In biology, morphogenesis refers to the set of processes that determine the shape and structure of a developing organism. The term comes from the Greek morphê (form) and genesis (creation): literally, the creation of forms. It is through morphogenesis that a fertilised cell becomes an embryo and then a complex organism, or that a seed gives rise to an entire tree.

Fritjof Capra, physicist and systems thinker, illustrates the phenomenon: the shape of a leaf or the structure of a bone does not emerge from a pre-established blueprint, but from the complex interaction between genes, cells and environment. In other words, form is born of relationship. This is not a simple assembly of parts, but a dynamic process in which each component influences the others until new properties appear.

By extension, morphogenesis is also invoked outside biology — to describe the formation of cities, for instance, or the development of knowledge. In psychology and the human sciences, the term designates more broadly the process by which new structures, new patterns or new forms of organisation emerge within human systems.

Every system, biological or social, seeks to maintain a certain balance. In systems thinking we speak of morphostasis for the forces that hold a system in its status quo, and of morphogenesis for the forces of change that carry it towards new forms.

The two dynamics coexist at all times. Family therapists quickly observed that struggling families oscillate between these poles. Faced with the crisis brought on by a child’s adolescence, a family may try to return to its former equilibrium by reinforcing existing rules, or it may take advantage of the chaos to let new, better-adapted rules and roles emerge.

Humberto Maturana showed how living systems, by moving away from their point of equilibrium, create new structures — inspiring therapists to see crisis not as a danger but as an opportunity for change.

In change work, this leads us to revalue the role of instability. Rather than avoiding crisis at all costs, the therapist or systemic practitioner can put it to constructive use. A well-known paradox in brief strategic therapy consists precisely in prescribing the symptom — temporarily amplifying the imbalance — in order to provoke a salutary reorganisation of the system.

Far from destructive chaos, morphogenesis here is constructive chaos: a transitional phase in which the old order breaks down to make way for a new one.

Morphogenesis goes hand in hand with emergence. A property is said to be emergent when it appears at the global level of a system without being directly inscribed in its basic elements. No single member of a team holds the organisation’s culture on their own, and yet a shared culture emerges from the interactions among all of them.

The work of psychologist Esther Thelen on child development offers a telling example. Thelen showed that skills such as walking result from the interaction of multiple factors — neurological maturation, lived experience, social environment — with no single master plan. A baby’s development is thus “the emergent product of many decentralised and local interactions occurring in real time”. The child builds new abilities out of the whole of their interactions, rather than following a predefined step-by-step programme.

Systems thinking therefore teaches that lasting change cannot simply be imposed from outside, piece by piece: it must emerge from within the system, through the loops of interaction between its elements. It is likewise impossible to predict exactly what form a human system will take as it evolves, just as one cannot guess the precise silhouette of a leaf from DNA alone. For the practitioner, this calls for humility and curiosity: the transformation of a person or a group often holds surprises no plan could fully anticipate.

If change is necessary, how can a system evolve without losing its deep identity? Maturana and Varela introduced the concept of autopoiesis to describe the capacity of living systems to produce and maintain themselves. An autopoietic system — a person, a family — continually self-organises to preserve its integrity while exchanging with its environment. As Maturana and Varela put it, such systems “produce their identity; they distinguish themselves from their environment”.

This does not imply immobility, quite the contrary. Maturana distinguishes a system’s organisation — the essential relations that define its nature — from its structure — its concrete components and their arrangements. The key discovery is that structure can change while organisation is preserved.

If, on the other hand, structural changes exceed certain limits and alter the basic organisation, the system may lose its identity: this is radical identity transformation, sometimes reaching the point of disintegration. Think of a person who no longer recognises themselves after an overwhelming life upheaval, or of an organisation whose culture has become unrecognisable following a total overhaul.

In practice, supporting morphogenesis therefore means finding the balance between novelty and continuity: what can be changed without altering the identity bedrock that lets the client, or the system, feel coherent?