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IN THIS PAPER, I WILL ARGUE for the advantages—or to put it more strongly, the necessity—of a systems theory for psychoanalysis. I will attempt to show, through both clinical and research data, the means by which a properly defined systems theory significantly widens the scope of psychoanalytic explanation. I will present, too, some ideas on the means by which systemic thinking can contribute to and be a part of the development of psychoanalysis as a science. Finally, I will indicate some of the directions toward which psychoanalysis might move in terms of the systems theory to be proposed here.
I am not proposing a theory designed to replace or restate present psychoanalytic theory; I am myself a trained psychoanalyst, and my basis of operations in psychoanalytic theory—its conception of psychological structure, drives and defenses, conflict and resolution, self and other, and so forth. Rather, I believe that psychodynamics accounts for or illuminates the implications of only a portion of psychoanalytic data and phenomenology, and that the addition of systemic conceptualizations and understanding will greatly enhance the explanatory power of psychoanalytic propositions. That is, the present offering is part of an expanded theory of psychoanalysis which postulates two fields of force operating in the analytic interaction—psychodynamic and systems dynamic.
Indeed, I will argue that psychodynamic propositions cannot generate predictive research, except in the most global and general terms possible, whereas the combination of psychodynamic and systems dynamic propositions can be meaningfully and probabilistically predictive, even at the present stage of crude beginnings.
Of course, this is by no means the first effort to introduce