Acting Out
Acting on a conflict, a defense or an impulse without taking into account the different system contexts and thus precipitating behavior without understanding the implications of that behavior for the individual person, the member, the subgroup or the group-as-a-whole systems.
Ambiguity
See Information Theory: Shannon & Weaver (1964).
Anxiety
A psychophysiological response to system disruption characterized by some or all of the following symptoms: dry mouth, cold hands, rapid heartbeat, “butterflies” in the stomach. In SCT, the source of anxiety is attributed to one of three causes: 1. Anxiety-provoking thoughts; 2. Reactions to unfamiliar physiological experiences of emotion; 3. Misinterpretation of the normal excitation at the edge of the unknown (called apprehension). Discrimination: see Excitation and Apprehension.
Apprehension
Intuitive understanding: non-verbal, non-cognitive. It has to be translated into words before it can be integrated into comprehension.
Attunement
Psychophysiological resonance; being synchronized and “in tune” with one’s own or another's internal rhythm and experience, when the words match the music.
Authority
In systems-centered language, the word “authority” has the meaning of “the right to work” (similar to the Tavistock definition). In SCT, actualizing authority is achieved by the deliberate vectoring of energy towards system goals.
Barrier Alert
A signal that the observing self-system is losing the ability to understand experience in either a self-centered or a systems-centered context. A cognitive disruption, the boomerang defense or taking something personally are examples of barrier alerts.
Barrier Experience
The experience generated by personalizing experience and generating a defensive, encapsulated, subsystem, formed within the person system. The self-observing system loses the facility to observe the self in either its self-centered or systems-centered contexts. In a barrier experience, boundaries open to information similar to the existing system integration, and close to differences that are too different. In a barrier experience, one’s personal sense of space and time is impaired, as is the ability to take on the different roles and goals relevant to the systems of member, subgroup and group-as-a-whole.
Boomerang Defense
The fleetingly experienced or denied retaliatory impulse towards some frustrating person, thing or event that is turned back as an attack on the self in the form of mindreading, negative predictions, tension, psychosomatic symptoms (including psychomotor retardation) and depression. The boomerang defense creates a barrier experience.
Boundaries
The system structure within which information is located in space, time, reality and role. The physical or psychological threshold that differentiates one context from another.
Boundaries, Reality
Discriminate between reality that can be consensually validated through reliable reality-testing methods and hypothetical reality which is untested (irreality).
Boundaries, Role
Define the different system roles that shift in relationship to space, time and reality. As the context shifts, so do the role and the goal. For example, the hierarchical shift of the different roles and goals are relevant to the systems of member, subgroup and group-as-a-whole.
Boundaries, Space
Differentiate conceptually between what is inside the system and what is outside the system. Determine the subsystem parameters within, between and among systems in the hierarchy.
Boundaries, Time
Differentiate between what is present for the system and what is past or future. Determine the system parameters of past, present and future.
Boundarying
The application of the systems-centered methods and techniques that reduce the restraining forces to communication (ambiguities, contradictions and redundancies) at the boundaries within, between and among systems in the hierarchy, and therefore increase the probability that information (energy) will be transferred in the system transactions.
Boundarying and Vectoring
Boundarying makes boundaries permeable to information, and vectoring directs the information towards the primary and secondary system goals.
Care-giving
“Giving care to” – discover from the person what they need and help them to get it.
Care-taking
“To take care of” – to take over and decide what another person should do to change.
Centering
Vectoring energy towards the psycho-physiological “center” of the self or of a person (physiologically, the diaphragm and lower abdomen), with the intention of accessing spontaneous, apprehensive understanding of the relationship of the self to the context and goals of the present. Centering increases boundary permeability between apprehensive and comprehensive knowing and increases access to emotional intelligence.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957) postulates that cognitive dissonance occurs when the mental map does not fit the realities of the territory. Cognitive dissonance is reduced either by redrawing the map to fit reality or by maladaptively changing the perception of reality to fit the map.
Cognitive Distortions
Mis-constructed mental maps of the world that are organized around untested assumptions, like negative or positive predictions, mindreading and other untested judgments based on wishes and fears rather than on tested reality.
Common Sense
Intuitively logical or “instinctive” responses to reality that increase as the permeability of boundaries is appropriately increased or decreased (titrated) between comprehensive and apprehensive knowledge.
Communication
Transfers of matter/energy (Miller, 1978) across boundaries. The permeability of boundaries (Agazarian, 1993) is influenced by noise in the communication channel (Shannon & Weaver, 1964) which determines both the quality and quantity of the information that is transferred in the process of communication. SCT systems organize the “communications” that cross their boundaries in the form of energy/information that is vectored towards its goals.
Comprehension
Knowledge arrived at through cognitive processes of thinking, logic and imagination.
Constructed Reality
The cognitive maps of reality that result from the person's organization of their information about reality, whose relative reliability or unreliability influences the appropriateness of a person's role behaviors in relationship to system goals.
Containing
Potential energy maintained within a relaxed state of focused alertness and readiness.
Context
The environment of the system in space and time, e.g., the phase of development in which the work of an SCT group takes place.
Contextualizing
Capacity to see more than one context at a time. In SCT, individuals experience themselves in the context of the member, subgroup and group-as-a-whole systems. Contextualizing requires the vectoring of energy into the roles and goals that are appropriate to the different systems of the hierarchy.
Cooperation
Interpersonal role behaviors that orient to the goal of the context.
Deconditioning
Vectoring energy away from defensive cognitive or somatic responses to stimuli and re-vectoring energy into authentic, emotional experiences of conflicts or primary impulses.
Defenses
Restraining forces that inhibit the inherent system drive towards the goals of survival, development and transformation of living human systems. Defensive experience generates a secondary “as if” reality and diverts energy away from the authentic experience of conflicts, impulses and emotions generated by the challenges of primary reality to survival, development and transformation.
Defense Modification
A predetermined sequence of SCT methods and techniques which systematically undo defenses against intrapersonal and interpersonal experience in the context of the phases of group development. These methods and techniques systematically weaken the restraining forces within each phase and subphase of system development.
Depression
A masochistic defense that constricts and re-vectors the retaliatory impulse away from an outside target (like a person, object or thing) towards the self. The self becomes the target, not only of the retaliatory, aggressive or sadistic thoughts or actions, but also of disapproval of the impulse itself.
Despair
A regressive experience of the unpleasurable side of the pre-integrated split in which pleasure has no reality, and in which survival is experienced as a hopeless, grim and meaningless life sentence.
Discrimination
The process of recognizing differences in the apparently similar and similarities in the apparently different.
Discovering Reality
Differentiating the reality of the experience from the defenses against it. The defenses against reality are, in fact, often the source of the pain about reality.
Distraction Exercise
An SCT boundarying technique, used when a distraction is vectoring members’ energy out of the group, requiring discriminations between thoughts and feelings, so that emotional energy can be re-vectored into the here-and-now reality of the group.
Dominance, Submission and Cooperation
Dominance
Bullying or one-up role behaviors: implicitly or explicitly “telling” people “what to do or think or say.”
Submission
Compliant, one-down role “followership” behaviors. Implicitly or explicitly following the letter of the law (but sometimes not the spirit).
Cooperation
Interpersonal role behaviors that orient to the goal of the context.
Dread
A sinking feeling, which, when followed rather than avoided, leads to the apprehensive experience of that which is dreaded, which is typically a split off part of the shamed or emotional self which can then become re-integrated.
Driving Forces
Vectors in the force field that direct the life force towards the primary goals of survival, development and transformation and the secondary goals of environmental mastery.
Edge of the Unknown
The apprehensive experience of being in uncertainty, often mixed with dread and anxiety about not knowing what is going to happen next. When curiosity about the unknown is aroused, energy is re-vectored and the experience is transformed from dread and/or anxiety, into excitement, anticipation and wonder. This experience is labelled as apprehension at the “edge of the unknown.”
Emotion
SCT discriminates between the meaning of the words “emotion” and “feeling” and does not use them interchangeably. Emotion is defined as a combination of affect, sensation and motion that is always accompanied by an intention movement (often subliminal) that signals an impulse to action. SCT defines emotion as a primary, apprehensive process and defines feelings as a secondary, comprehensive process by which emotions are described and labelled cognitively. Discrimination: see Feeling.
Emotional Intelligence
Understanding that results from appropriate permeability of the boundary between apprehensive and comprehensive information that results in common sense judgments and intuitions about the self and the environment.
Empathy
The importance of empathy as different from resonance or attunement is that in empathy one reality-tests the intuition that one knows what the other is experiencing, thus discriminating between a projection and a perception.
Emptiness
The apprehensive experience of the loss of split off parts of the self.
Energy
The ability to work, which in SCT is defined in terms of the transfer of information in communication transactions (matter/energy) across the boundaries within, between and among the hierarchy of systems.
Energy, Actualized
Actualized energy is information that is vectored in relationship to implicit and explicit goals in a reality context in space and time.
Energy, Potential
Potential energy is information that is available but not yet actively vectored towards implicit and explicit goals in a reality context of space and time.
Entropy
Chaos, undifferentiated and dissonant energy/information. In SCT, understood as ambiguities, redundancies and contradictions that serve as restraining forces to the transfer of information across system boundaries (adapted from Shannon & Weaver, 1964).
Excitation
The excitation aroused at the threshold of uncertainty or the unknown. The excitation that accompanies the discrimination and integration of differences. The turbulence in the process of making the transition from one system integration to another. Discrimination: see Anxiety.
Feeling
A secondary, comprehensive process which enables emotion to be verbalized. Feelings have two sources: emotions (primary experience) and thoughts (secondary experience). Words like “grief,” “rage,” “joy,” etc., are used to describe the experience of primary emotions. These same words are also used to describe the secondary experience generated by thoughts. Thus, sad thoughts generate “grief”; moral outrage generates “rage”; positive predictions generate “joy,” etc. Cognitive interpretations of experience, expressed in words like “abandoned” or “betrayed,” also generate feelings. Feelings generated by thoughts may “feel” the same as the feelings generated by emotion, but they have different psychophysiological sources. Discrimination: see Emotion.
Field Theory
Lewin’s Field Theory (1951) postulates that all behavior is a function of the perceptual map (the Life Space) of the road to the goal and that knowing the map makes it possible to predict behavior.
Force Field
A field of equal and opposite driving and restraining forces which define the system’s structure at a moment in time. Driving forces are vectored towards the system goals of survival, development and transformation. Restraining forces reduce the permeability of the boundaries to the energy (information) in the driving forces.
Fork-in-the-Road
A metaphor for the forced choices presented to SCT members, first between explaining and exploring (i.e., elaborating on the known vs. discovering the unknown) and then between exploring the defenses against reality vs. discovering the reality of experience, conflicts or impulses that are defended against.
Function
The dynamics of the system operation related to its goals. A Theory of Living Human Systems defines a single dynamic – the process of recognizing and integrating differences – to explain the process by which systems function on the path to the goal, solving the problems that lie in the way. By recognizing and integrating differences in the apparently similar, and similarities in the apparently different, all living human systems move towards the goals of survival, development and transformation from simpler to more complex. In SCT, this function is operationalized by the method of functional subgrouping.
General Systems Theory
Von Bertalanffy (1968) postulates that all living systems in the same hierarchy can be defined isomorphically.
Goals
The goals of all systems in the defined hierarchy of living human systems are to survive, develop and transform from simpler to more complex by discriminating and integrating differences, both differences in the apparently similar and similarities in the apparently different. Discriminating and integrating differences is both a necessary and sufficient condition for ongoing transformations of all systems in the hierarchy.
Heuristically, living human systems are defined as goal-directed and self-correcting in relationship to primary and secondary goals. The quasi-stationary equilibrium (the place of rest) of the system in relationship to its goals in a moment in time can be diagnosed through the use of the Force Field model.
Goals, Explicit
The goals that systems say they have, in contrast to implicit goals which are the goals that are implied by the way systems behave.
Goals, Implicit
Also known as heuristic goals or “as if” goals. Goals that are implied by the way that systems behave.
Goals, Primary
The primary goals of living human systems are survival, development and transformation. The primary goal of SCT groups is to develop the system structure of member, subgroup and group-as-a-whole systems and to transform through discriminating and integrating information (energy) within, between and among the system hierarchy.
Goals, Secondary
The secondary goals of living human systems are environmental mastery or the explicit goals that are stated for a particular system. In SCT groups the secondary goals are to develop into a problem-solving, group-as-a-whole system by modifying the hierarchy of defenses in the context of the phases of group development.
Goals, SCT
To increase the permeability of the boundaries between comprehensive and apprehensive knowledge in the hierarchy of living human systems.
Grief
The emotion aroused in the process of crossing the boundary between irreality to reality of a sad fact of life, as in grief at the loss of a loved one, at an impairment or loss of function or capacity, at the loss of a fantasy or an illusion, or from the recognition of what one's defenses have cost in terms of missed and sabotaged opportunities, relationships and self-development. Discrimination: see Depression and Despair.
Group-as-a-Whole System
Contains the subgroup systems and vectors energy towards primary and secondary goals.
Guilt
The signal of a conflict between a judgment about what one ought to, or should be, do, think or feel, and a contradictory impulse, emotion, feeling or wish. In SCT guilt is addressed by making the conflict between cognitive irreality and the emotional reality explicit and directing attention to containing and centering the reality experience rather than acting upon it or criticizing it. Discrimination: see Remorse.
Hierarchy
The structure in which each system exists in the environment of the system above it and is the environment for the system below it. All systems rank from smaller to larger and from larger to smaller – just like a set of nested Russian Dolls. Thus, no system can ever stand alone. Every system always exists in the context of the larger system above it and is itself the context for the smaller system below it. Thus, all systems come in threes, and every system is always one of a triad.
Hostile Discharge Defenses
Avoidance of the retaliatory impulse by discharging the energy of that impulse into hostile and/or sadistic acting out with targeted or random discharges of irritability, frustration and arousal. Symptoms generated: depression and hostile actions.
Individuation
See Separation and Individuation.
Individuation Defenses
The defenses against recognizing and integrating similarities in the apparently different. Disenchantment, contempt, alienation, suspicion, disassociation, despair, mistrust of self, others and groups, are the major defenses against individuation. Symptoms generated: paranoia, isolation, despair.
Information Theory
Postulates that there is an inverse relationship between noise (ambiguities, contradictions and redundancy) which introduce entropic forces into the communication process and the probability that the information in the communication will be transferred across system boundaries (Shannon & Weaver, 1964).
Insight
Comprehensive and/or apprehensive integration of information that changes understanding, through cognitive processing (intellectual insight) or through instant knowledge (emotional insight).
Integration
The process by which the boundaries between encapsulated subsystems are made permeable so that the information (energy) they contain is re-organized in the service of system survival, development and transformation.
Intention Movements
The nonverbal cues people send that signal their emotional responses in relationship to themselves and others [from Tinbergen's (1951) observation that birds and animals signal their intention to act before they act]. These intention movements can be interactive. For example, when a chick observes an “attack intention” in an adult bird, it inhibits the attack by assuming a submissive posture. People also react to intention cues from other people.
Intimacy
Discriminating between self-centered relationships and systems-centered relationships; transforming the relationship that one “wants” into the relationship that one can “make” in reality, through the process of discriminating and integrating differences in the apparently similar (separation) and similarities in the apparently different (individuation).
Intra-system
The system-as-a-whole in relationship to its subsystems.
Intrapersonal
The relationship between the self and the different parts of the self (internal subgroups) in the self-centered system.
Inter-system
Relationships across the boundaries between systems in the hierarchy of systems: the self-centered system in systems-centered contexts.
Interpersonal
The relationship between the self and others.
Isomorphy
Similarities in structure and function of systems in the same hierarchy. Like looking at the hierarchy of multiple reflections of an image in a double mirror, each system is a mirror image of the ones behind it and the ones in front of it. All systems share the same ways that they manage the permeability of their boundaries (structure) and the ways that they function. All living human systems survive, develop and transform from simpler to more complex by the process of discriminating and integrating differences. Isomorphy means that what works for any one system works for all systems in the hierarchy. Thus, it can be expected that interventions that are effective for any one person in systems-centered therapy can be generalized to all people in all forms of therapy, whether as individuals, couples or groups.
ISTDP
Habib Davanloo’s formulation and methods of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy.
Knowledge and Common-Sense Defenses
1. Defenses against comprehensive and apprehensive knowledge, generating symptoms like impairment of decision-making and implementation abilities, loss of common sense and humor; 2. Defenses against reality-testing, generating symptoms like self-centeredness at the expense of the environment.
Life Space
A cognitive map, defined by Lewin (1951) as a function of the person's perception of the environment.
Masochism
Making oneself the target of the retaliatory impulse, turning the retaliatory impulse back on oneself and taking on the role of victim, victim's victim or scapegoat.
Member System
An SCT construct that is actualized when an individual contains self-centered system energy and vectors it into a subgroup.
Mentalization
Developed, over time, in the pre-frontal cortex: thinking about one’s own and others mental states (Bentzen, 2015).
Methods of SCT
Contextualizing, boundarying, vectoring and subgrouping implemented by the SCT hierarchy of defense modification, which creates a systems-centered group.
Mirroring
Reflecting (as in a mirror) another's facial expressions, posture and mood. Discrimination: see Attunement and Resonance.
Modules of Defense Modification
Five discrete sets of defenses that define the series of defenses which are modified sequentially in the contexts of phases of group development.
Module 1
The social defenses and the triad of symptomatic defenses which are modified sequentially in the flight subphase, in the transition between the flight and fight subphases, and in the fight subphase of SCT group development. See Cognitive Distortions, Tension, Depression, Acting Out and Hostile Discharge Defenses.
Module 2
Role lock defenses that are modified in the fight subphase of group development. See Role Lock Defenses.
Module 3
Resistance to change defenses that are modified in the transition between Phase One (authority) and Phase Two (intimacy) of group development. See Resistance to Change Defenses.
Module 4
Defenses against separation and individuation in intimacy that are modified in Phase Two of group development. See Separation Defenses and Individuation Defenses.
Module 5
Defenses against knowledge and common sense that are modified in every-day life contexts. See Knowledge and Common-Sense Defenses.
Noumenal
An idea, object or event that “exists” without sense or perception. In contrast to phenomena that can be operationally defined and reality-tested.
Noise
Ambiguities, redundancies and contradictions that serve as restraining forces to the transfer of information across system boundaries; synonymous in SCT with entropy, dissonance and chaos.
Outcome Criteria for SCT
Symptom reduction and an increase in reality-testing, common sense and a sense of humor, as a function of an increase in the ability to apprehend experience and translate it comprehensively.
Past Adaptive Roles
Adaptive conflict resolution roles developed in the past which, when imported into the present, are out of context. The driving force of our past adaptive survivor roles is that they stabilize us in the present by closing our boundaries to new information; the restraining force is they do not allow development or transformation.
Person System
Defines the system that is generic to all human beings, and contains the potential energy which, in SCT, is vectored towards the development of the systems of member, subgroup and group-as-a-whole. It is in the person system that the isomorphic construct of the self-centered system within the systems-centered context is developed and integrated. When something is taken “just personally” the context of individual experience is boundaried within a subsystem within the person system to the exclusion of all other contexts. This is called the barrier experience in SCT.
Person System-as-a-Whole
The Person-as-a-Whole contains three isomorphic systems: the Inner-person, the Inter-person and the Person-System-as-a-Whole. The inner-person system is the source of our life-force energy and exploratory drive; the inter-person system contains the exploratory, member, researcher, observer and subgroup roles; and the system-as-a-whole contains the system norms and potential for transformation.
Personalizing
Taking things “just personally” and out of context. Personalizing is understood, in SCT, to generate most of the human anguish that brings people into therapy. The alternative is to understand experience both from the personal and from the contextual perspectives. See Barrier Experience.
Pervasive Transference
The objectless transference to the present of primary experience that arises from the early atmosphere between the child and the other that generates a pervasive orientation to experience that replicates the primary experience.
Phases of Development
Living human systems go through predictable phases as they develop. SCT built on Bennis & Shepard (1957), who in turn built on Bion’s Basic Assumptions: Flight/Fight, Pairing and Work. SCT’s unique contribution introduces a force field of driving and restraining forces that operationally define each phase of development. These driving and restraining forces are defined as goal-oriented role behaviors which may be driving in one context and restraining in a different context. For example, closing one’s boundaries to new information is a driving force to maintaining system equilibrium but a restraining force to system development.
Phenomena
Comprehensible: anything that can be operationally defined in reality, in contrast to “noumena” (an idea, object or event that “exists” without sense or perception in reality).
Reality, Constructed
Comprehensive mental schema that represent organizations of sensory data, mental maps, which serve as the basis for interpreting inner and outer reality and which guide responses and actions and predictions. See Lewin's Field Theory, 1951.
Reality, Misconstrued
Comprehensive mental maps that are generated by wishes and fears about reality and are relatively impervious to, or in contradiction with, sensory data. Misconstrued maps serve to guide maladaptive responses, actions and predictions.
Reality, Primary
Direct, sensory and apprehensive experience of inner and outer reality, the raw data for comprehension.
Reality, Secondary
Discriminations and integrations of primary data through the data organizing processes that result in comprehension.
Reframing
Rewording the meaning or context of events so that they are related to general human dynamics and not to specific individual psychodynamics. Reframing is used to de-pathologize, normalize, legitimize and humanize the way people view their experiences and to discourage members from taking their experiences “just” personally.
Regression as a Driving Force
Re-experiencing the past in the context of the present, so that information is available both from the past and from the present for the work of discrimination and integration related to the present context.
Regression as a Restraining Force
Re-experiencing the past in the context of the present, without awareness of the past-present boundary. When the differences between the past and the present are not perceived, then the system-as-a-whole is regressed and the system's functional ability to discriminate and integrate is governed by the developmental level to which the system is regressed. For example, when members, subgroups or the group-as-a-whole regress to a pre-integrative level, it is impossible to put “two and two” together.
Remorse
The experience of regret at the consequences of an action, often coupled with compassion for the people involved in the consequences. Discrimination: see Guilt.
Repetition Compulsion
Repeating role behaviors that worked in the past but do not work in the present, often inducing role locks with others.
Resistance to Change
Closing boundaries to difference within, between or among systems in a defined hierarchy. Resistance effectively disrupts the process of discriminating and integrating differences – the transformational dynamic in system survival and development.
Resistance to Change Defenses
Module 3. That set of defenses that are modified in the transition stage between Phase One and Phase Two of group development. 1. Externalizing conflicts with authority: defensive stubbornness and suspicion that splits good and bad and blames the bad on authorities or society, thus taking the righteous and complaining position. Symptoms generated: sabotage of social and personal goals. 2. Disowning authority: defensive stubbornness and suspicion of self that splits good and bad and blames personal incompetence. Symptoms generated: sabotage of personal goals.
Resonance
An instinctive and limbic system response. Experiencing apprehensively the core emotional synchronicity between oneself and a part of oneself, between a part of oneself and another, and sometimes, when resonating with the system hierarchy, centering oneself in the system-as-a-whole. Resonating is an affective experience and is the criterion for joining a subgroup. Discrimination: see Attunement and Mirroring.
Responsibility
Behaving appropriately to the role one is in; to the context that one is in while performing the role; and to the goals of both the context and the role.
Restraining Forces
Vectors in a force field that oppose the driving forces and reduce the permeability of the boundaries to the driving life force.
Role
An identifiable collection of behaviors that serve as driving forces towards the goal, appropriate to the context. Role is a construct that is independent of the people who take on the role. One person changes role many times a day: parent, spouse, employee, driver, guest, etc.
Role Locks
Roles governed by the repetition compulsion replicating past role responses to failures in resonance and attunement.
Role Lock Defenses
The Module 2 set of defenses that are modified in the fight phase of group development. Defensive projections and projective identifications into one-up/one-down role relationships: identified patient/helper; scapegoat/scapegoater; victim/bully; and other defiant/compliant splits that repeat old roles. Symptoms generated: repetitive stereotypic interpersonal relationships at work and at home.
Role, Goal and Context
SCT defines roles as a system of behaviors that move towards or away from the goals of the context. Implicit goals are implied by behavior. Explicit goals are the stated goals of the context. Context is the environment of the system in space and time, e.g., the phase of development in which the work takes place or the explicit environment, e.g., therapy or organizations.
Sadism
Thoughts, words and deeds that target the retaliatory impulse against others, without compassion for them as victims.
SCT
Systems-Centered Therapy/Training
Self-centered System
SCT definition for intra-personal personality and character, the source of potential energy for developing the systems-centered hierarchy. The self-centered system and the systems-centered system are isomorphic.
Self-correcting
Systems self-correct by reducing the restraining forces that vector the system away from its goals, thus releasing the driving forces that are vectored towards its goals.
Self-observing System
The “eye” of the systems-centered self. The discriminatory and integrational function of the system hierarchy. It surveys the subsystems in the self-centered system and the self-centered system in systems-centered contexts. Discriminates between thinking (comprehensive knowledge) and emotion (apprehensive knowledge) in the self-centered system. It collects information for reality-testing and is the source of common sense and humor.
Separation Defenses
These are defenses against recognizing and integrating differences in the apparently similar. Enchantment, idealization, merging, love addiction, blind faith, hope and trust in others, self and groups are the major defenses against separation. Symptoms generated include exploitability and dependency at the expense of interdependence and independence.
Separation and Individuation
The process of discriminating and integrating differences in the apparently similar and similarities in the apparently different.
Social Defenses
Avoidance of unpredictable interpersonal reality by defensive, stereotypical, social communications. Symptoms generated: inauthenticity.
Structure
The boundaries of a system in space and time. System boundaries discriminate between a system's inside and its outside, place it in its hierarchy of systems and differentiate it from the subsystem components inside its boundaries and from the larger systems of which it is a component.
Subgroup System
Contained within the group-as-a-whole and containing the member system. Subgroups contain splitting in the group-as-a-whole, and SCT groups use functional subgrouping as a conflict resolution method to discriminate and integrate differences at all levels of the system hierarchy.
Subgroups, Explicit
A collection of members who, through an observer's eyes, appear to be formally working towards a clear goal in the group.
Subgroups, Implicit
A collection of members who, through an observer’s eyes, appear to be working together, though members themselves may not be conscious of so doing. For example, all of the members who are using fighting behaviors make up an implicit subgroup, even if they do not recognize that fighting each other meets the criterion for a “fighting” subgroup.
Subgrouping, Functional
A conflict resolution technique developed for SCT, in which members are deliberately encouraged to form subgroups around two (or more) sides of a conflict. Conflict is thus split and contained in the group-as-a-whole rather than within its members. Subgroup members work together within their own subgroup, to explore their similarities rather than to scapegoat group differences. As each subgroup works, members discover differences in the apparent similarities within their own subgroups and in the process the subgroup transforms from simple to complex. Each subgroup then comes to recognize similarities between the different subgroups. As similarities in the apparently different are recognized, integration takes place in the group-as-a-whole, which in turn develops from simpler to more complex.
Subgrouping, Stereotype
A natural phenomenon in which people in groups tend to come together around stereotyped similarities, e.g., men talking to men, and to split away from differences, frequently closing boundaries to the difference.
Submission
Compliant, one-down role “followership” behaviors: implicitly or explicitly following the letter of the law (but sometimes not the spirit).
Suspicion
The experience generated from an expectation that the environment is potentially exploitive, harmful or dangerous. Perceptions are selective and are organized into cognitive misconstructions that reinforce mistrust. Suspicion is transformed into a paranoid barrier experience when information is organized into a comprehensive map that reflects the primary split of basic mistrust. SCT works to reframe suspicion as a pre-cursor to reality-testing. Discrimination: see Wariness.
Systems-Centered Therapy/Training
The process of functional subgrouping, boundarying, vectoring and defense modification carried out in a systematized sequence in the context of phases of system development.
Tension
The second defense in the triad of symptomatic defenses characterized by avoidance of arousal and emotional experience through constriction of the striated muscles (central nervous system). Benign symptoms generated: stiffness in neck, back pain, tight abdomen or chest, and including pain, ticks, twitches, etc. When tension is discharged into the autonomic nervous system, secondary, non-benign, psychosomatic symptoms, such as irritable bowel syndrome, are generated.
Theory of Living Human Systems
Defines a hierarchy of isomorphic systems that are energy-organizing, self-correcting, and goal-directed. Structurally, each system in the hierarchy is defined by its boundaries; functionally, systems survive, develop and transform through splitting, containing and integrating differences.
Theory of Stress
Howard and Scott (1965) postulate that all human behavior is goal-oriented behavior that either approaches or avoids the problems that lie on the path to goal.
Transference
The transfer of past system functions into the context of the present in a closed feedback loop. Transference is defined as having two components: 1. Unconscious memories of past emotional reality; 2. Unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious interpretation of the present context that replicates the criteria of past irreality.
Transference, Primary
Primary transference is related to past system functions in relation to the primary goals of survival and development and reflects the transformation from living systems into the living human system: 1. Pervasive transference which is experienced as a pervasive atmosphere, e.g., an orientation towards either optimism or pessimism; 2. Pre-integrative transference, which dichotomizes good and bad/hope and despair/blind trust and blind mistrust into discrete experiences – each one of which precludes awareness of its opposite; 3. Pre-differentiated transference, which is a transcendental experience of primary consciousness, in which there are no boundaries between self and other; between animal or human; space and time; energy or matter; 4. Undifferentiated transference, which is experienced as chaos, and whose source is undifferentiated information (matter / energy).
Transference, Secondary
Secondary transference replicates past system role functions in relation to the social and environmental contexts and includes: 1. Stereotype social role relationship transferences; 2. Defensive role postures (defiant, compliant, scapegoat, etc.); 3. Interdependent role locks in authority and intimacy.
Transformation
A function of discrimination and integration. T= f(d,i). This hypothesis is common to many theorists. For example, as early as 1862, Herbert Spencer wrote that evolution is a “change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiation and integration.”
Triad of Symptomatic Defenses
Defenses against anxiety, tension, irritability and frustration that generate most of the symptoms that initially bring people into therapy and include: 1. The cognitive defenses against anxiety that generate more anxiety; 2. The somatic defenses of tension that create psychosomatic and somatic symptoms which increase stress which increase tension; both cognitive and somatic defenses increase frustration and irritability; 3. Irritability and frustration arouse the retaliatory impulse, which is defended against by depression or hostile acting out.
Trust
Defined for SCT as a function of tested expectations. Testing expectations in reality is the process by which the ability to discriminate between blind trust and functional trust is developed.
Turbulence at the Boundary
An SCT descriptor for the normal dissonance that occurs at the threshold of a boundary between the known and the unknown. Turbulence is experienced as: apprehension; as inhibiting feelings like shyness or embarrassment (inter-system boundaries); or as shame or dread (intra-system boundaries). When this experience is reframed as turbulence, the process is de-pathologized and normalized.
Vectoring
Directing working energy across the boundaries towards the goal.
Vectors
Arrows in flight have a direction, a force and a target or goal (point of application). Driving and restraining forces are vectors with opposing goals, e.g., the two forks-in-the-road between explaining and exploring direct energy either towards comprehension or apprehension. When behavior is framed in terms of vectors, then all behavior is interpreted as a directed output of the system. This diagnoses the direction in which the system is travelling, the amount of energy (motivation) required for the journey and the goal direction of the system. This construct can be used to infer a Lewinian Life Space.
Wariness
A potential energy, alertness and acuity, accompanied by a scanning of the environment for information with readiness to respond appropriately to environmental conditions – a precursor to testing reality. Discrimination: see Suspicion.
Work
Defined as “transfers of matter/energy,” (Miller's definition for communication, 1978).