Abstract
The notion of eigen-value, contributed by von Foerster to the field of cybernetics, can be usefully applied to the understanding of the transformative process of narratives in therapy. When problem-sustaining narratives are destabilized during therapy, they "seek" new steady states, they become more sensitive to, and craving for, the incorporation of new elements or logic provided throughout the therapeutic conversation. These fit-hungry, unstable, incompletely formatted stories end up gelling around new eigen-values. The new configuration will replace the problem-sustaining story with stories that are problem-free or, at least, problem-solving.
Prologue
I am honored and overjoyed by the opportunity to participate in this Festschrift in which we render homage to Heinz von Foerster and acknowledge his vast contribution to cybernetics and his influence in so many other fields.
I wish to offer you, Heinz, a wild flower of an idea generated by your intellectual seed.
...But first, a disquisition on etymology
Some ten years ago, in Brussels, in the course of a keynote address delivered by Heinz in a Congress on Systems, Families, and all that jazz, I heard for the first time his erudite lucubration about the etymology of the words "epistemology", "understanding" and "Verstehen" and their similar way of denoting the relationship to knowledge entailed in the position of the knower (v.Foerster 1985).
Epistemology, Heinz reminded us, derives from the Greek, and is composed by a prefix, epi, to mean "up" or "above", and the word histamein, "to stand". Therefore, it could well be translated as "standing above", or "upper-standing", an interesting position, as those proficient in the English language prefer to stand under, that is, to understand. In turn, he also noted, the German word for the operation of understanding, Verstehen, is composed by the prefix ver--change, loss, reversal-- and the word stehen, "to stand". He proposes then that a literal translation of the German word could be un-standing. Upper-standing, under-standing, or un-standing, these words concur in placing the subject at a meta-, recursively observant position, removed from where he/she stands and thus acquiring a vantage point from which to grasp a view of the subject as a whole. (It is in that paper, mind you, that Heinz noted the usual rendition of epistemology as "theory of knowledge", and swiftly re-translated that into "theory of understanding" and, as theories bring understanding, into understanding understanding, second-order understanding, U2, one of his trademark logos.)
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