If you read articles, books etc. on systems theory you will come across terms like sub-systems and super-systems and in this Sub-Chapter I will describe them as to how they pertain to family life. I have stated already that the family has a central role in healing, and that is why we are considering systems theory in respect of the family at all.
The theory proposes that relationships are very powerful in networks. In our case we can consider a network to be family, extended family, community etc. It also proposes that society is akin to a living organism, and cannot be broken down into individual entities that exist in isolation.
Every system contains a sub-system, and here I will explain how this applies to the family.
My family (the system) contains a number of sub-systems (me and my siblings), all of which, in turn, contain further sub-systems, (our individual personalities, physical make up, ages, etc. – personality and physical make-up being a system of sorts).
We can say that my family exercises a downward influence on me an individual, and I, an individual, exercise a downward influence on my physical make up, personality etc.
That is, my family’s norms and values are influential in respect of what my norms and values are, and my norms and values affect what I portray to the world, and my physical make up. In systems theory this is known as downward causation.
Of course, all the time this is going on, my personality traits or physical make up will influence my behaviour, which will, in turn, influence my family – like knowledge flow, the influence is two-way. This is upward causation.
My family’s influence also extends upwards to my larger extended family, (we will call this a super-system), which in turn extends upwards towards my community. Similarly my community extends upwards towards my town, locality, city, etc., which in turn extends upward towards the region I live in, then my country and so on.
Now while the downward direction is suggestive of the older method of reductionism and analysis of ever smaller components, the upward direction implies holism and emergence.
So – and importantly – the reductionist methods are not ignored, but are complemented by the more systemic relationships within the networks.
The state of our relationships determines the characteristic (or characteristics) that are growing, or developing, that define(s) who we are, how we are identified, how we relate to others.
This quality of emergence is at least as powerful, if not more powerful in identifying us, than the properties of the original parts.