The human pyramid

To put it simply, the systemic approach is a current that proposes taking a step back to gain height in interpreting human phenomena. It opens in particular onto the idea that we can suffer without this being due to a psychological problem or a personal dysfunction, but to a relational phenomenon in which we are caught, sometimes without knowing it. To use a metaphor, we could say that every human group — a family, an organization, a company… — is like a human pyramid.

As a member of several groups yourself, you belong to just as many human pyramids. Although you do not perceive it directly, your actions bring about a change in the structure of the whole, however imperceptible it may seem, and can produce consequences for a person at the other end of the pyramid. Imagine that one of the members gets a cramp: they will inevitably shift their position, which will naturally lead every other person in the structure to adjust their own to compensate for the imbalance — every system always tending towards equilibrium. Thus, some will bear a little more weight on one shoulder, others will have to contort themselves to hold the whole together, while some will notice nothing at all. It all depends on their place in the system.

Shifting the way we look

In the same way, in a family, a company or an institution, the behaviours of some always have consequences for the attitudes of others. And if you follow this idea, it is possible that some people suffer from a situation caused — without their even suspecting it — by a relational phenomenon played out at the other end of the pyramid. Our society is built in such a way that we then tend to target our actions at the person in distress, looking for factors inherent to their person, or seeking the causes of their unease in their private life, their work, their childhood, their unconscious… whereas if we shift our gaze, if we observe the complex relational context in which they find themselves, the solution sometimes appears so obvious.

A “de-pathologizing” approach

One of the aspects I find most interesting in this approach is the fact that it strikes me as “de-pathologizing”. It builds on people’s resources and abilities to solve their own problems, rather than defining them by a psychopathological diagnosis that confines them to an identity of being ill, deviant, dysfunctional. So many people have gone to see cohorts of therapists with the ambition of finding what was “dysfunctional” in them so as to correct it, or to learn to “live with it”. And guess what: when we look for something, our mind is built in such a way that we always end up finding it a bone to gnaw on — we always end up finding the signs we came looking for. It is a cognitive bias well known to psychologists working in research.

So, how can we shift the way we look? How can we understand what is happening to us, or what is wearing down the people around us, by taking a step back and trying to grasp the relational stakes in which they are caught? In the video below — in French — I let you discover my reading recommendations for an initiation into this current of thought, with references that are easy to approach and fascinating.