Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Homeostasis refers to the stabilization of the state of living organisms by the maintenance of the various physiological variables within constant limits (regulatory mechanisms). Its complement is homeorhesis , which describes the stabilization of the flows of organisms, the stabilization of their temporal trajectories and thus their time-extended course of change through the non-linear fluctuation of physiological variables (Waddington, 1975; see also chreod ). Though Cannon introduced the concept of homeostasis in 1929, many years after it was first prefigured by Claude Bernard (1865) (‘constancy of the internal milieu’), it seems that its general application to systems only became apparent with the writings of Wiener ( cybernetics in which homeostasis is associated with negative feedback ), von Bertalanffy (1947) and Weiss (see Piaget, 1976). Don Jackson (1957) was the first to identify the homeostatic mechanisms at work in family groups. Psychotherapeutic action undertaken with an isolated individual creates feedback within the other members of the family system which leads, possibly unknown to them, to an attempt to return to the initial state. In flexible family systems (where the symptomatology is, essentially, neurotic), this attempt will take into account the context and the temporal evolution of the family; in rigid systems, the slightest attempt at change causes possibly ... log in or subscribe to read full text