There are several uses of the term "Systemic Practice". A broad and simple definition of Systemic Practice might be:

1. An Inclusive Way of Working With People

Systemic Practice is any way of working that aims to bring out, share, and respect the views and stories of all involved, so to integrate a constructive way forward. Characteristically that very broad description fits Family Therapy, but it also fits many other human activities!

Used in relation to Family Therapy ideas and methods, Systemic Practice means other things. It can mean:

2. Applying Family Systems Ideas to Other Professions Than Family Therapy

The simple application of the same family-systems principles and approach, as above, to other helping professions other than Family Therapy itself, that work with people and their life problems. That would include psychology, psychiatry, family doctors, couselling, nursing, social work, and all the psychotherapies.

This, and the first meanings are the main ones on this website. This second one is also what AFT's strapline long name means: "The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice in the UK". Nick's articles on Forallthat about the demystification of Family Therapy into less monolithic, more ordinary, elements have been entirely for this purpose - eg The Potential of Systemic Practice (for Social Work) which was given at the Forallthat launch meeting in Stirling; and Family Therapy: The Rest of the Picture.

3. An Alternative Broader Term for Family Therapy

Family Therapy characteristically tackles a certain class of problems, mental health or behavioural ones, that mental health services typically claim as their clientele and expertise. But everyone agrees that such a family systems approach is validly applied to groups other than "Families" and activities other than those that are comfortably called "Therapy". So the term Systemic Practice may be used as a suitable alternative to Family Therapy to denote its broader scope. Changing "Systemic" for "Family" and/or "Therapist" for "Consultant" or somesuch, may mean simply that the professional has this broader view of their work. But on the other hand, those titles may go with:

4. A More Specialist Development of Systemic Ideas Within Family Therapy

Systemic Practice may mean the specialist development of systemic theory and methods within a more pure and often high-flying academic discourse. This may go with variations of the term Family Therapist similar to those above, such as "Systemic Psychotherapist" or "Systemic Consultant".

5. A More Sociological Perspective

If families and small human organisations are complex, then sociologically sized ones must be even more so! Thinking about change within social groups therefore gives rise, for example, to a Journal of Action Research and Systemic Practice.

And A Note on the Meaning of "System":

The etymological origin of the word "system" means something that has "set-up-ness". That is, the cybernetic view of a grouping of things as if set up for a purpose where there is feedback to keep things on track, as there is when a person uses a rope and pulley, or a bicycle. That is the word originally referred - at least in an "as if" way - to intentional matters, even though we can also analyse a predicament and the factors that go to make it, even if they were certainly not intended by anyone (eg a football crowd disaster, and in many families with problems). In the last example, the systemic analysis is in order to intentionally stop or change the undesired system functioning.

Nowadays the word "system" implies a holistic approach, an interest in the whole "set-up" and the wider functioning of the system. Physicians got hold of the word "systemic" before we did, as in "systemic therapy" which for them means giving medicine throughout the whole body not applying it locally, eg steroid pills rather than cream for a skin rash. That surprisingly parallels our interpersonal approach to presented problems quite closely, doesn't it?!

nick.child@virgin.net