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Fam Proc 21:153-168, 1982

What Is an Epistemology of Family Therapy?

BRADFORD P. KEENEY, PH.D.a
aDirector of Research, Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy, 149 East 78th Street New York, N.Y. 10021.
"Draw a distinction!"

Therapist: How does one begin to explain what epistemology means in the field of family therapy?
Historian: Perhaps we should start by acknowledging that the term "epistemology" is being used more and more by
family therapists. That ensures that there will be diverse explanations of its meaning and that confusion
and disagreement over its "proper identity" will multiply. Nevertheless, it may be possible for us to take a
historical view and see how the term came into the field. An understanding of its historical origins may
help us connect a larger tradition to family therapy.
Therapist: Many of us are aware that Gregory Bateson referred to his work as epistemology and that he often called
himself an epistemologist. Should we give credit (or blame) to Bateson for bringing the term to our field?
Historian: It is correct that Gregory Bateson, more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing the term
"epistemology" to family therapy, as well as to other disciplines of biology and social science. It is
important, however, to realize that Bateson did not invent the term nor did he really use it in an
idiosyncratic way. Gregory Bateson was part of a tradition of epistemologists.
Therapist: That is confusing to me. My academic experience with philosophy courses provided a definition of
epistemology that roughly had to do with theories of knowledge specifying the limits and validity of what
we can formally know. My reading of Bateson does not clearly indicate a connection with this specialized
area in philosophy. What do you mean when you say that Bateson was part of a historical tradition?
Historian: Outside of the philosopher's den, another tradition of epistemology was born. These epistemologists
asked questions such as, "How do we perceive color?" and "What does the frog's eye tell the frog's
brain?" Answering these questions required a neurophysiological laboratory. Although
neurophysiologists have been around for quite some time, it wasn't until the middle part of this century
that the discipline was named "experimental epistemology." Warren S. McCulloch, an MIT scientist,
came up with that term and proposed that experimental epistemology was concerned with studying the
"embodiment of mind."
Therapist: But how do we get from McCulloch to Bateson to family therapy? What do frogs' brains have to do with
family interventions?
Historian: To answer you properly, several bits of information are needed in our discussion. First of all, you should
note that during the 1930s and 40s, different types of scholars were studying what McCulloch called the
"embodiment of mind." McCulloch and his colleagues were looking at how neurons are organized, Piaget
was examining how children organize processes of knowing, and Gregory Bateson was in New Guinea
pondering how ritualized behavior is organized in social interaction. These scholars, and others, began to
recognize that the organization of events, whether neurological, psychological, behavioral, or social,
could only be understood in terms of information, rather than energy or matter.
Therapist: That's beginning to sound a lot like Bateson, who always drew a distinction between the world of
information and the world of physics.
Historian: Yes. The most important point at this time in our discussion is to realize that many of those who were
studying the world of information, (i.e., pattern, form, and organization underlying any aggregate of
phenomena) began to recognize each other's work in the 1940s. At that time a series of meetings were
held in New York City under the auspices of the Josiah Macy Foundation to discuss this intellectual
awakening. It was Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, who proposed the term "cybernetics" to name the
new kind of thinking they had come up with. At that time a new science was born that provided an
alternative world view. Cybernetics, the science of information, pattern, form, and organization, was
marked as distinct from physics, the science of matter and energy.
Therapist: What does cybernetics have to do with epistemology?
Historian: The distinction between cybernetics and physics is in fact a difference between epistemologies.
Cybernetic epistemology indicates a way of discerning and knowing patterns that organize events, for
example, the sequences of action in a family episode, whereas Newtonian epistemology is concerned with
knowing the nature of billiard balls and the forces that operate on them. What differentiates the work of
Wiener, McCulloch, and Bateson is that they all jump from the paradigm of things to the paradigm of

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pattern.
Therapist: Are you implying that a therapist's epistemological menu card only provides a choice between a
cybernetic and Newtonian epistemology? What about all those other names I read about, such as
ecosystemic, general systems, nonlineal, and circular epistemologies?
Historian: The difference that makes the most profound difference in epistemology is indicated by moving from
substance to form, or from physics to cybernetics. What I am saying is that the distinction between
cybernetics and physics is the biggest difference one can draw when talking about epistemology. It is no
accident that Bateson repeatedly stated that "cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2,000 years" (1, p. 476). Cybernetics is the alternative
epistemology to conventional ways of knowing. It leads us to a world of form and pattern that is not
concerned with materiality. It is an invisible world, analogous to a Japanese landscape in which patterns
rather than delimited objects are primary.
Therapist: But what about those other terms I mentioned?
Historian: A "systems," "nonlineal," "ecological," "circular" epistemology may or may not signify a cybernetic
epistemology. In family therapy, for example, a "systems epistemology" is often used only to indicate a
holistic view, e.g., working with families rather than individuals. General system theory, 1 which got its
official baptism from von Bertalanffy's work, must be differentiated from cybernetics. Although
Bertalanffy wanted us to believe that general system theory subsumed cybernetics (and just about every
other discipline), we must remember that cybernetics is principally concerned with changing our
conceptual lens from substance to form, rather than parts to wholes. In the world of cybernetics, both
parts and wholes are examined in terms of their patterns of organization.
I propose to you that the term epistemology is often abused. Perhaps it is useful for you to think about
why people even use the term. For the most part, the term epistemology is invoked when someone wants
to differentiate a general orientation, world view, or universe of experience. That is, of course, similar to
the way in which Kuhn's term "paradigm" has been useful. Recall how humanistic pyschologists referred
to a "holistic paradigm" as differentiated from a "reductionistic paradigm." My point is that the terms
"paradigm" and "epistemology" often get kicked around in the same way.
I should warn you, however, that for Bateson and the tradition of which he was a part, epistemologies are
most basically differentiated in terms of form and substance, organization and matter, or as the
cyberneticians sometimes phrase it, bits and watts. Seeing wholes rather than parts, or families rather
than individuals, has little to do with these distinctions. Similarly, nonlineal or circular causality versus
lineal causality does not represent the major epistemological difference. The cybernetician's criterion of
distinction centers around whether one is in a descriptive universe that utilizes metaphors of matter,
force, and energy or one based on the metaphors of pattern, form, information, and organization.
Therapist: Most family therapists who use the term "epistemology" seem to be referring to a systems orientation or
an ecological view, rather than what you call the science of cybernetics. Are they out of step with the way
in which Bateson used the term?
Historian: Perhaps. To follow Bateson's path requires that we choose a cybernetic epistemology. I promised to
expand upon Bateson's use of the term as part of a historical tradition of epistemologists. At this time the
historical connection can be seen more clearly. Moving out of the neurophysiologist's laboratory, Bateson
extended cybernetic epistemology to the natural history of organisms and aggregates of organisms (e.g.,
social groups). Biology, whose focus ranges from single cells to social organisms and whole cultures,
therefore becomes the study of "embodiments of mind." Stated differently, a tradition of biologists from
McCulloch to Bateson and, more recently, Maturana, Varela, and von Foerster is concerned with
identifying the patterns of organization that characterize mental and living process.
Therapist: How does this orientation connect to family therapy? Why did Bateson bring cybernetic epistemology to
our field?
Historian: Gregory Bateson and his cybernetic colleagues viewed most of psychology and the social sciences as
misguided. To put it more bluntly, they regarded most of social science as insane and often proposed that
it be buried. That, my friend, is a radical view. The source of social science's insanity has to do with its
adoption of a Newtonian epistemology. The argument was that the use of an epistemology of billiard balls
to approach human phenomena is an indication of madness.
That, of course, has been suspected throughout the history of the social sciences. William Jones even
joked that when psychology threw away mind, it became mindless. More recently, humanistic
psychologists under the leadership of Abraham Maslow proposed that Newtonian science is
inappropriate for psychological phenomena. As I already indicated, the same criticism is heard again on
the lips of family therapists who object to reductionistic and lineal frameworks.
Cyberneticians argue, however, that these objections are simply not basic enough. Let me give you an

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example. Years ago at a theory conference for humanistic psychologists, Gregory Bateson pulled a
surprise by announcing that humanistic psychology is part and parcel of the same paradigm that embodies
behaviorism and psychoanalysis. He reminded the participants that their use of the term "third force"
connected them to the epistemology of Newton. Through their choice of metaphor, their epistemological
slip was always showing.
Bateson directed the same criticism at family therapy, a field that also has a history of boasting about its
radically different frame of reference, paradigm, and epistemology. Bateson repeatedly warned family
therapists that any use of Newtonian metaphors indicated an epistemology that had nothing to do with
formally knowing pattern, form, and organization of family events. The crescendo of his attack was
directed at Haley, who has insistently proposed a description of family therapy in terms of the metaphor
called "power." Richard Rabkin identifies the Bateson-Haley disagreement as the epistemological core of
family therapy. Their differing orientations signify the contrast between cybernetic and Newtonian
epistemology.
The cybernetician's argument is that family therapy, as well as all disciplines of biology (in the broad
sense of that term), must embody a cybernetic epistemology if patterns that characterize living and mental
process are to be encountered. Otherwise we treat ourselves and our contexts of living as though they
were heaps of bricks being pushed and shoved by the dynamics of locomotion. As the cyberneticians
argue, such a position is "loco" and dangerous to the ecology of living process.
Therapist: I want to understand what a cybernetic epistemology of family therapy fully means, but I simply cannot
imagine a world of human relations in which "power" is not involved.
Historian: You must realize that "seeing" power in any context follows from a way of punctuating events. If you say
that a therapist and client are engaged in a "power struggle," I will say that you have punctuated the
context of therapy in a way that constructs that view. "Power" is in the hand of the punctuator, not
necessarily in the "observed." The major epistemological issues are therefore concerned with the
consequences of particular habits of punctuation. As the ecologists have warned us, punctuating
biological events in terms of Newtonian metaphors often breeds pathology, e.g., fractionation of
complexity and destruction of patterns that connect.
Therapist: Let me extend your premise. If what we see is a consequence of a punctuation, then the very distincton
between cybernetic and Newtonian epistemology also arises from a punctuation. Similarly, the idea of
punctuating and constructing a world view is itself a particular punctuation.
Historian: Yes. You have now moved us deeper into the world of epistemology. In a sense, all of our discussion has
brought us to a position from which we can more fully respond to your initial question regarding the
definition of an epistemology of family therapy.
Therapist: Please begin.
Historian: The fundamental act of epistemology is to draw a distinctiondistinguishing an "it" from the
"background" that is "not it." You do that when you demarcate an individual as different from a family,
identify cybernetic as distinct from a Newtonian epistemology, and use the difference between you and
me in order to engage in a conversation. All that we know, or can know, rests upon the distinctions we
draw.
Bateson referred to this activity as "punctuation." More recently, G. Spencer-Brown has formalized this
constructive view for the world of mathematics and logic in his book Laws of Form. The major point is
that a particular punctuation organizes (i.e., patterns) events in a certain way. Cultures, as well as
individuals may therefore vary with regard to how their world of experience is punctuated. As all good
therapists know, initiating a change of a client's frame of reference often leads to the alteration of
problematic behavior.
In the hurly burly world of therapy, we can now note that clients follow habits of punctuation that enable
them to construct a particular world of experience. Knowing how clients construct these worlds becomes
a task of epistemology. Richard Rabkin suggests that we call this investigative process "clinical
epistemology." At the same time, therapists follow systems of punctuating that prescribe how they
describe. A complete epistemology of family therapy must therefore look at how both the client and
therapist construct a "therapeutic reality."
Therapist: To see how my clients and I construct various "therapeutic realities" requires a higher-order view. Does
that entail a metaepistemology or a metapunctuation of how we punctuate?
Historian: Indeed. The drawing of a punctuation always invites someone to metapunctuate it. In general, all knowing
provides a difference that may trigger other orders of knowing.
Therapist: Before we get too carried away with our epistemological carvings, or distinctions, I would like to know
what all this has to do with cybernetics. You originally argued that cybernetic epistemology is a historical
tradition, brought to our attention by Gregory Bateson, that provides a formal way of knowing family

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therapy. The alternative to cybernetics, a Newtonian epistemology, is supposedly an inappropriate frame

of reference for family therapy. Is the idea of punctuation part of cybernetic epistemology?
Historian: Punctuating or mapping a world follows from how an observer chooses to see. The punctuation or map is
in that sense entirely made up (or inherited by biological constraints and learned by cultural tradition).
What we see is always a map, never the territory or thing in itself. That, of course, was Korzybski's
pointthe map is different from the territory, the name is different from the thing named, the description
is different from what is described.
But look where this takes us in the world of cybernetics. In cybernetics there is no territory, matter, thing,
or object. There are only maps of maps, punctuations of punctuations, relations of relations, differences of
differences. In cybernetics, seeing a world follows from how we draw it. It is as if one's hand draws
outlines on one's own retina. The process is recursivewhat one draws, one sees, and what one sees, one
draws. The world of cybernetics is the world of mental process in which, as William Blake put it, creative
imagination proposes outlines of a world.
Therapist: I am somewhat baffled. To me, cybernetics deals with robots, computers, and machines and has been
criticized as "mechanistic." You're now telling me that it is the world of William Blake. Please elaborate.
Historian: You need two pieces of information. First, it is necessary to correct a misconception regarding what is
meant by a "mechanistic" view. A mechanistic view is simply one that views form and pattern (e.g, the
organization of a cell or machine). It is a form of explanation that accounts for events without any regard
for matter and energy. In that respect, cybernetics is mechanistic. The family therapist who wants to
discern pattern and form in human relationship is looking for a mechanistic view.
The second piece of information involves reexamining the history of cybernetics. It is important to note
that after the early Macy meetings, engineers ran away with some of the terms of cybernetics and
developed a craft called "control engineering." It was applied to the guidance and control of rockets as
well as to the design of prosthetic devices for people. This domain of cybernetics was often only
concerned with the control of a range of deviation for a particular variable, such as house temperature,
flight trajectory, or movement of a prosthetic limb.
When social scientists and psychotherapists applied simple cybernetic ideas to human phenomena, they
often committed a reductionistic error. What they did was look at complex systems of human relationship
as though they were black boxes with clearly demarcated input and output relations. For example, some
therapists proposed that a family system could be seen as a black box with various inputs such as
symptomatic behavior and therapeutic interventions thrown into it.2 The incompleteness of such a view is
that it placed the therapist outside the system being treated. A more correct view is to see the therapist as
part of the therapeutic system.
Therapist: But isn't it a matter of punctuation whether one sees the therapist (or engineer) as connected to a system?
Historian: I stand corrected. What is erroneous is to forget that one's view, whether it be one in which the therapist
is part of the system or not, is always a matter of punctuation. The inadequacy of applying simple
cybernetics to human phenomena was that it failed to prescribe higher-order punctuations that connect
the therapist or observer to the client or observed. In other words, early-day cyberneticians often became
addicted to one way of punctuating events.
Therapist: Was that an error of cybernetics itself?
Historian: Historically, yes. Cybernetics began by looking at simple phenomena. We've all heard about the house
thermostat, for example. However, as cyberneticians began looking at more complex orders of
phenomena, they began to carve different punctuations. In the case of the house thermostat, the
cybernetician could see a larger feedback loop encompassing it. The house resident may happen to spend
some time in the tropics or the Arctic, resulting in his readjusting the house thermostat. The larger
feedback loop involving the man's relationship to his climate recalibrates the lower-order loop of
thermostat and house furnace.
Therapist: Similarly, the therapist's behavior may be related to the family's behavior in a way that can be seen to
recalibrate lower-order feedback loops within the family.
Historian: Precisely. When cyberneticians noted that there are different orders of feedback, they began to talk of
feedback of feedback, control of control, homeostasis of homeostasis, and change of change. Margaret
Mead suggested that the field call this perspective of higher-order process, "cybernetics of cybernetics."
Therapist: Who are some of the originators of that higher-order view of cybernetics?
Historian: The emergence of that view happened almost simultaneously among many different cyberneticians. For
example, Pask began to distinguish between two different orders of mechanisms called taciturn and
language-oriented systems. Similarly, Ashby differentiated between trivial and nontrivial machines. In the
world of biology, Maturana and Varela began articulating a map of higher-order cybernetics that
characterizes the organization of living process and cognition. And, of course, Gregory Bateson

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articulated various maps of different orders of cybernetic process in the domain of learning and the
contextual organization of behavior. Somewhere along the line, Heinz von Foerster made the distinction
between first-order cybernetics, the cybernetics of simple feedback, and second-order cybernetics, the
cybernetics of cybernetics.
I should immediately warn you that some family therapists have used Maruyama's distinction between
first and second-order cybernetics, which refers to stability and change-oriented processes, respectively.
This is a noncybernetic distinction that is different from von Foerster's proposal. Maruyama's distinction
between first-and second-order cybernetics is not connected to the historical tradition of cybernetic
thinking we are pointing to.
Therapist: Please stop. Are you saying that the distinction between processes of change and stability is not
cybernetic?
Historian: Cybernetics is concerned with how processes of change are connected to patterns of stability and how
processes of stability are tied to patterns of change. In cybernetics, change and stability are a whole
gestalt. To balance oneself on a tightrope requires constant change of one's position. Similarly, for a
marriage to remain stable, the couple must periodically bicker. In family therapy (and social science), one
of the most ridiculous misunderstandings of cybernetics has been its definition of homeostasis as a
process of stability. Homeostasis is a way of describing how change leads to stability and how stability
embodies change. The homeostasis of homeostasis moves us to a perspective in which higher-order
change leads to higher-order stability. One cannot, in cybernetics, separate stability from changeboth
are complementary sides of a systemic coin called "homeostasis."
Therapist: Please return to how cybernetics connects with what Bateson called punctuation.
Historian: The complete cybernetician recognizes that an understanding of any phenomenon begins with the act of
drawing a distinction. For example, you may begin by indicating a distinction between yourself and the
family you treat. The cybernetician then goes on to acknowledge the domains of phenomenology that
subsequently arisethe phenomenology of the punctuated system as an autonomous unit requiring no
reference to outside events and the phenomenology of the interdependence of the specified system with
other systems.
Therapist: Which domain of phenomenology corresponds to a "black box" model of a family system?
Historian: That is a bit tricky because we tend to pose a black box as something that is distinct from the observer. I
remind you, however, that the specification of a black box is in terms of inputs from an environment that
the black box transforms into outputs for the environment. Such a description refers to the relationship of
the system with its outside and is described from the perspective of the outside. The characterization of a
system as a black box thus belongs to the phenomenal domain of a system's interdependence with other
outside systems.
The contribution of Maturana and Varela to cybernetics is that they proposed a description of whole
systems from the perspective of a whole system itself, without any reference to its outside environment.
To speak of the distinctive wholeness of a system is a way of speaking of the system's autonomy. To
capture a system's autonomy requires, by definition, no reference to its outside. Instead, the system must
be described through reference to itself. Stated differently, the self-referentialness of a system becomes a
way of pointing to the system's autonomy.
Therapist: Please translate this to a family therapist.
Historian: It is quite simple. Family therapists who have attempted to adopt a general system view have been
plagued with a theoretical problem. The problem centers on how autonomy can be brought into the
picture. As many family therapists are aware, individuals are often overlooked as separate, autonomous
units in favor of seeing them as parts of a family organism or system. Similarly, a network therapist may
prefer to see a larger social ecology that swallows the autonomy of a given family. General system theory
(and holistic thought in general) has been unable to account for the autonomy of whole systems. Instead,
any order of social process is considered to be part of a larger system. Without any regard for autonomy,
we are logically led to consider the whole universe as the appropriate unit of treatment.
Maturana and Varela note, however, that the "wholeness" or autonomy of a given system can be
discussed when one closes the boundaries of a system and looks at it from the inside. This view, in fact,
arises as a natural consequence of cybernetics of cybernetics. Given an individual, for example, we can
consider various feedback relations among the organs of his body. This feedback is constrained (i.e.,
calibrated or controlled) by higher orders of feedback process within the individual organism. As we
climb this ladder of complexity, we reach a limit at which all the feedback processes of the individual are
themselves recursively organized, patterned, or connected. At this order of feedback, what is controlled is
the variable called "living." To step beyond the calibrated range of life is necessarily to die. Thus, the
highest order of feedback control for a particular system becomes a way of specifying the organization of

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living, which for Maturana and Varela is the autonomy of living systems.
Therapist: Let me try this out on a family. If we consider all the various feedback loops that organize the behavior of
family members, we may then conceive of a higher order of control that organizes those feedback loops.
The highest order of feedback process in a family is feedback of all its feedback. That order of process is
a way of pointing to the family's wholeness or its autonomy
Historian: You are correct. Now consider what this highest order of feedback process implies. It is a feedback of the
system's own feedback. Since there is no input or output with regard to an external environment, this
feedback is not feedback in the traditional sense. Varela and Maturana therefore refer to this order of
feedback as "organizationally closed." It feeds upon itself, not upon the outside.
Therapist: But isn't organizational closure just another way of saying autonomy?
Historian: Yes. The autonomy of a system is the order of feedback process that is organizationally closed.
Therapist: When do we refer to the autonomy of a system as opposed to its interdependence with other systems?
Historian: It is a matter of where you, the observer, draw a distinction. You may consider a family as
organizationally closed, or you may consider a more encompassing system connecting you with them as
organizationally closed.
Therapist: But does it make a difference how I draw the distinction?
Historian: Indeed. You must recall that any act of epistemology refers to how you behave as well as perceivethe
two are linked as a recursive process. In therapy you may choose to behave and perceive in a way that
organizes you as part of a larger system that may facilitate recalibrating parts of a family.
Therapist: Something is troubling me. You are speaking the language of cybernetics, which includes homeostasis,
feedback, learning, information, and so forth. There are some therapists who urge us to throw away those
terms and begin with a new vocabulary. Please comment.
Historian: Changing our lexicon may only result in using new terms in the same old way. In the historical context of
cybernetics, the field itself evolved as a pattern of self-correction. As the field moved toward approaching
higher orders of complexity, the meaning of its terms consequently evolved. The move from simple
cybernetics to cybernetics of cybernetics did not necessitate throwing away terms like homeostasis, but
enabled us to speak of higher orders of homeostasis (e.g., homeostasis of homeostasis).
Therapist: Is any call to throw away these terms an argument that is disconnected from the tradition of cybernetics?
Historian: In part, yes. Our dilemma is one of choosing between the Scylla of misunderstanding and the Charybdis
of talking a private language. Take the approach of Varela, for example. He is quite clear in saying that
the traditional paradigm of information that characterizes simple cybernetics is not useful for describing
the autonomy of living systems. He suggests that the jump to the order of cybernetic organization that is
closed from an environment cannot be discussed in terms of an outside bit of information that is
processed by the system and then fed back to the outside world. That way of speaking requires making
reference to an "outside."
Nevertheless, Varela does not suggest that we throw away the term "information." Instead, from the
perspective of autonomy, he proposes that we follow its more etymological meaning as a process of
in-forming. In cybernetics of cybernetics, information is the in-forming of forms, or as Bateson put it, the
recursive transforming of difference. When speaking of the autonomy of natural systems, information
becomes constructive rather than representational or instructive. In this frame of reference, in-formation
is self-referentially defined. Here, there is no outside information.
Therapist: What you suggest is that terms like information, homeostasis, feedback, and so on change their meaning
in cybernetics of cybernetics.
Historian: Yes. All descriptive language changes its meaning in cybernetics of cybernetics because it is a different
frame of reference. Furthermore, cybernetics of cybernetics provides us with additional terms that point
to patterns we were not able to clearly discern with simple cybernetics. Autonomy, for example, is
proposed as a term for speaking of the distinctive wholeness or identity of a system rather than using
first-order terms like homeostasis, stability, circular organization, or coherence. Autonomy more clearly
specifies that we are referring to an upper limit with regard to a system's homeostasis of homeostasis,
stability of stability, or coherence of coherence. Cybernetics of cybernetics must always be seen as a
higher order form of cybernetic recursionits name is no accident.
Therapist: Is cybernetics of cybernetics a more correct perspective for family therapy than simple cybernetics?
Historian: That is an incorrect question. Cybernetics of cybernetics enables us to speak of the autonomy of whole
systems, whereas simple cybernetics gives us the view of a system in the context of its relationship with
outside systems. As Varela has demonstrated time and time again, each view provides a different but
complementary perspective. The complete therapist and cybernetician therefore has an enriched vision
that enables him to see both the autonomy and connection of diverse forms of pattern.
Therapist: But when is it appropriate to use simple cybernetics as opposed to higher-order cybernetic description?

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Historian: You must never forget that the autonomy of a system is a more encompassing view than one that speaks
of a system's inputs and outputs, simple homeostasis, simple stability, and simple change. The view of
cybernetics of cybernetics is one that recognizes the wholeness of a given realm of phenomena. If we
wish to speak of the wholeness (i.e., autonomy) of a family, then higher-order cybernetic description is
appropriate. We may, however, want to view the therapist plus family as a whole system. To point to the
wholeness of that system also requires the descriptive language of cybernetics of cybernetics.
At other times we may find it useful to dissect (i.e., punctuate) the wholeness of systems into parts and
then talk about the relations among those parts. A therapist can choose to see how symptomatic behavior
calibrates a particular sequence of interaction. Discerning such simple feedback often offers a pragmatic
advantage in designing what is called an "intervention." Going on, interventions can be discussed as if
they were inputs to a family, that is, the introduction of some new piece of information to the system that
may help it behave differently.
When whole systems, whether the family or the family-plus-therapist, are punctuated into distinguishable
parts, what must be remembered is that the drawn parts are approximations of the whole system from
which they were abstracted. Bate-son sometimes called these artifacts the "partial arcs" of "whole
circuits." The drawing of partial arcs and the chopping of the world into parts provides us with various
pragmatic advantages. The drawing of a difference between problem and nonproblem behavior, for
example, sometimes enables the therapist to orient his behavior in a strategic fashion.
The danger of using the punctuations of "partial arcs" is that we may forget that they are approximations
of whole patterns of recursion. When we fail to remember that the punctuations of simple cybernetics are
always approximations of more encompassing processes, we set ourselves up for trouble. We then forget
that "interventions," "symptoms," "therapists," and "families" are approximations or metaphors for larger
patterns of relationship. That may lead us to seeing interventions and symptoms as mythical entities,
seemingly real things in the fabric of nature.
This is a serious problem in the world of therapy, where the punctuated streams of events are often reified
and subjected to so-called "objective" criteria. Pattern and form have no "realness," are not subject to
quantification, and cannot be discussed as though they were "things" influenced by the interplay of force,
power, and energy.
In sum, we are free to carve the world as we like as long as our carvings are remembered to be
approximations for the more encompassing patterns from which they were demarcated. The question you
should have asked is, "What is the appropriate use of cybernetics?" The answer to that question is that
therapists should always embody an explicit sensitivity to both simple cybernetics and cybernetics of
cybernetics. Any attempt to use one perspective without remembrance of the other is the error.
Therapist: Let me return to the drawing of a distinction. If I draw a distinction between a system and myself, I must
remember several things. First of all, I must remember that I drew the frame of reference. Given that
frame, I can point to the phenomenal domain of the autonomous system. That requires my speaking about
it without any reference to an outside environment, as though I, the observer, did not exist. And last, I can
point to the phenomenal domain that includes the system's interdependence with outside systems,
including me.
Historian: You are beginning to sound like a cybernetic epistemologist. With these perspectivesa distinction, the
autonomy of the system, the interdependence of the system with outside systemsone can begin thinking
about an epistemology of family therapy. Before doing so, let us look a bit more at what these three
perspectives imply.
Therapist: Let me guess. The drawing of a distinction or punctuation always means that I, the therapist, am actively
participating in the construction of the reality of what happens in therapy. As Watzlawick once put it,
"How real is real" is a function of one's habits of punctuation.
Historian: One cannot not draw a distinction. Any effort to not draw a distinction reveals a distinction. Thus, you
and your clients are always active epistemological operators.
Therapist: The perspective of the autonomy of a system is a bit paradoxical to me, for it seems to require that I
describe a system as though I were not around to describe it.
Historian: You are now describing your describing, which is different from pointing to the domain of
phenomenology, which pertains to the autonomy or closed organization of a system. Nevertheless, you
are correct in assuming self-reference while being a describer. That only reminds us again that you are
drawing the distinctions. Thus, as Laing suggests, "data" should more accurately be called "capta."
Similarly, representation is more accurately presentation, and description yields to prescription. In
general, descriptions reveal properties of the observer. What the therapist sees tells us something about
his epistemology. As von Foerster notes, cybernetics of cybernetics is therefore a move from the
cybernetics of observed systems to that of observing systems.

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Therapist: Please explain the perspective that enables me to discuss the phenomenal domain of my interactions with
the system I encounter.
Historian: That is also a bit tricky. Let us back up again. We just implied that you cannot really describe the
autonomy of a system without reference to you, the describer. Thus, what we are up against are two
different ways of describing one's relation to a demarcated system. Maturana and Varela suggest that
when we speak of a system's autonomy we should refer to our interactions with that system as
"perturbations" rather than "inputs." This reminds us that no part of what we do to an autonomous system
ever gets "inside" the system but rather that our action interacts with the wholeness of the system. It is
another way of saying that our interactions do not affect any one part of a system but affect the whole
organization of a system.
When we speak of the wholeness or closure of a system, we are pointing to its simultaneity of
interactions. At this level of description there can be no chopping of the whole into causal loops with time
delays between an input and output. Similarly, we cannot speak of the wholeness of a system in terms of
hierarchy or logical typing, and we cannot punctuate a beginning or end. As the Buddhists remind us,
every point is the center and the whole. To preserve the flavor of wholeness requires that we speak of our
interactions with wholes as perturbations on a whole organization.
Therapist: From the perspective of a family system's autonomy, all a therapist can do is "perturb" the family and see
what happens?
Historian: That is the view that autonomy prescribes. The wholeness of a family (i.e., its closed organization) will
either compensate or not compensate in response to the perturbations that act upon it. The family may
compensate through altering its structure.
Therapist: Stop. What do you mean by structure? Is that different from the family's organization?
Historian: Maturana and Varela differentiate the structure and organization of a system. A system's organization is
invariant, but its structure changes to maintain its organization.
Therapist: In other words, the actual processes through which a family maintains itself as a viable social organism
can be described as its structure. In that sense, innumerable forms of structure may lead to maintaining
the whole family. Organization then refers to the wholeness of the family. If its changes, the family ceases
to be a family. It is again a way of speaking of the autonomy or identity of a whole system.
Historian: Yes. I think you've got it. Let's get back to where we were. In the phenomenal domain of a system's
autonomy we speak of our interactions on a system as perturbations that may be compensated for through
an alteration of the family's structure. This order of description requires that we describe whatever the
autonomous system does as an effort to maintain its own organization.
In the history of family therapy, this order of process has often been called the "family's homeostasis." The
description is technically a category mistake. What family therapists are trying to point to is "homeostasis
of homeostatis," or the autonomy of a family. The same error is committed when we substitute the term
"coherence" for "homeostasis." Again, what should be stated is "coherence of coherence." Any call to
move us beyond homeostasis should be seen as a call to move us beyond simple or first-order
homeostasis. Therefore, when therapists insist that a family's homeostasis or coherence should be
respected, they are really suggesting that we respect its autonomy.
Therapist: Okay. Now what about the other perspective we left behind? That is, what is the other phenomenal
domain that points to interdependent systems?
Historian: That domain of phenomenology is more concerned with those descriptions of a system that we, the
observers, attribute to the system's relations with other systems we observe. For example, we may ascribe
the characteristics of "purpose" and "causality" to a system. To say that a system has a certain purpose is
to comment on its relation with other systems. When I say that the purpose of my automobile is to get me
from place to place, I am actually referring to my purpose with the automobile. The automobile does not
contain purpose. "Purpose," as Varela and Maturana argue, belongs to the phenomenal domain of the
system's relation with other systems, not to the perspective of the system's autonomy.
This phenomenal domain is expressed through what Varela calls "symbolic explanations." These
explanations point to behavioral regularities of a system that are not operational for the system but refer
to regularities between interdependent systems as perceived by an observer. "Operational explanations,"
on the other hand, refer to the system's own identity-producing processeswhat we have called the
phenomenal domain of its autonomy.
Therapist: When we say that a child's symptom serves the function of helping keep the parents together, that refers
to the phenomenal domain of the relation between parent and child systems. The purpose and function of
symptoms, interventions, families, and therapists is something ascribed by an observer and does not
reside in the whole organization of the system being described. It is a symbolic explanation derived from
the relation between different systems.

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Historian: Correct.
Therapist: Why is it important for family therapists to distinguish between the two phenomenal domains?
Historian: That brings us back to Gregory Bateson. When we confound phenomenal domains, we commit an error
of logical typing. We may, for example, see "personality characteristics" such as dependency,
friendliness, or hostility as descriptions of an individual rather than descriptions that point to the relation
of that individual to another individual (e.g., the observer). Such an error leads us to create what Bateson
called "dormitive principles." A dormitive principle is a form of epistemological nonsense that arises
when we attempt to explain a system by attributing to it descriptions that do not belong to its phenomenal
domain but belong to its relation with other systems.
Therapist: In other words, keeping tabs on the different phenomenal domains is a way of avoiding confusion and
nonsense?
Historian: Yes. The argument of Bateson is that the nonsense and pathology humans generate can be traced to
confounds in these symbolic domains. As Warren S. McCulloch once joked, "Psychiatry would have been
a lot better off if man didn't happen to speak." Of course, the curse is also a blessing. The various knots
we can pattern through our symbolic systems also enable a world of art and beauty to be experienced. But
all that is for another discussion.
Therapist: Let me see if I can begin defining an epistemology of family therapy. First of all, therapists and clients
embody an epistemology that governs the way they construct and know a world of experience. Knowing
about an epistemology also invokes an epistemology and can serve as a paradigm for the very process of
epistemology. Looking at that process, we can see that knowing a world requires drawing a distinction.
Since drawing a distinction is a way of constructing a world, knowing and constructing are inseperable.
Family therapists are epistemologists in the sense that they embody patterns of knowing and constructing
a therapeutic reality. As we have said before, to become aware of how one knows and constructs a reality
entails knowing about one's knowing. That necessarily requires that we see ourselves constructing and
construct ourselves as seeing. When we jump to this order of perspective, we may see that epistemology
is always a recursive process that infolds upon itself. More broadly, all worlds of experience are
in-formed and self-referential.
The family therapist who discovers his epistemological knife will approach the clinical world in a
radically different way. Such a therapist will not search for what is "really" going on with a family or what
the "real problem" is. The enlightened therapist will realize that what is real, whether it be problem or
cure, is always a consequence of a constructed world of experience. Since he joins his clients in the social
construction of a therapeutic reality, he is also responsible for the universe of experience that is created.
Epistemology is therefore neither a map, description, theory, model, paradigm, nor paradigm of
paradigms. It is a process of knowing, constructing, and maintaining a world of experience. The clinical
activities of diagnosis, intervention, and research have been traditionally associated with efforts to know
the problematic situation, alter the problematic situation, and verify the occurrence of the aforementioned
domains, respectively. In the epistemology of family therapy these three activities are different faces of
the same recursive beast.
Historian: Let me add a few pieces. If you fully consider the connection of knowing and constructing a world, you
will realize that what we have encountered is the organization of living and mental process. Perception
and behavior are recursively related, as the cyberneticians remind us. If you're an experimental
epistemologist working in a neurophysiological laboratory, you will discover that the organization of
neural systems is recursive. The discovery of Maturana was simply that the nervous system is recursively
organized. In the world of social organisms, experimental epistemologists like Bateson have discovered
the recursive organization of behavior. Throughout diverse orders of living process, recursive
organization appears.
Therapist: Are you suggesting that the processes of epistemology (i.e., cognition and knowing) are the same as the
processes of living?
Historian: The identity of living process with cognitive process is perhaps the most profound insight of our time.
Mind and nature become an inseparable unity. That is the position of Bateson, McCulloch, Maturana,
Varela, von Foerster, and all cybernetic epistemologists who have fully encountered the ideas we've been
discussing.
Therapist: An epistemology of family therapy is therefore an epistemology of life?
Historian: Yes. When what you do is seen as mental or living process, your action is revealed as part of a larger
ecological dance. Family therapy then becomes a crucible for the drama of life and mind.
Therapist: If I were to fully understand the insights of epistemology, what difference would it make in the way I live
my life inside and outside of my clinical practice?
Historian: When you understand that you are an active epistemological operator, you realize that you are always

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participating in the construction of a world of experience. The view of a participatory universe suggests
that ethics, rather than objectivity, is the foundation of family therapy. In other words, you are responsible
for contributing to the construction of therapeutic realities. There is no such thing as an observer-free
description of a situation that can be objectively assessed and evaluated. What one experiences is
constructed. In that recursive process, what one knows leads to a construction and what one constructs
leads to knowing. One's knowing is recycled in the constant (re)construction of a world.
As Wittgenstein informs us, ethics and aesthetics belong to the same domain. That should be clear to us
now, for what we perceive is drawn by how we behave, and how we behave follows the constraints of
what we perceive. The observer is in the observed, the therapist is in the clinical problem, the reader is in
what is read.
Therapist: Where do family therapists go from here?
Historian: As family therapists, there are several jumps that must be made. First of all, the therapist must jump from
the paradigm of substance to that of pattern. That places one in the context of cybernetic epistemology.
Once there, the family therapist must embody the complementary gestalt of simple cybernetics and
cybernetics of cybernetics. He must be able to jump back and forth between these orders of recursion.
With this full view, the family therapist can approach both the complexity and elegance of autonomous
and interconnected patterns of life. In this ecology of family therapy, mind and nature become one.
Therapist: Is it really necessary to fully understand cybernetics in order to be a good family therapist?
Historian: Of course not. Cybernetics is only a raft that can carry us across the river. Other vessels are also
accessible, particularly the offerings of poets. As Bateson reminded us, William Blake packaged all of
these ideas in another form of symbolic language.
I warn you, however, that taking the path of science is another matter. In science, only the language of
pattern can lead to the world of human experience.
Therapist: But isn't the distinction between form and substance an arbitrary punctuation? Are they not one?
Historian: First of all, I need to remind you that cybernetics is part of a general science of pattern and organization.
In the world of cybernetics we may think of two classes of events in which pattern is manifestthose
involving matter and those that are said to be nonmaterial events. This view enables us to distinguish
between the embodiment of mind by matter and the appearance of mind in nonmaterial or imaginary
worlds. W must remember, of course, that in the case of matter, pattern can never be regarded as the
"stuff" that embodies it.
The cyberneticians remind us that physics is actually a subdiscipline of cybernetics involving the study of
patterns that are embodied by matter. In this way, physics and cybernetics do not represent a symmetrical
relation between opposite poles. Instead they appear as a complementary gestalt in which physics is a
part of cybernetics.
There is another point you must not miss. Namely, the world of distinctions is distinct from that world
within which nothing can be distinguished. Jung referred to those worlds as "creatura" and "pleroma,"
respectively. The world of epistemology is one of creatura, i.e., making distinctions. To know that mind
and body, form and substance, or yin and yang are not two requires first drawing a distinction. We could
not realize the whole gestalt without having first noted that it subsumes different parts. On the other hand,
parts cannot be distinguished without having assumed a whole from which they are abstracted. In sum,
we are left with the realization that form and substance are neither one nor two. The autonomy and
interdependence of wholes is not one, not two.
Therapist: There is a lot of work to do.
Historian: Many of us do not yet know that how we know (and don't know) is inseparable from how we behave.
Fewer know that epistemology in its fullest sense is life itself. The biology of cognition, as Maturana and
Varela put it, is the organization of life.
Therapist: My free association to what you say is that a cybernetic epistemologist is also an ecologist. In other
words, a full realization of the connection between mental and living process would naturally lead one to
see mind in nature. From that perspective, what we call "mind" cannot be limited to what goes on behind
the boundaries of a skull. Mind becomes immanent in the organization of diverse patterns in our
biosphere. For the family therapist, the unit of therapy becomes a mental system.
Historian: This mental system, like all mental systems, is a pattern of knowing that embodies epistemology. A world
of experience is carved and known by the mental process we habitually call "therapy." Therapy, in other
words, becomes epistemology.
Therapist: Knowing and acting, or diagnosing and intervening, become inseparable, as all good therapists know. Is
the view of this connection a definition of an epistemology of family therapy?
Historian: The pattern that connects parts of a therapist's experience to those of a family or client system, as well as
to you and me as we now communicate and to all the various patterns of our biosphere, embodies

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epistemology.
Therapist: Are you suggesting that therapists, families, ecologists, cities, seashores, and forests are indistinguishable
in epistemology?
Historian: Their distinction and connection draw an epistemology of life and cognition...
Therapist: ... and an epistemology of family therapy.

REFERENCES
1. Bateson, G., Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York, Ballantine, 1972.
2. Bateson, G., Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, New York, E. P. Dutton, 1979.
3. Biological Computer Lab., Cybernetics of Cybernetics, Urbana, University of Illinois, 1974.
4. Keeney, B., Aesthetics of Change, New York, The Guilford Press, in press.
5. Maturana, H. and Varela, F., Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Dordrecht, Holland, D.
Reidl, 1980.
6. McCulloch, W., Embodiments of Mind, Cambridge Mass., MIT Press, 1965.
7. Spencer-Brown, G., Laws of Form, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1969.
8. Varela, F., Principles of Biological Autonomy, New York, North Holland, 1979.
9. Von Foerster, H., "Notes for an Epistemology of Living Things,", in E. Morin and M. Piatelli (eds.), L'Unité de
L'Homme, Paris, Seuil, 1974.

1The term general system theory, proposed by Bertalanffy, as distinct from general systems theory, will be used throughout the

paper.

2Note that any system, whether an individual, dyad, or family may be punctuated as a black box. The usefulness of such a view

is that it allows us to ignore the system's "inner processes" and focus on the redundant relations between inputs and outputs.

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