdity, and
in their sum, all arrive at a common terminus of unfreedom. [p. 345]
It is this sense of a loss of persons living within a family and social context and the shift to, in effect, a person being lived
through a pattern of interaction that is difficult for many to understand and accept. Bateson, for example, and along the
same line, refers to the self as a mythology (7, p. 342), but here, especially, Bateson's thought must be understood in the
intellectual context of the times. His work, too, must be critically examined and the implications grasped.

Orthodox and Genetic Structuralism

In a wonderfully lucid exposition of structuralism, systems, and related concepts, Raymond Williams (11) calls attention
to a subtle distinction concerning "the description of any system or structure, whether emphasis is put on the relations
between people and between people and things, or on the relationships, which include the relations and the people and the
things related" (p. 255). He goes on to say that system or structure can be used with either emphasis but that what he terms
an "orthodox" position, in which "actual people and actual products are made theoretically subordinate to the decisive
abstracted relations" (p. 256), must be differentiated from a "genetic" position that includes both people and products and
"sees these as being built up and broken down at different stages in history? [emphasizing]? the building and dismantling
of structures" over time (pp. 256-258). If I understand him correctly, Williams connects the orthodox emphasis with a
reification of an abstraction into a "prime substance." The orthodox position among systems thinkers seems (as noted by
Williams) most congenial to those with a managerial conception of society and with an interest in industrial technology.
The distinction seems useful as a tentative line of demarcation between approaches to structure and systems in family
therapy. I submit that this line separates a conception of cybernetic networks, derived from an ecosystemic epistemology,
from the notion of social network found in my paper and elsewhere; it is the difference between orthodox and genetic

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emphases. It is also one difference between, for example, Minuchin's structuralism and that of the Milan group.
It may also be argued that the whole of ecosystemic practice may be illuminated by a consideration of the epistemology
as related to an industrial/business framework: The image seems apt of the ecosystemic therapist as a management
consultant attempting to grasp the pattern of the immediate system of organization in which a process of concern is stuck
and in which the producers and the product are of secondary importance (actually, not particularly visible) in order to offer
an intervention to change the immediate set of relations. Both the base (person as subject) and the wider network may be
chopped in the service of interventions to remove obstacles to "production."
We may say that therapeutic activities associated with an ecosystemic approach appear as a decidedly conservative kind
of enterprise, linked both to a powerful model in the structure of economic organization and to a highly developed and
sophisticated avant garde theory in other areas of enterprise (philosophy, literary criticism, linguistics, etc.). But these other
enterprises do not act directly on persons. The application of a theory, for example, toward a new understanding of the
novels of Balzac is of a different nature from applications of it to families.

Conclusion
Yet, many of us are attracted to bourgeois and conservative systems; I certainly am. Perhaps it is the attraction of the
promise of power (what could be more powerful than a new version of the medical model, combined with an industrial
model with an avant garde grounding?) and the label of something "new." No old-fashioned, Newtonian universe for
up-to-date, go-ahead, managerial types. Perhaps it is because, as even the most virulent critics suggest, structuralism has
been a powerful force for breaking down old habits of thought and perception and allowing new approaches and new
productivity for workers in a spectrum of fields. But the problems remains of how to integrate "orthodox" and "genetic" and
save the persons and the wider social context in family therapy. I believe this has been a question that family therapists have
struggled with from the very beginning. One can chart something of it by reading the productions of Jay Haley over the
years: from relations to relationships (and various points in the middle).
Carolyn Attneave calls for main courses. But there are many restaurants, and a few Grand Chefs and Sous Chefs are
announcing a new mode of changing production while commenting on the epistemological errors in other menus (much as
the old chefs used to note Freudian slips). This response is a note on the menu margin to the diners about the ingredients
they may be ordering. They already know that a metaphysical soup cannot be falsified.

REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Althusser, L., Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, London, New Left Books, 1971.
Culler, J., Barthes, London, Fontana Modern Masters, 1983.
Derrida, J., Of Grammatology, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
De Shazer, S., Patterns of Brief Family Therapy: An Ecosystemic Approach, New York, Guildford Press, 1982.
Faucoult, M., Madness and Civilization, London, Tavistock Publications, 1965.
Hirst, P. and Wolley, P., Social Relations and Human Attributes, London, Tavistock Publications, 1982.
Hoffman, L., Foundations of Family Therapy, New York, Basic Books, 1981.
Keeney, B., (1979) "Ecosystemic Epistomology: An Alternative Paradigm for Diagnosis," Fam. Proc., 18,
117-128.
Minuchin, S. and Fishman, C., Techniques of Family Therapy, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press,
1981.
Thompson, E., The Poverty of Theory, London, Merlin Press, 1978.
Williams, R., Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London, Fontana/ Croom Helm, 1976.

Manuscript received December 12, 1983; Accepted December 27, 1983.

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