Personal construct and family systems theories can profit from an exchange of ideas concerning the relationship between their personal and interpersonal aspects of construction. This article examines three possible points of contact between the two orientations. First, we suggest that personal construct psychology could profit from addressing the important contributions of the family context to the development of each individual’s system. Second, we address the impact of the person’s constructions on the larger family system. Third, we suggest that the family system itself develops a system of shared constructions that define and bind its identity and interactions. Each of these areas of interface carries implications for therapy, and specific intervention techniques corresponding to each of these are discussed.

Purpose: An attempt was made to establish a link between brief therapy a’ la MRI and Heinz von Foerster’s view of how we might conceive of and live in the world of our creation, at least in a social sense. Design/methodology/approach – The author relates how her encounter with Heinz von Foerster coincided with and further developed a way of thinking about and doing therapy which she found at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California. She tries to show how Heinz the person has had a lasting effect on the way she conceives of and tries to conduct Brief Therapy a’ la MRI. Findings: She finds that using Heinz’s metaphor of dancing with the world quite useful in the elucidation of what therapy might be all about: how it might, metaphorically speaking, simply be about engaging a client or clients by dancing with them, allowing for the mutual creation of a new possibility. Originality/value – This paper was written to commemorate Heinz and for therapists in search of a therapeutic stance.

Key words: Cybernetics, therapists, philosophical concepts.

A series of articles has recently appeared in which implications of second-order cybernetics for the practice of family therapy have been discussed. In this article, we attempt to advance the discussion by addressing ideas that we think have not been adequately emphasized thus far. Specifically proposed are ideas about conditions that might facilitate the emergence of consciously pragmatic strategy informed by the kind of systemic wisdom that delicately balances natural systems without the benefit of human planning. It is argued that a shift in the personal habits of knowing and acting that typically organize individual human experience is required. After attempting to specify what this shift might involve, implications of these ideas for the practice of family therapy and for human action in general are discussed.

Purpose: When reviewing the prospectus of mainstream universities that offer psychology majors, one would be hard-pressed to find any cybernetic approaches included in their course material. This is an unfortunate observation as most psychological problems arise in a relational context. Reasons for this status quo are presented. The purpose of this paper is to reduce obstacles for prospective learners in cybernetic psychology, with the hope that cybernetic psychology may be assimilated and seen as an equal footing paradigm in mainstream psychology teachings. Design/methodology/approach – A popular cybernetics web site is often used by students who are learning cybernetic psychology. Using the responses from students who frequent the online resource, solutions are presented based on the questions that students have asked the author of the site. Findings: Students are taught different therapy paradigms in terms of models; the psychodynamic model, the medical model, the person-centred model; the systems model and so forth. Their position to the model is external and they can critically evaluate the different models and apply each model in an interpretation and analysis of various psychology case studies. Cybernetic psychology becomes problematic when that line of thinking is used. Practical implications: Cybernetic psychology stands as an ethical choice for therapy. Reducing the boundaries for cybernetic therapies to be assimilated in the mainstream context, especially if offered by universities as an equal footing paradigm, which would be in keeping with the WHO’s call for responsible ethical therapy interventions. Originality/value – There is limited information on how to perform cybernetic psychology. This is understandable owing to the nature of cybernetics; however, reliable and stable approaches should still be available for students who are new to this epistemology. There needs to be an entering point into this way of thinking so that cybernetic psychology remains accessible to newcomers.

Key words: Psychology, cybernetics, model, second-order cybernetics, systems, therapy

Constructivist family therapy offers a model for the application of Maturana’s theories to practice. This paper describes key concepts of a constructivist approach and draws on family therapy to provide guidelines for applying them in an organizational setting. It offers a view of the organization as a network of conversations in which change occurs through the coconstruction of new conversations which widen or change the rational domain in which a problem occurs.

Key words: systemic therapy, family therapy, constructivism, autopoiesis, organization, problem solving, human service organizations, management, resistance to change, systems methodology.

Abstract: I make explicit the status of the “quasi-metaphysics” associated with neurophenomenology in the target paper. Here, metaphysics serves as a therapy and as a guide, not as a picture of anything. It aims at liberating us from the urge for secure foundations, rather than providing one more foundational representation.

Some of the problems faced by Cybertherapy along the last two decades are far from being restricted to technical issues. They entail new challenges of medical education, mainly related with the adequate insertion of new technologies in therapeutic processes without distorting the relation between medical professionals and clients. We contend that the acknowledgment of the effects of the systemic effects of therapeutic applications of virtual reality is not fully predictable and can only be achieved attending to the way the patient enacts certain tasks oriented by goals. Enaction means the patient is placed at the centre of the treatment processes, not only as an informed agent, but also as the agent of change through practice. Focusing on the requirements of Cybertherapy applied to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, we propose a theoretic reflection on the conditions of training and treatment in virtual settings. We underline the decisive role of Health Care professionals in applying and improving the potentialities of biometric sensors, graphic and aural engines in virtual (and hybrid) settings. This role can only be adequately understood within a framework of different levels of recursion of the therapeutic system. Two main levels are referred, the first encompassing the patients adaptation and learning to “move within” the interfaces, the second requiring a reflection on the architecture and design of the physical setting and the computerized rendering of sensory data. Further levels concern the larger framework of therapy, relating to its allocation of resources and the social ends that therapeutic technologies, particularly those concerning mental health, must accomplish.

Purpose: What is therapy? Which would be today Heinz von Foerster’s answer? The authors try to unveil the mystery of an answer coming from a conversation among them. They think that Heinz von Foerster, like Gregory Bateson, was one of the most influential philosopher of therapy. In the paper they analyse some very basic key words – like trivial machine, human becoming – and key concepts – like “broaden the field of possible” – in order to understand if there is an order or a purpose in doing therapy. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a confrontation between epistemology and therapy. The trick is that, unlike von Foerster, the authors are therapists. So probably their conversation will not be reliable. But usually therapists, in doing therapy, do not look for reliability. They try to be accountable, which is a different issue. Findings: Probably therapy is a language game. If yes, the language game of therapy is a trick without a trickster. A map in a stranger land. That can be considered the main finding which follows from von Foerster’s thought. Practical implications: Nevertheless, such a wrong map sometimes could help who is lost, provided that map and territory will never be the same thing. Originality/value – The original value of the paper is, first of all that it can be considered the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. In the very last period of his life Cecchin was considering and sounding a new perspective for therapy. Pietro Barbetta and Dario Toffanetti were working with him in therapy and theoretically to find new frames for therapies in the post-modern era.

Key words: cybernetics, ethics.

Excerpt: there are various common threads between the enactive approach, and current trends and practices in psychopathology. These common threads depend mainly on the fact that both the enactive approach and psychopathology have “phenomenological connections”; as such, they both value lived experience, emphasize the bodily and situated character of the mind, and the fact that what is constructed as salient depends constitutively on the organism’s structure, interests, and goals. To be aware of these commonalities is important to generate further ideas and methods. For example, an enactive neurophenomenological approach could be explicitly adopted to explore whether and how experience and neurophysiological processes correlate in mental disorders; also, emphasizing the complexity of the mutual relations of brain, body, and world, as enactivism does, can provide reasons within psychopathology as to why mental illness should not be reduced to neurochemical impairments, and as to why alternative forms of treatment such as bodily practices should be considered equivalent to drug-based therapy.

In recent years, the societal and personal impacts of pain, and the fact that we still lack an effective method of treatment, has motivated researchers from diverse disciplines to try to think in new ways about pain and its management. In this paper, we aim to develop an enactive approach to pain and the transition to chronicity. Two aspects are central to this project. First, the paper conceptualizes differences between acute and chronic pain, as well as the dynamic process of pain chronification, in terms of changes in the field of affordances. This is, in terms of the possibilities for action perceived by subjects in pain. As such, we aim to do justice to the lived experience of patients as well as the dynamic role of behavioral learning, neural reorganization, and socio-cultural practices in the generation and maintenance of pain. Second, we aim to show in which manners such an enactive approach may contribute to a comprehensive understanding of pain that avoids conceptual and methodological issues of reductionist and fragmented approaches. It proves particularly beneficial as a heuristic in pain therapy addressing the heterogenous yet dynamically intertwined aspects that may contribute to pain and its chronification.