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Fam Proc 21:21-41, 1982

Beyond Homeostasis: Toward a Concept of Coherence

PAUL F. DELL, PH.D.a
aThis work was undertaken while the author was a faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
University of Texas Medical Branch and of the Galveston Family Institute. Currently, the author is Director of Clinical and Theoretical
Studies, Colonial Institute, 17579 Warwick Boulevard, Newport News, Virginia 23603.
The concept of homeostasis has served as a major building block, if not the cornerstone, of family theory and family
therapy. Designed to account for the perceived stability of systems (and symptoms), homeostasis is an epistemologically
flawed concept that has repetitively been used in the service of dualistic, animistic, and vitalistic interpretations of
systems. Accordingly, homeostasis has led to quirky clinical formulations and a great deal of fuzzy theorizing. This
paper contends that the notion of homeostasis is fundamentally inconsistent with systemic epistemology and should be
replaced with the more compatible concept of coherence. Whereas homeostasis is a heuristic concept that is not part of a
more encompassing theory, the concept of coherence is inseparable from the epistemology in which it is embedded.

It might seem as if there were a real Governor, but we find no trace of his being
Chuang T'zu

Homeostasis and Family Therapy: A Brief History

From at Least the time of Fromm-Reichmann's paper on the schizo-phrenogenic mother (25), there has been a growing
awareness in the psychotherapy field of the interpersonal context of symptoms. Broadly, such context has been interpreted
to have two aspects: fit and causation. Fit is the more general notion of the two. Without making reference to etiology or
causation, fit simply posits that the behaviors occurring in the family system have a general complementarily; they fit
together. Causation, on the other hand, is a particular interpretation of fit that considers the observed complementarity to
have the form: A causes B.1 For example, bad parents make their children sick. That is Fromm-Reichmann's thesis about
the etiology of schizophrenia (25). As will become clear, clinical theorists' failure to distinguish between fit and causation
has been a major contributor to the confusion regarding family homeostasis. Specifically, there has been a recurrent
tendency to assume that fit (i.e., complementarity) implies causation (i.e., circular causal, mutual causal, or even linear
causal interactions).
The field of family therapy gained its initial impetus from the study of the interpersonal context of schizophrenia: Bateson
et al. (13), Bowen (16), Lidz et al. (37), Wynne and Singer (54, 55, 64). All of these investigators examined the ways in
which the schizophrenic fit with his or her family and vice versa (21). Singer and Wynne (55) explicitly used the concept of
fit in their blind pairing of family members' projective test protocols with one another. Bateson's group arrived at the
double-bind theory by explicitly asking what kind of interpersonal context would make sense of (i.e., would fit with)
schizophrenic behavior. Their conclusion, of course, was that schizophrenic behavior fit within the double-binding context.
The work of Lidz and of Bowen explicitly tends to emphasize the notion of causation at the expense of a more general
notion of fit. These investigators seem to understand the psychopathology of offspring as being caused by their neurotic
parents. Bateson et al. (14, 33) and Singer and Wynne (54) reject causation in favor of fit in schizophrenic families.
Nevertheless, they understand fit in terms of causalitythat is, circular causality.
Jackson, a member of Bateson's group, introduced homeostasis to the field of psychotherapy with his seminal paper,
"The Question of Family Homeostasis" (32). The basic theme of this paper is the patient in his or her context. Jackson
suggested that a variety of diagnostic categories of psychopathology fit within particular interactional patterns. Jackson
claimed that, as a consequence of that fit, improvement of the patient might lead to conflict, psychiatric upset, and even
suicide elsewhere in the family. "Serious consequences will occur" in another family member who "has been 'buying"
mental health from the illness of the person who is in treatment" (33, p. 8). Jackson's paper is the first in the psychotherapy
field to refer to homeostatic mechanisms. A careful reading of Jackson's comment about "buying' mental health from...
illness" reveals an implication that the person who did the 'buying' was somehow causing the illness of the patient. This
implicit attribution is isomorphic to that made the year before2 in "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia" (13), in which
Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland claimed that mothers double bound their offspring and caused schizophrenic
symptoms. Bateson et al. retracted that linear causal position in favor of mutual causality shortly after (14, 33), but
homeostasis continued to carry the linear causal emphasis that double-bind theory had shed.
In succeeding years, the Bateson group and the Mental Research Institute rapidly expanded their use of cybernetics and
communication theory as heuristic models for family interaction. By 1959, Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland were

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describing the family as an error-activated, self-correcting, homeostatic system (27). Jackson and Weakland (35) spoke of
homeostatic mechanisms whose function was to restore the family system to its status quo. Negative feedback was used as a
companion concept and often as a synonym for homeostasis. Negative feedback and homeostasis were said to keep the
patient sick. In 1962, Haley (28) advanced his First Law of Relationship: "When an organism indicates a change in relation
to another, the other will act upon the first so as to diminish and modify that change" (p. 277).
During that period, these theorists were struggling unsuccessfully to make the epistemological shift necessary to think
"system." Bateson (9), for example, states that he was not able to make the full shift until late 1969. The problem is that
systems theory properly entails noncausal fit, rather than linear or mutual causation. Thus, causal descriptions of
homeostasis as maintaining the status quo or helping to keep the patient sick are epistemologically incorrect.
In 1959, Bateson (4) struggled to escape this problem by claiming that schizophrenic families were

not simply homeostatic around the invalid status of the particular identified patient. It would seem...that the
variables which must at all costs be kept constant are somewhat more abstract or more secret in nature. It is not that
at all costs the identified patient must be kept confused; rather it seems as if the patient himself is an
accessoryeven a willing sacrificeto the family homeostasis. If he ceases to play this role, there is a likelihood
that some other member of the family will assume it in his place. Like many complex homeostatic systems, the
pathogenic family seems to be able, like a newt, to regenerate a missing limb. [pp. 128-129]

Here, Bateson is close to understanding homeostasis to be the nature of the organization of the system as opposed to
homeostasis being an aspect or part of the organization of the system. The difference between the two is crucial. In a
system, by definition, components are interconnected. Accordingly, clear systemic thinking forbids talking of one aspect of
the system as separate from and causally acting upon other parts of the system. To claim that homeostasis or negative
feedback regulates that system is to fall into the error of dualistic, causal thinking (23)an error that plagues virtually all
past and contemporary discussion of family homeostasis.
In a paper partially titled, "Is Homeostasis Enough?," Speer (56) raised serious objections to the pervasiveness of
homeostatic thinking in the family therapy field. He cogently pointed out that families indeed change and that change
obviously cannot be explained by homeostasis. In addition, he noted the supreme irony of founding an approach to
therapeutic change on a theory of how systems do not change. Speer's call for family therapists to reconsider their homage
to the concept of homeostasis has been essentially unheeded.
Interpreting homeostasis in terms of causation has a second liability (in addition to dualism), namely the problem of
purpose. That is, if you tell a clinician that a family has a homeostatic mechanism, he or she will not rest until the
mechanism's "purpose" has been "discovered." If the clinician is sophisticated, he or she will search for its function, but the
original dualistic error still dooms the clinician to muddled thinking. It is again Jackson who precipitated the initial
confusion regarding purpose.
Jackson observed recurrent behavior patterns in families (elsewhere described in terms of homeostasis and negative
feedback) and suggested that the recurrent corrective cycling could be understood by positing that the family had rules. At
first, Jackson maintained that these rules provided the reason or purpose for the observed patterning of interactions (33). In
short, such rules were considered to be homeostatic mechanisms imposed on the system that prescribed (27) or regulated
what would happen (e.g., no one in this family gets mad; mother is never wrong, etc.). Subsequently, Jackson thought better
of it and claimed that such "rules" were "as if" descriptions by the observer (27, 34). That is, for the purpose of
conceptualization, it is useful to describe the system as functioning "as if" (34 p. 592) there were such-and-such a rule.
Jackson's "as if" position contained clear, incisive thinking that should have gone a long way toward eventually ending
the confused ideas concerning homeostasis. Unfortunately, Jackson was not able to further develop that line of thinking
before his death in 1968. Because the field subsequently ignored Jackson's "as if" clarification of rules, the concept of
homeostasis became further contaminated. The notion of rules has apparently been too compelling for most family
therapists to forego. As a result, current clinical conceptualization continues to think of families as having rules and
repeatedly speaks of family members as behaving in a certain way for various systemic purposes. For example, "the child
has become symptomatic in order to save his parents' marriage;" "the son is acting out in order to reinvolve his father;" "the
daughter is sacrificing herself in order to protect the family homeostasis."
Hoffman (30) has discussed the "homeostatic cycle" in which "the sequence, not just the misbehavior, served some kind
of change-resistant or homeostatic function" (p. 502). In addition, she contends that "symptomatic behaviors occur in a
matrix of other behaviors, that are linked to and supported by these behaviors, and that the totality constitutes some sort of
formal program which has to do with the survival of a larger unit, usually the family" (p. 503). That line of thinking
continues to be developed by Selvini-Palazzoli and her colleagues (52, 53).
Hoffman's (29) comparison of Minuchin's concept of "enmeshment" (45) to Ashby's (3) concept of the "too richly
cross-joined" system is the only significant exception in the family therapy literature to the habit of interpreting homeostasis

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in a dualistic, causal fashion. Hoffman noted that both Ashby's Homeostat and Minuchin's enmeshed family are alike in
having a high reactivity that stems from their components being too richly cross-joined. In a too richly cross-joined system,
the behavior of any single part immediately affects all other parts, whose behavior in turn affects all other parts, and so on.
Such systems rarely reach resolution of anything because they are too reactive for their own good. Hoffman concluded that
such systems suffer from "too much homeostasis" (p. 459). That view is an advance over other views of homeostasis in the
family therapy literature because it implies that homeostasis is a characteristic of the system as a whole and avoids all talk
of homeostatic cycles and mechanisms. Unfortunately, the ramifications of her interpretation seem to have gone
unrecognized.

The Problem With Homeostasis

The preceding section has provided the reader with a conceptual retrospective of homeostasis in the field of family
therapy. The second section of the paper will explore in detail the problems with homeostasis previewed above.

Errors of Logical Typing

From almost its very inception, the concept of homeostasis has been plagued by errors of logical typing. That is, it is
possible to discuss a system in terms of its components or in terms of its coherence as a whole, but mixing together both
levels of analysis is muddled thinking. Bernard's (15) milieu interieur described the coherence of human physiology.
Cannon's (18) concept of homeostasis, on the other hand, addressed itself to how the organism maintained blood pressure
and other variables within a certain critical range. This way of looking at the phenomena implies causality (i.e., A causes B:
organism maintains blood pressure) and threatens dualistically to mix two levels of analysis: behavior of specific
components (i.e., blood pressure) and the coherent functioning of the system as a whole.
Subsequent attempts to employ the concept of homeostasis led to much confusion and dissatisfaction with the concept in
physiology, biology, and psychology (29, 44, 58). Eventually, much of the problem was traced to two contrasting
definitions of homeostasis: it was sometimes construed to be an end (of constancy in the face of change), and sometimes a
means to that end (19, 58). Homeostasis as means (i.e., the homeostatic mechanism) is a causal dualism. Worse yet, it is
vitalistic. Any description of a system as resisting the changes proposed by environmental inputs must explain how or why
that resistance occurs. To answer that the system remains stable "because it is homeostatic" is circular reasoning. To
answer that these systems are stable because they have a "homeo-static force" or "homeostatic principle" is a form of
vitalism. Such reasoning is equivalent to explaining the phemomena of life on the basis of élan vital. To describe
homeostasis as an end is little better than describing it as means, because the end is still dualistically opposed to
environmental change (which the system somehow resists).

Dualism and Misplaced Concreteness

Homeostasis is a metaphor or model for describing the functioning of a system. Homeostasis is not something concrete,
but rather a concept about a way of behaving. It is a description, an explanatory fiction. As such, talk of homeostatic
mechanisms is not only dualistic, it is a reification of a conceptual metaphor. To speak of a family member's behavior as
being part of the homeostatic cycle or part of the homeostatic mechanism is to commit Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced
concreteness (62). To do so is to treat a metalevel description as real. In other words, with regard to any given family,
homeostasis is not something that actually is. Rather it is a way of talking about the system's functioning. For the same
reasons, the "governor" of a steam engine is not something that is; rather, self-governing is a way of describing how the
steam engine functions.
The concept of homeostasis is an attempt to come to terms with the perceived stability of a system. In turn, that perceived
stability is portrayed as being the result of a process of self-regulation. The problem with this is that self-regulation is itself
an epistemologically flawed notion. If the self (or part of the self) regulates the self, then what regulates the aspect of the
self that is doing the regulating? This, of course, is the beginning of an infinite series of such questions that leaves
regulation ultimately with no ground on which to stand. There is no way to escape the infinitely self-referential nature of
"self-regulation." The quest for self-regulation is much like the attempt to overcome the second law of thermodynamics by
inventing a perpetual motion machine. It is an attempt to repeal the impossible. Homeostatic mechanisms and family rules
must be seen to be family therapy's equivalent of Maxwell's Demon.3
The next point is more subtle because the dualism of homeostasis cannot be escaped by simply accepting the above
arguments. That is, even if one concedes that the notion of "homeostatic mechanisms" is a dualistic reification, the problem
with the concept of homeostasis remains. One is still wont to say that the homeostatic constancy of the system (e.g.,
redundant patterns, symptomatic behavior, etc.) is there regardless of whether it is the outcome of the systemic whole or the
product of a mythical homeostatic mechanism. The problem with this position is that the constancy is itself dualistic
vis-a-vis the other interacting processes in the system. To attend to the constancy is to see it as being apart from the rest of

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the system.
This last point tends to upset people, because they insist that the constancy is there regardless of any theoretical
mumbo-jumbo; it is objectively there. But the point is that the constancy or redundant pattern is "there" in precisely the
same sense that the homeostatic mechanism is "there." Such regularities of systemic functioning are not features of the
operative system, but of our description (41). There exists an infinity of apparent "features of the system," and each one is
defined by a way of describing the system. Such descriptions are not of the system; they are something that we bring to it.

Punctuation
With that last point, we have come to the issue of punctuation (61). All family therapists are familiar with the
nag-withdraw-nag cycle and the folly of arguing about which way to punctuate it"He withdraws because she nags" versus
"She nags because he withdraws." The preceding paragraph introduces the punctuation dilemma at a more profound
level"Is the system this homeostatic cycle here and all the rest of it there?" versus "Is the system this homeo-static
mechanism here and that constancy there?" versus "Is the system...?" In other words, one cannot say what the system
"is."One can only choose a particular punctuation and take what consequences come with it.
And consequences will indeed follow from that choice. The therapist's decision as to what the system "is" may very well
determine the outcome of therapy. Again, however, one must remember that, if punctuating the system one way "works"
(i.e., facilitates successful intervention), all we can say is that it works, that it was useful. The fact that it works does not
mean that it is accurate or truthful; it only means that it works. For example, "purpose" is one way of punctuating a system.
If the punctuation "works," it affords predictability or it allows a successful therapeutic outcome. Nevertheless, the fact that
the purposive punctuation was useful is not evidence that such purpose was accurate or really "there." That is the logical
fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Purpose
The concept of purpose is and has been very problematic for accounts of human behavior in both psychology and
philosophy. All attributions of purpose are made by an observer who is interpreting the behavior in question. That is true
even when the observer/interpreter is describing himself or herself. Even the self-observer is never sure why he or she
behaved in a particular way. At the level of the system, the matter of purpose is obviously vastly more obscure than at the
level of the individual. Given its inherent epistemological problems and given the fact that it is always hamstrung by the
limitations of inductive logic, systemic "purpose" must be deemed a bad bargain that is best left alone. Believing that a
family has a purpose can only lead to a brand of fuzzy thinking best described as systemic animism.
Attempts to retain purpose within a systemic perspective while simultaneously avoiding systemic animism usually lead
straight to causal dualisms (e.g., "She is misbehaving in order to rescue her parents from conflict and in order to protect the
family."). That is, a component of the system is described as determining or regulating the functioning of the system. Worse
yet, such explanations lead to some very convoluted and inconsistent thinking about altruism and family members
"sacrificing" themselves for the family. As noted above, Bateson (4) once described the patient as a "willing sacrifice...to
the family homeostasis." Similarly, Hoffman (30) has experimented with applying E. O. Wilson's sociobiological
hypothesis of an altruism gene to explain the same phenomenon. Selvini-Palazzoli and her colleagues (52) speak constantly
of family members sacrificing themselves.4
The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that these same theorists simultaneously believe that the family system is an
organized whole with its functioning being mutually determined by all of its parts. Thus, if other members of the family play
a part in causing the patient to behave as he or she does, then the patient cannot be fully altruistic because his or her
behavior is at least partially determined by the system. In other words, as soon as dualism is avoided by claiming that a
system's behavior emerges from mutual causal processes, the purposive interpretations of that functioning become
impossible. That, in part, is what is meant by systems theorists when they insist that the best explanation of a system is the
system itself. In short, there is no why; there is only is.

Evolution
As Speer (56) noted, families, and other types of systems, do indeed change and evolvea phemomenon that
homeostasis apparently cannot explain. Specifically, homeostasis cannot explain evolution of the system's functioning if
homeostasis is considered to be the maintaining of a particular stability in the system.5 In other words, if homeostasis is
underestood as something that maintains the status quomaintains the system this waythen when the system evolves to a
different way, homeostasis is unable to account for it. (Parenthetically, it should be noted that believing in such "specific
homeostasis" almost inevitably leads one to seek the reason or purpose of it.) On the other hand, system change can easily
be explained if homeostasis is considered to be a tendency to seek a steady state, any steady state (as opposed to a specific

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steady state). Thus, when a system is perturbed, as all systems are, it tends to seek a steady state that is always slightly
different from the preceding steady state. In short, homeostasis evolves.

The Misleading Dualism of Feedback

Like its sibling concept, homeostasis, negative feedback is typically used in a dualistic and nonevolutionary fashion.6
Feedback is defined as the introduction of a system's output into part of its internal behavior so as to "correct" (i.e., negative
feedback) or amplify (i.e., positive feedback) the behavior of some target variable. This view of feedback, however, is
confused for two reasons. First, it isolates one variable (the target variable) of the system from the rest. This is a dualism
that assumes that the behavior of the target variable is independent from that of the ignored remainder of the system. That
simply is not so; if the target variable were independent, then it would not be part of the system! Second, this type of
thinking assumes that what is fed back affects only the target variable and not the rest of the system.7 Again, that is not so.
Typically, such other effects are either ignored or somewhat pejoratively referred to as side effects.
The term feedback shows its epistemological heritage in assuming that it feeds back to something that has undergone
nothing more than a change in position. Given that assumption, it is also assumed that such change is reversibleas in
negative feedback. This view ignores the recursive evolution that occurs in most systems. Even old Heraclitus"You can
never step in the same river twice"knew that change was irreversible. The essence of the problem with "feedback" is that
feedback affects the entire system, not just the target variable. Accordingly,what is fed back may "cause" the target
variable to remain constant and, at the same time, may "cause" the system as a whole to evolve!
The last point, of course, is a bit startling and difficult to grasp at first because we usually attend to similarities and
constancies (upon which we confer the status of "thinghood") while concomitantly we usually ignore differences and
changes (20). We tend to focus on the "feedback" and the constancy of the target variable while ignoring the changes
elsewhere in the system. Whenever a constancy is introduced in one aspect of a system, the rest of the system will change to
accommodate that constancy. For example, an alcoholic or a heroin addict introduces certain constancies into his or her
physiology by keeping constant the level of the drug in his or her system. As a result, the rest of the addict's physiology
adjusts to come in line with the constancy. The longer the constancy is maintained, the more the rest of the systemshifts. In
other words, the "feedback," which "maintains" the target variable constant, "causes" the system as a whole to evolve. Thus,
at the level of the system, all "feedback" is evolutionary. 8

The Fallacy of Resistance

Homeostasis is founded on two notions: (a) the concept of a coherently organized system, and (b) the idea of that system
maintaining itself (i.e., the status quo) by resisting change. Of those two notions, the former is sound, the latter is not. In
fact, it is an epistemological error. The idea of a homeostatic maintenance is doubly dualistic because if something is being
maintained, then (a) there must be something that is doing the maintaining (of the rest of itself), and (b) there must be
another something that is being resisted.
The problem with the question of how and why a system "resists change" lies in the assumption underlying the question
itselfnamely, that the system does indeed "resist." The system does not resist; it only behaves in accordance with its own
organized coherence. It appears to resist for three reasons: (a) our Lamarckian misreading of the relationship between the
system and its environment; (b) our failure to see the wider system (i.e., system/environment); and (c) our inability to
accept the fact that systems are mechanistic.

Homeostasis as Modern Lamarckism

The starting point for thinking about any living system is that the system seems to be adapted to its environment. That is,
the system seems to resist the environment by responding with behaviors that successfully "fight off" all environmental
input. In fact, however, the system is not re-sisting; it is ex-isting (in the only way that its organization allows). The fact that
the system continues to exist (essentially unchanged) does not mean that it is "resisting" change; it simply means that the
system fits its environment. That is, thus far in the history of the system, its environmental input (including previous and
current therapy) has contained nothing that is disruptive to the system's organization. If the system had experienced
disruptive input, then it would have disintegrated (or reorganized into a different system).
In the case of the human body, for example, it must be remembered that its organized coherence (as a living system) is
the product of natural selection in the face of environmental context. Species do not resist the environment; they either
survive or they do not. Species, or members of species, whose organization is better suited to the environment, survive (and
pass on their genes to future generations). To believe otherwise is Lamarckism.9 Curiously, the belief that systems
(families, individuals, groups, biological organisms, etc.) homeostatically resist the environment is a latter-day form of
Lamarckism. That is, the doctrine of Lamarckism and the concept of homeostasis suffer from the same fundamental error.
Both ignore the existing organization of the system and assume that the environment can somehow cause the system to be

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other than what it is. Lamarck believed that the environment could cause individuals (and, thereby, the species) to change.
Homeostasis implies that the environment should cause a system to change. That is, the need for a concept of homeostasis
only makes sense in the context of an implicit belief that environment should (and usually does) cause systems (and other
objects) to change. Thus, when the system does not change, the phenomenon of staying the same must be explainedvia
the concept of homeostasis.
That, in fact, is the error that underlies almost all Western thinking about causality. The environment can never cause a
system to do something that it (the system) is not already capable of doing. Any given system (i.e., individual, family,
species gene pool, etc.) can only behave in accordance with its own organizationno matter what noxious or powerful
stimuli the environment throws at it (39, 40, 42). The system neither resists nor is controlled by such stimuli; it just goes on
being itself.

Not Seeing the Wider System

This matter of a system appearing to resist change can also be approached from a more inclusive perspective. That is, the
nature of the system's "adaptation" to its environment (i.e., the fact that it fits its environment and seems to resist change) is
such that the system has become one with its environment. Thus the "environment's" "inputs" are not inputs but are internal
to the functioning and organization of the system/environment. That is the second reason that a system appears to resist. If
an observer punctuates the system/environment as separate from one another, then he or she must inevitably interpret the
"environment" as proposing change for which the system compensatesthus seeming to be homeostatic. On the other
hand, were the observer to see the system/environment as one, he or she would only see a system fluctuating through the
domain of its coherence; he or she would see a system being itself. Similarly, and perhaps more radically, if the observer
were to consider a therapy patient in terms of the patient's particular coherence, then the observer would not see a patient
resisting change, but one who is simply being himself or herself. What could make it more apparent that the task of therapy
is not to change the patient, but to help him or her become nonsymptomatic in the ways available to his or her particular
systemic coherence?

Refusal to Accept Mechanism

The third reason that systems appear to resist change is our persistent failure to appreciate that systems are mechanistic.
Every system (person, family, institution, etc.) has its own organization, its own coherent identity (59, 60), that fully
specifies how the system will behave in any and every situation. The system has no choice; it always functions in the way
that it is organized to function. It never functions in a way that it is not organized to function. The system is what it is.
Period.
That truth is the foundation of the reality principle: Things are what they are, not what we want or expect. Werner Erhard
(est) is right: "What is is; what ain't ain't." This epistemological truth is profoundly difficult for people to accepttherapists
included. The sad fact is that very few of us successfully master the reality principle and fully surrender the pleasure
principle. To a greater or lesser degree, most of us want things to be what we want them to be, and we become upset when
our expectations are not fulfilled. Bowen's (17) concept of differentiation demonstrates the central role that the reality
principle plays in mental health. The hallmark of the undifferentiated person is that he or she can neither tolerate nor accept
others being different from what he or she thinks or expects that they should be.
Such epistemological error (i.e., the refusal to accept what is) is related in several ways to a system's appearing to resist
change. First, if we expect a patient to act a certain way and cannot accept that she or he acts otherwise, then we have made
an epistemological error and created "resistance." That error is far more common than therapists would like to admit. The
so-called "resistant patient" is usually defined by his or her obnoxious unwillingness to cooperate with treatment. That
patient, however, is not resistant; the patient is simply being who she or he is. Erickson (24) long ago pointed out that the
epithet, "resistant patient,"amounts to nothing more than the therapist's declaration that he or she will allow his or her
patients to have some symptoms, but not others (i.e., obnoxious uncooperativeness). Note also that the patient is not
obnoxious; the patient is just being who he or she is. What we find obnoxious is the fact that the patient is not as we want
him or her to be.
Another closely related way that therapists create "resistance" is to expect a patient's particular reponse to a therapeutic
intervention. When the therapist's expectation is not borne out, the therapist has two choices. The therapist can either
decide that his or her expectation was in error (i.e., that the patient is, in fact, different from the therapist's notion of him), or
the therapist can decide that the patient is resistant (i.e., the patient is obstinately defeating the treatment). A more subtle
way to commit this same epistemological error is to decide that the patient is "not ready for treatment." Such a judgment, of
course, is nonsense. It is not the treatment that determines how the patient will respond but the organization of the patient as
a system. It would be more accurate (and more honest) to say that the treatment is not yet ready for the patient.
The remaining way that a therapist can create "resistance" is to believe in control. To believe that one might control what

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happens is to aspire to the stature of the gods. This is overweening pride, the first of the seven cardinal sins. The error
inherent in the notion of control is the equation, "A causes B," or "A can make B happen." No one can ever cause
something to happen. Therapist's interventions do not cause a patient to change. The organization of the system (i.e.,
patient) determines what will happen, not the intervention. Put simply, man proposes, but the (organization of the) system
disposes.
In therapy, the organization of the system is the unalterable reality with which the therapist must contend. If that reality is
denied, the system will be "resistant."
Strategic therapists know that "resistant" patients can be changed by "going with the resistance." Nonsense. "Resistant"
patients are "changed" by going with the realitythat is, by the therapist's accepting that the system is what it is and by
behaving accordingly. In short, there is no such thing as resistance; there is only misunderstanding of reality or refusal to
accept reality.
That, in fact, is the defining characteristic of epistemological error: Epistemological error is the misunderstanding of, or
the outright refusal to accept, reality. The most destructive way to refuse to accept reality is to believe in the possibility of
control. Control licenses the use of power (in the pursuit of control). If, as stated above, A can never cause or control B,
then the use of power by A can only make matters worse. Power creates still greater "resistance," leads to righteousness,
hatred, and eventually chaos, if not carnage. One has only to watch what happens when parents "over"control their children
to see that that is so. Control wreaks havoc. The literature on deviance and its control attests to that.

Coherence
If I have argued my case adequately, it should now be apparent that homeostasis is a concept thatlike phlogiston,
Ptolemaic epicycles, and spontaneous generationmust now be relegated to the museum of compelling but erroneous
scientific ideas. Where does that leave us?
Of the two components of homeostasis (i.e., (a) the organized system, and (b) the system maintaining itself by resisting
change), only the concept of an organized coherent system remains viable. Moreover, not only is this concept viable, but,
properly understood, it is able to account more comprehensively for the same data that homeostasis had "explained." There
is, it seems to me, a definite need for a new term that means "organized coherent system." Such a new term would have two
related purposes. First, it should indicate or stand for the epistemologically altered meaning of "organized coherent system"
that this paper has struggled to convey. Second, a new term is needed in order to remind us that we have abandoned the
illusion of homeostasis. Without a new term, the compelling phenomena of apparent resistance and apparent homeostasis
will repeatedly seduce us into epistemological error. Certainly, the time has come for a term that does not lead clinical
thinking astray. Family therapy is already difficult enough.
The term that I suggest is a rather prosaic, neutral one: coherence. Coherence simply implies a congruent
interdependence in functioning whereby all the aspects of the system fit together. It would seem to be adequate for
describing the behavior of a system-being-itself without inadvertently implying anything more than that. Yet, because of the
epistemological freight that it carries, system-being-itself does indeed imply a great deal: much of family therapy theory and
its clinical application must be at least restated and perhaps rethought.

The Evolving Coherent System

One of the great shortcomings of the concept of homeostasis is its inability to explain systemic change. In an attempt to
remedy that shortcoming, theorists who believe in homeostasis have begun to indulge in dualisms that describe systems as
having both a tendency toward homeostasis or morphostasis (1, 56, 63) and a tendency toward change, transformation, or
morphogenesis (1, 56, 63). The concept of coherence is able to deal with systemic change without resorting to such
paradigm-protecting patchwork (36).
Every behavior (contrary to what the behaviorists would have us believe) is not an independent atom of an individual's
functioning but rather is embedded in his or her systemic coherence. Not only do all behaviors issue from the coherence,
but they recursively affect the coherence. To paraphrase Heraclitus once again, there is a sense in which the same system
cannot behave twicebecause in that very behaving it makes itself different! A system cannot behave without altering
itself. That is true even of machines. In living systems, each behavior participates in the continuing, recursive, first-order
evolution of the systemic coherence.10
If (for whatever reason) an individual repeatedly exhibits a particular behavior (or if he or she repeatedly is subjected to
a particular input from the environment), his or her coherence will (recursively) alter so that it becomes more coherent with
the behavior (or input) in question. Westerners typically do not understand this, whereas Easterners do (11). That is
particularly easy to see in skill acquisition (during which, of course, the individual repeatedly exhibits a particular
behavior). Westerners practice (e.g., playing an instrument, playing tennis, being observant, etc.) in order to acquire a skill.
The skill is understood as a tool for the self to use. In contrast, when Easterners practice something, they do it in order to

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change the self. They understand that following a discipline or practice changes the entire self rather than simply adding a
skill to the preexisting self.
Similarly, if a woman continues to jog, both her physique and her physiology will become coherent with her behavior. In
addition, even her social behavior and daily life will become coherent with her jogging. If a vigilant man continues to be
vigilant (for whatever reason), his cognitive style, social attitudes, and political beliefs will become coherent with his
increasingly paranoid behavior. Obviously, both "jogging coherence" and "paranoid coherence" have enormous
interpersonal consequences that will recursively feed back upon the individual and his or her evolving coherence. Thus,
there is coevolution of the individual's coherence and the coherence of the family network and other social systems to which
he or she belongs. The coevolving coherences of the individuals and of the larger system are a complementarity that can
neither be separated into its components nor reduced to one or the other.
This coevolution of coherences is a central phenomenon in all therapy. It is the process by which the individual or family
system "neutralizes" the therapist who is seeking to change it. That is, therapeutic input is defined by the fact that it has
impact upon the symptom and the coherence in which it is embedded. If the input no longer affects (or never did affect) the
coherence vis-a-vis the symptom, then it is no longer really input. When that happens, the therapist has become part of the
family system; the family and the therapist have coevolved a complementary coherence. Moreover, if a family stays in
therapy for long, that always happens. The only relevant question is whether the therapist is now part of a still dysfunctional
family system11 or whether it has changed and the therapist is now part of a nonsymptomatic family system.
Because the therapist becomes ineffective when he or she has coevolved a coherence with the family, it is clear that
therapy will be facilitated by any factors that hinder the appearance of that coherence. In order of increasing potency,
strategies that can retard or undo the coevolution of a complementary coherence are: (a) a one-shot consultation to the
therapy; (b) ongoing supervision; (c) cotherapy; (d) cotherapy with one of the therapists behind a one-way mirror; (e)
therapy (or cotherapy) with a team behind the mirror; and (f) infrequent therapy sessions. Finally, the matter of retarding or
undoing the formation of co-evolved therapist/family coherence is one way of resolving the debate as to whether family
therapists should be analyzed (or undergo family-of-origin therapy).
Whereas many family therapists claim that therapists need to be analyzed, strategic and systemic family therapists insist
that analysis is unnecessary. Strategic and systemic family therapists usually see families for few sessions and often use one
or more of the above-mentioned strategies for retarding or disrupting a coevolved coherence. Accordingly, they can claim
to have little need for personal analysis. On the other hand, therapists who use none of the above strategies and who
typically do long-term therapy are justifiably insistent about the importance of personal analysis for family therapists.
Analysis sensitizes a person to (and, it is hoped, dissipates) his or her areas of undifferentiation, emotional reactivity, and
tendencies to fuse into interaction patterns (i.e., coevolved coherence) with others. As such, analysis is the most important,
and perhaps the only, tool in long-term therapy to block and undo the crystallization of coevolved coherence that neutralizes
the therapist (and the therapy).

Coherence and Discontinuous Change

Many theorists in different fields have recently emphasized the importance of the phenomenon of discontinuous change:
catastrophe theory in mathematics (57), dissipative structures in chemistry (48), hierarchical reorganization in physics (47),
punctuated equilibria in biology (24), and transformations in human systems (23, 31, 49, 50, 52, 53). The question
therefore arises "What is the nature of discontinuous change of coherence?" What is second-order, discontinuous change of
coherence?
To answer the question, it is necessary to distinguish types of discontinuities. Most discontinuities are discontinuous only
from the viewpoint of an observer; they are not discontinuous in terms of the coherence in question. For example, when a
child contracts chicken pox, the observer will note a discontinuous change. Before, the child was healthy; now the child is
sick. There is not, however, a discontinuous change in the physiological coherence of the child. The child's physiological
coherence has the ability to suffer chicken pox (and a myriad of other disorders). Although such disorders may be
discontinuous departures from health, they are not discontinuities of coherence, but only a change of state in the ongoing
physiological coherence of the child. What would constitute a discontinuous change in physiological coherence? Death.
Any genuine discontinuity almost certainly will disrupt the organization of the coherence so as to end the ability of the
organism to continue living. In summary, then, we can say that disease states (and the return to a state of health) may be
discontinuous changes for an observer, but not for the physiological coherence of the organism. So much for physiology.
What about the behavioral coherence of an individual?
When a woman changes the way she lives, others often say, "You'd never know her; she's a different person!" Is she?
Does character change or personality change involve a discontinuous change in one's personal behavioral coherence, or is
such change only an evolution to a new state within an ongoing coherence? Similarly, it can be asked whether
psychotherapy helps individuals to evolve to a new state in their ongoing coherence, or whether it transforms them such that
they have a discontinuous change to a totally different coherence. The last question is less difficult than the others. Most of

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us would agree that psychotherapy serves only to help a person evolve his or her ongoing coherence rather than to
transform it in a discontinuous fashion. Unfortunately, that answer leaves untouched the basic question: Is it possible to
have a discontinuous change in one's behavioral coherence?
In what is perhaps the best existing epistemological treatment of personality, Bateson (6) proposes the concept of
Learning II. Learning II (which Bateson equates with personality) is "a way of punctuating events" (6, p. 300) such that "'I
am my habits of acting in context and shaping and perceiving the contexts in which I act" (6, p. 304). In other words,
Learning II is a pattern of behaviors and premises that has a perfect, complementary fit to the individual's environmentas
he has experienced (and made) it. Bateson clearly sees personality as a coherent pattern that, he notes, is highly resistant to
change. If the individual does change, he or she may replace one pattern of Learning II with another; alternately, he or she
may "achieve" (6, p. 306) Learning IIIa somewhat mystical state in which the individual's sense of self becomes
irrelevant to his or her experience because the individual merges with the whole (of his or her world).
Nowhere, however, does Bateson speak directly to the issue of whether personality change is an evolution or a
discontinuous change. One could argue perhaps that the leap from Learning II to Learning III must be a discontinuous
change of coherence because it represents such a profound shift. Nevertheless, I prefer to think that Bateson would insist
that we look for the "pattern which connects" (12, p. 8)that is, the overarching coherence of the person. Put simply, a
man may evolve, but how could he truly get beyond himself? After all, the possibilities for future evolution of coherence are
always made ready (and can only be made ready) by what has gone before. The newly evolved coherence must always be
founded on the old.
Ultimately, behavioral coherence must surely be bounded by the coherence that defines the species to which the
organism belongs. That is, behavior begins at birth with the reflexes and early schemata (46) that evolve into the full
complexity of adulthood, but these can never get beyond the bounds of the species coherence. Thus, to break the coherence
is, once again, to bring about death. Thus, it seems that personality change can only be a hermeneutic evolution. Any
apparent discontinuity would exist only from the vantage point of an observer; it would not be an actual transformation or
discontinuous change of the behavioral coherence.12
If neither physiological "change" nor personality "change" is an actual discontinuous change of coherence, do such
discontinuous tranformations really exist? They do. All multi-individual interactional systems are capable of true
discontinuous change: families, groups, friends, neighborhoods, interaction among animals, and so on. These systems can
undergo discontinuous change because coherence as an interactional system is fundamentally different from the
coherence that constitutes the individual living members who constitute that system. That is, we have shown that
disruption of the physiological or behavioral coherence of a living system results in deathno more system. Disruption of
the coherence of an interactional system will also result in death (of that system), but almost certainly there will ensue a
knitting together that forms a new system with a truly new coherence. The knitting together is what Bateson has called the
self-healing tautology (12). Human assaults on the environment, for example, may violate the coherence of the local
ecosystem, but the ecosystem will heal itself into a new tautologyalbeit one that we may find undesirable.
Maturana (40, 42) describes such interactional systems in terms of a reciprocal structural coupling in which the history
of behaviors of the members of the system-to-be culminates in a stable, organizationally closed (59, 60) system.
Organizational closure is attained when circularity is achieved: the behaviors of some members (A) become the trigger for
behaviors of others (B), which become the trigger for ... which eventually recursively loop back to trigger the behaviors of
A. In other words, the individuals have formed an organized system.
The implications of structural coupling are important. First, the behavioral coherence of each individual member is
primary, whereas the higher-order coherence of the interactional system (the reciprocal structural coupling) is
secondary. The coherence of the reciprocal structural coupling can be discontinuously transformed; the behavioral
coherence of individual members cannot be transformed. Second, there is a complementarity and coevolution that takes
place among the behavioral coherences of the individuals and between them and the higher-order coherence of the system
as a whole. The higher-order coherence of the system does not determine, control, or homeostatically maintain the
behavioral coherence of each of the members of the system. The members just fit together. Yet, even in the most highly
organized system (with the most "rigid" circularities of interaction), the behavioral coherence of each individual member
has the potential for behaviors that can discontinuously transform the coherence of the system as a whole. It is that
potential, of course, that the family therapist is trying to catalyze.
To achieve the transformation, the family therapist must trigger system-transforming behaviors from individual family
members. That is the third implication of structural coupling: In order to be successful in triggering system-transforming
behaviors, the family therapist obviously must use behaviors (i.e., interventions) that differ from those already being used
within the system (23). Obviously, behaviors already being used do not have the ability to promote system-transforming
behaviors in others. Fourth, and most important, the behavioral coherence of each family member specifies those
interventions that will trigger behaviors (in him or her) that may transform the system. The individual's behavioral

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coherence is the lockand the therapist's interventions are the keys. It does not matter how many jeweled, ornately
scrolled, gold, silver, and platinum intricate keys the therapist has. It is always the lock that determines which keys will
work. There is no Truth (i.e., One True Key). There is no Causality (i.e., the key that makes the lock open). There is only
Fit (i.e., those keys that are complementary to the lock).

Coherence and Pathology

Family therapists' fondness for the concept of homeostasis probably stems from the fact that it has been a helpful way of
talking about pathologypathology of people in systems and pathology of systems. After all, every clinician knows that
pathological systems are marked by "rigid homeostatic redundancies." They "resist" change. They are "pathological." The
problem with that view is that all systems are redundant. All systems "resist" change. All systems are "homeostatic." Family
therapists have, in fact, been uncomfortably aware of this and have been forced into paradigm-protecting maneuvers such
as claiming that some systems are too homeostatic (i.e., pathological) and others are less homeostatic (i.e., normal).
Systems that are "too homeostatic" differ from normal systems in that they are too redundant and have a narrow repertoire
of steady states. Most important, however, such systemsmust have somethinghomeostasis, negative feedback, family
rules, or whateverthat controls the system and constrains its functioning to the rigid pathological cycling that maintains
the status quo to the general detriment of everyone, especially the patient.
Why "must" there be something (i.e., homeostasis) that maintains the status quo? Well, because of the second law of
thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics says that, over time, everything turns to entropy. All structure
degrades into disorder. Even mountains wear down. There are more ways for things to get in a muddle than for things to be
in order; therefore, things tend to get in a muddlethat is, become entropic (7). It takes energy (i.e., negentropy, 51) to
maintain structure. Without energy, living systems run down, die, deteriorate, lose their structure, and return to unordered
entropy. Therefore, if a family system remains rigidly the same, does not change or wear down, is highly structured and
negentropic, theremust be something (i.e., homeostasis) that is investing enormous energy in controlling and maintaining
things the same.
The argument of the preceding paragraph is scattered throughout the family therapy literature, especially in those books
and articles that have tried to be the most theoretically rigorous and sophisticated. The argument is totally wrong. The
second law of thermodynamics is not wrong, but it is totally wrong to apply it to the world of coherence. Bateson (10) was
certainly aware of this. His distinction between Pleroma and Creatura (10, 12) precisely differentiates between the world
of thermodynamics and the world of coherence. Pleroma is the world of physics: mass, inertia, velocity, energy,
thermodynamics. Creatura is the world of the living: pattern, difference, relationship, information.
In the world of thermodynamics, energy and structured order are essentially synonymous. The Second Law says that all
energy and structured order tend to run down. In the world of coherent interactional systems, on the other hand, the notion
of energy is irrelevant, but structured order is the essence of coherence. In this world, a new Second Law says that order
tends to build up! Makridakis has suggested a Second Law of Systems, which maintains that "things tend to become more
and more orderly if they are left to themselves" (38, p. 1). That, in fact, is what organizational closure, structural coupling,
and the self-healing tautology are all about: in living interactional systems, order spontaneously arises. Maturana (40, 42)
shows that, left together for any period of time, two systems will become structurally coupled; they will coevolve a
coherence. Bateson, for example, described the development of patterns of interaction between his dog and pet gibbon as
an "evolution of fitting together" (12, p. 138). He noted that "the system of dog-gibbon has become simplermore
internally integrated and consistent" (12, p. 138). In other words, the dog and gibbon had become structurally coupled.
Bateson, of course, would describe that phenomenon in terms of the self-healing tautology:

My opinion is that the Creatura, the world of mental process, is both tautological and ecological. I mean that it is
a slowly self-healing tautology. Left to itself, any large piece of Creatura will tend to settle toward tautology, that is,
toward internal consistency of ideas and processes.[12, p. 206]

The implication of this is that homeostasis is a superfluous concept. The coherence of interactional systems needs no
explanation other than that the coherence is a natural, spontaneous phenomenon that arises when living organisms spend
time together. Homeostasis is not needed to explain the "force" or "principle" that holds together the interactional
coherence. The interactional coherence is a coevolved coupling whose possibility of being realized is immanent in the
various potential correlations and complementaries of the respective behavioral coherences of the organisms involved.
If coherence does everything (and more) that homeostasis was previously reputed to accomplish, and if coherence is
another way of saying "the system," then, in a sense, homeostasis (whatever the concept still means after being so battered
in these pages) is now equated with "the system." That (to devotees of homeostasis) is a highly unsatisfactory state of
affairs. If homeostasis is the same as "the system," then homeostasis no longer means anything and has no raison d'être.
Exactly. The concept is no longer needed.

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Which returns us to the matter of pathology. Obviously, there is a difference between the coherence of supposedly
normal families and the coherence of those families that family therapists have been most wont to call "homeostatic" or
"pathological." What possible contribution can the notion of coherence make to our understanding and conceptualization of
such "rigidly, pathological families?" The answer to that question is ironic. Those readers who are most comfortable with
the epistemological gutting of homeostasis that has taken place in this article will probably be those who are most
discomforted by the implications of the concept of coherence for understanding pathology.
If interactional coherence arises out of the possibilities for structural coupling that are immanent in the behavioral
coherences of the members of the system-to-be, then ultimately (as noted above), the behavioral coherence of each
individual is primary, and the emergent structural coupling is secondary. In other words, the interactional system is a
consequence of the nature (i.e., the behavioral coherence) of the individuals who compose it. Therefore, if an interactional
system is one that we would previously call "rigidly homeostatic," then the source of the "rigid homeostasis" is in the
individuals who compose the system. The coherence of the respective individuals in the system is such that they behave in
ways that constitute a structural coupling or interactional coherence that we used to call "rigidly homeostatic." Once again,
this so-called "rigid homeostasis" is just another structural coupling, just another interactional coherence. It arises out of the
individuals in the system, and nothing is requiredsuch as "homeostatic mechanisms" or "family rules"to make it be (or
stay) the way it is. It is the way it is because that is the way those individuals fit together.
This article cannot explore pathology in detail. The matter of pathology is a separate undertaking that should culminate in
something I think is badly needed by the mental health fielda clinical epistemology. One major point, however, can be
briefly sketched. "Rigid" pathological systems are founded on the behavioral coherence of the respective individuals who
constitute those systems. What is it about those individuals that results in such systemic pathology? The answer is that they
frequentlymuch too frequentlycommit epistemological errors upon themselves and others.
There are only two fundamental epistemiological errors. One is passive and the other is active. The passive error is to
refuse to accept reality. That is a violation of the reality principle. "What is is; what ain't ain't." Denying what is or getting
mad about what is and insisting that it should be otherwise than what happened is an epistemological error. Erhard Seminar
Training (est) derives much of its power from its success in driving this point home.
The active epistemological error is to try to control others and make them be what you want. That is an error because
people (and all other organisms) are what Maturana calls structure-determined (40). That means that individuals always
behave out of their coherence; they can behave in no other way. Control is impossible. Their coherence determines how
they will behave, and no amount of determined attempts to control them can ever change that fact. Moreover, an
individual's coherence specifies his reaction to the other's attempts to control him. The coherence will, in most cases,
"respond" in a different way than was intended by the attempt to control. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot
make it drink. Each successive attempt to make the horse drink results in the coherence (which is the horse) doing whatever
it does under that particular perturbation. The coherence always determines. The best that can be achieved is for the owner
of the horse to discover the perturbation to which the coherence (which is the horse) "responds" with drinking behavior.
Pathological families are full of individuals who repeatedly and determinedly inflict those epistemological errors on
themselves and those around them. Because epistemological errors almost always preclude the outcome that they were
designed to attain, those individuals are forced to keep tryingover and over. Accordingly, those families develop a highly
redundant systemic coherence (i.e., "homeostatic rigidity"). Their attempts to control (themselves and) each other succeed
often enough by chance to keep them going. So they keep trying to resist reality and trying to control, and trying to resist
reality, and trying to control, and trying, and trying, and trying, and trying. ... No wonder those families have such rigidly
sterotyped patterns of interaction.

Postscript: Epistemological Leitmotiv

Bateson (9) once suggested that all scientific data are organized in one of two waysaccording to scientific
fundamentals or according to "imperfectly defined explanatory notions" (9, p. xviii). Scientific fundamentals are of two
kinds: (a) tautological (e.g., arithmetic and Euclidian geometry), and (b) major scientific truths (e.g., the laws of
conservation of mass and energy, the second law of thermodynamics, etc.) "Imperfectly defined explanatory notions,"
Bateson noted, are commonly used in the behavioral sciences. Examples of such explanatory notions are: ego, anxiety,
instinct, self, intelligence, maturity, introversion, locus of control, and so on. Such notions, Bateson says tartly, "are so
loosely derived and so mutually irrelevant that they mix together to make a sort of conceptual fog which does much to delay
the progress of science" (9, p. xviii).
The scientific fundamentals are important because we understand the phenomena of the world in terms of them. That is,
explanation of events is achieved by mapping data onto the fundamentals. Thus, the success of the hard sciences is owing
to, and can be measured in terms of, their steadily increasing list of fundamentals. In contrast, Bateson insists that little
understanding can be achieved by mapping data onto imperfectly defined explanatory notions. He believes that the primary
deterrent to significant progress in the behavioral sciences has been their continuing fascination with those explanatory

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notions. Bateson claims that, as a direct consequence of that "fascination," the behavioral sciences have produced "scarcely
a single principle worthy of a place in the list of fundamentals" (9, p. xix).
That is what "Beyond Homeostasis" is all about. Homeostasis is an imperfectly defined explanatory notion. In fact, the
family therapy field is awash with such notions: family rules, resistance, therapeutic paradox, undifferentiated family ego
mass, hierarchy, negative feedback, perverse triangle, and so on. All of those are imperfectly defined explanatory notions
that hang in the air. There is a desperate need for some fundamentals that can begin to explain the data of family interaction,
psychopathology, and therapeutic intervention. This paper is an attempt to provide one such fundamental.
The concept of coherence is not another imperfectly defined explanatory notion. In Bateson's terms, it is, perhaps, a
perfectly defined explanatory notion. That is, unlike the imperfectly defined explanatory notions, coherence is derived
directly from a fundamental. What is that fundamental? Broadly, it is the epistemology that this paper has struggled to lay
out. Specifically, it is Maturana's concept of the structure-determined system. What I am suggesting is that both the
universe as a whole and all of its bits and pieces are structure-determined. The concept of the structure-determined system
is the fundamental that "bridges" both Pleroma and Creatura, both the quantitative world of physics and the qualitative
world of pattern and order. What does that mean? It means that, if the universe is a structure-determined system, then both
the fundamentals of Pleroma and the fundamentals of Creature should be immanent in that system. That is, both the
fundamentals of the hard sciences and the fundamentals of relationship, order, and pattern should be immanent in a
structure-determined universe. There is, in fact, some indirect support for this.
The two fundamental epistemological truths (which correspond to the two fundamental epistemological errors presented
earlier in this paper) are inherent in the structure-determined system. The two truths are: (a) What is is; and (b) The
structure of the system fully specifies how the system can and will behave in every possible situation. The second truth is, in
fact, a definition of what structure-determined means. The first truth is both an ontological comment upon, as well as a
consequence of, the second truth. The ontological comment is about what isnamely, that the universe is
structure-determined. The consequence is thatwhatever isin any and every specific situationfollows from the fact that
everything is structure-determined.
In closing, there are two final points that must be made. First, coherence is similar to, but not equivalent to, Maturana's
concept of the structure-determined system. Properly understood, Maturana's concept is all-inclusive of the universe and its
concepts (living and nonliving), whereas coherence applies only to organizationally closed living systems. Second, unlike
homeostasis, coherence is firmly grounded in its own epistemology; it is a (much more) perfectly defined explanatory
notion. The epistemology in which it is grounded is most familiar to family therapists as represented in the writings of
Gregory Bateson; it is most purely and unswervingly defined in the writings of Humberto Maturana. Coherence, therefore,
is not just another heuristic concept; it is inseparable from its epistemological ground.

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23. Dell, P. F. and Goolishian, H. A., "Ordnung durch Fluktuation': Eine evolutionäre Epistemology für menschliche
Systeme," Familiendynamik, 6, 104-122, 1981.
24. Erickson, M., "An Hypnotic Technique for Resistant Patients: The Patient, the Technique and its Rationale and
Field Experiments," Am. J. Clin. Hypnosis, 1, 8-32, 1964.
25. Fromm-Reichmann, F., "Notes on the Development of Treatment of Schizophrenics by Psychoanalytical
Psychotherapy," Psychiatry, 11, 263-273, 1948.
26. Gould, S. J. and Eldredge, N., "Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered,"
Paleobiology, 3, 115-151, 1977.
27. Greenberg, G. S., "The Family Interactional Perspective: A study and Examination of the Work of Don D.
Jackson," Fam. Proc., 16, 385-412, 1977.
28. Haley, J., "Family Experiments: A New Type of Experimentation," Fam. Proc., 1, 265-293, 1972.
29. Hoffman, L., "Enmeshment' and the Too Richly Cross-Joined System," Fam. Proc., 24, 457-468, 1975.
30. Hoffman, L., "Breaking the Homeostatic Cycle," in P. Guerin, Jr. (ed.), Family Therapy: Theory and Practice,
New York, Gardiner Press, 1976.
31. Hoffman, L., "The Family Life Cycle and Discontinuous Change," in E. A. Carter and M. McGoldrick (eds.), The
Family Life Cycle: A Framework for Family Therapy, New York, Gardner Press, 1980.
32. Jackson, D. D., "The Question of Family Homeostasis," Psychiat. Quart. Suppl., 31, 79-90, 1957.
33. Jackson, D. D., "The Study of the Family," Fam. Proc., 4, 1-20, 1965.
34. Jackson, D. D., "Family Rules: The Marital Quid Pro Quo," Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 12, 589-594, 1965.
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Results," Psychiatry, 24, 30-45, 1961.
36. Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1962.
37. Lidz, T., Cornelision, A., Terry, D. and Fleck, S., "Intrafamilial Environment of the Schizophrenic Patient: VI. The
Transmission of Irrationality," A.M.A. Arch. Neurol. Psychiat., 79, 305-316, 1958.
38. Makridakis, S., "The Second Law of Systems," Int. J. Gen. Sys., 4, 1-12, 1977.
39. Maturana, H. R., "Strategies Cognitives," in E. Morin and M. Piattelli-Palmarini (eds.), L'Unite de L'Homme,
Paris, Du Seui l, 1974.
40. Maturana, H. R., "Biology of Language: The Epistemology of Reality," in G. A. Miller and E. Lenneberg (eds.),
Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought, New York, Academic Press, 1978.
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Association for the Advancement of Science, Houston, Texas, 1979.
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Reidel, 1980.
43. Maxwell, J. C., Theory of Heat, London, Longmans, Green, 1871.
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& Stratton, 1976.
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Aronson, 1978.

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53. Selvini-Palazzoli, M., Boscolo, L., Cecchin, G. and Prata, G., "The Problem of the Referring Person," J. Mar.
Fam. Ther., 6, 3-9, 1980.
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Using Projective Techniques," Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 12, 187-200, 1965.
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Gen. Psychiat., 12, 201-212, 1965.
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259-278, 1970.
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Progress in Cybernetics and Systems Research, New York, Halsted, 1978.
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1To most family therapists, the distinction between fit and causation will appear to be identical to the distinction between circular

and linear causality. The two dichotomies seem identical, yet they are profoundly different. Whereas the dichotomy of fit and
causation distinguishes fit from causation, the dichotomy of circular and linear causation distinguishes only between types of
causation. The problem with the latter dichotomy is that the concept of causation is an epistemological error. All causal accounts
of phenomena are fundamentally flawed and erroneous. Because the shortcomings of the notion of causation are more apparent in
circular situations than in linear situations, theorists have been led to believe that the crucial distinction lies between circular and
linear causation. It does not. The crucial distinction is between causal accounts of phenomena and what Maturana (40) calls
"structure-determined" accounts of phenomena.

2Although "The Question of Family Homeostasis" was published in 1957 and "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia" was
published in 1956, Jackson's writing of "The Question of Family Homeostasis" actually predated his joining Bateson's research
group. In fact, Bateson invited Jackson to be a member of the team because of the ideas contained in "The Question of Family
Homeostasis." (I am indebted to Carlos Sluzki for the foregoing historical information.)

3Maxwell's Demon is a mythical being with the ability to violate the second law of thermodynamics (43). The temperature of a

volume of gas is the mean of the velocities of the individual gas molecules. The more high-velocity molecules, the higher the
temperature. Conversely, the more low-velocity molecules, the lower the temperature. Maxwell's Demon is able, without
expenditure of work, to raise the temperature of the gas in one compartment and lower the temperature of gas in an adjoining
compartment. He accomplishes that impossible feat by opening and closing a small hole between the two compartments so as to
allow only the high-velocity molecules to pass from compartment A to Compartment B and only the low-velocity molecules to pass
from Compartment B to Compartment A. Thus, Maxwell's Demon purports to be able to accomplish work without doing any work.
In short, something for nothing. Homeostatic mechanisms, self-regulation, and the prescriptive notion of family rules are equivalent
to Maxwell's Demonthey supposedly accomplish work (i.e., regulation) without any work (regulation) being expended to regulate
the regulator. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? (Loosely, "Who shall regulate the regulator?")

4Selvini-Palazzoli (personal communication) says that she and her colleagues do not actually believe that family members
sacrifice themselves for one another. Rather, she and her colleagues talk to families about sacrifice because it is an effective
therapeutic intervention.

5Family therapy's preference for viewing homeostasis in terms of a particular stability is emphasized by the frequency with which
it is likened to a thermostat that maintains a fixed temperature.

6The reader is warned that this discussion of feedback is awkward and difficult to follow. The fault lies not with the reader nor
with the clarity of the account, but with the concept of feedback itself. Feedback, at first, appears quite real and objective. Closer
study, however, reveals it to be epistemological sleight-of-hand. It is a descriptive artifact that leads one in mind-twisting circles if it
is taken too seriously.

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7A sophisticated systems thinker would say, "No, I do not think that. I realize that the negative feedback affects not only the
target variable but the rest of the system as well." Nevertheless, this more sophisticated view still leaves untouched the problem of
the onto-logical status of (negative) feedback. Namely, all feedback exists as such only by virtue of a descriptive distinction made
by an observer. "Feedback" is not actually operative in the system. What does exist is a unitary coherent system that is fluctuating
within the domain of its operation. The observer, from his or her own (unavoidably) subjective perspective, correlates the behavior
of one part of the system with another part of the system. This correlation the observer calls "feedback." The fact that there is a
highly regular correlation between the behavior of these two parts of the system does not mean that feedback is causing or
constraining anything. It simply means that the observer is creating a correlation by choosing to observe these two parts of the
system (39). As for the system itself, it functions as a whole coherent pattern. It, as a whole, is its own "constraint" or "causation."

8The contention that all "feedback" is evolutionary at the level of the system is said more simply by Maturana (40): A system

does not undergo trivial interactions. That is, every interaction that a system undergoes, no matter how trivial, is still significant.
Every interaction leaves its mark on the system. To paraphrase Heraclitus, you cannot interact with the same system twice.

9Lamarckism is the pre-Darwinian belief that environmental changes cause animals and plants to undergo structural changes that
may be inherited by successive generations.

10Piaget was referring to this same first-order, recursive evolution when he noted that the (organization of the) organism
accommodates to itself via the reciprocal assimilation of schemata (46).

11The situation of the therapist becoming part of a (still) symptomatic family system used to be described as "the therapist being
regulated by the system." We can now see the arbitrariness of that punctuation. If the therapist is part of the system, he or she is not
dualistically regulated by it; he or she simply participates in a coevolved coherence.

12An interesting point in this regard is that the observer may observe himself or herself and experience a discontinuous change.

Since the ego is but a piece of the individual's coherence, it may be that the ego can undergo discontinuous change, whereas the
behavioral coherence as a whole cannot. I am indebted to Sue Crommelin for pointing that out to me.

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