Buckminster Fuller said this, gesturing to the idea that living entities seem to be a matter of “doing” not “being”.
A lingust and systems theorist was a guest lecturer on Thursday for the course I teach. He mentioned that he is wary of psychology because it focuses on the individual as an island when, he feels, people are constituded by the systems of their environment. Indeed, Johanna Macy in her book Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems shows us how our “selves” are not at all solid but are constituted, in the moment, of the interaction of systems and environmental factors. Systems theorist Leon Brilloun compares living creatures to a flame. A flame takes in and puts out energy in order to remain a flame. The flame itself is an emergent property of the coming together of different systems. Our “selves” and bodies are the same. We are the expression of an energy exchange that results in a body and consciousness.
But, does psychotherapy really only focus on the individual? Do family systems and/or narrative therapy begin to address this by looking at a person in the context of their family or culture? How do we see a client in the context of systems and still help that person get to be as choiceful as they need to be? Could a mindfulness practice help as part of a way to recognize how we are constituted by the world around us, but at the same time can begin to make choices away from the struggle to reify the self and to move into yielding to change?
