Cybernetics was born in the 1940s under the impetus of scientists such as Norbert Wiener, who sought to understand the mechanisms of control and communication in living systems and machines.

This interdisciplinary field, which came out of the famous Macy conferences, brought together mathematicians, engineers, biologists, anthropologists such as Gregory Bateson, and other pioneering minds. Its key concept is feedback: the loops of circular interaction through which a system regulates itself by responding to the effects of its own actions.

In the context of human systems — families, teams, organisations — systems thinking took up these ideas from the 1950s onwards. The first family therapists, inspired by cybernetics and by Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s systems theory, understood the family as a system seeking to maintain its internal balance. They observed that an individual’s symptom, such as a child’s problem behaviour, could serve to stabilise family functioning. The family system would resist deep change for fear of losing its balance, favouring repetitive “solutions” that maintain the status quo.

Over the decades it became clear that this initial view was incomplete. A major conceptual turn came with the emergence of second-order cybernetics, sometimes called the cybernetics of cybernetics.

In first-order cybernetics, the practitioner stands like a puppeteer at the controls of a system conceived as a black box to be adjusted. The observer is outside, pulling the strings to correct the system’s internal functioning. They take a position above it. Their aim: to control or correct the system from outside, applying solutions to make it work properly. Malfunctions are to be repaired so that balance can be restored.

In this approach the practitioner readily adopts the stance of an expert. A first-order family therapist analyses the family the way an engineer analyses a machine: by identifying the faulty part or the weak link. A child with a behavioural disorder may be seen as the symptom of a family imbalance to be corrected. The therapist makes an external diagnosis, then proposes prescribed solutions. The relationship is hierarchical: the practitioner holds the knowledge and the repair plan, the family is the patient.

The watchword here is control. The family or group is seen as chiefly needing to recover its homeostasis by eliminating deviations. The practitioner aims to be neutral and objective, ideally able to observe without influencing, like a scientist behind a one-way mirror. If change does not occur, it can be attributed to the system’s resistance rather than to the approach itself.

This approach has borne fruit in many situations and provided a valuable foundation. We owe to it, in particular, our understanding of interactional rules and of the negative feedback that keeps problems in place. It has also shown its limits, especially in complex human contexts where the unforeseen and the subjective play a crucial role.

Second-order cybernetics marks a radical shift of stance: the observer is included in the observed system. Rather than pulling strings from outside, they take part in the game, like a dancer interacting with their partners.

To borrow the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster’s formula, we move from the “cybernetics of observed systems” to the “cybernetics of observing systems”. We study not only the system, but also how we ourselves, as observers, form part of the picture. The mirror no longer has a single reflecting face: it has two, each returning the other’s image.

Applied to human systems, this perspective acknowledges that the practitioner inevitably influences the system they work with, and is influenced by it in return. Rather than claiming absolute neutrality, it is better to be aware of this and to use that influence constructively.

In second-order family therapy, the therapist co-creates the reality of the session with the family. There is no longer the family system on one side and the therapist above it on the other: there is an encompassing whole in which family and therapist together form a new system for the duration of the intervention. The professional becomes a co-actor of change, sharing knowledge and responsibility with the people they support.

In practice this changes a great deal. The practitioner is no longer a repairer of faulty parts, but a facilitator of new interactions and meanings. Their role is to help the human system generate its own solutions by stimulating its endogenous resources. The move is from expertise to co-construction. A second-order family therapist will readily use circular questioning, inspired by the Milan School, to bring the family to exchange points of view rather than delivering a verdict ex cathedra.

From the system’s own point of view, second-order cybernetics emphasises its evolutionary autonomy. Where the first saw mainly the tendency towards homeostasis, the second recognises living systems’ capacity for morphogenesis: changing structure and evolving towards new balances. Under the effect of perturbations, a human system can reorganise itself in unpredictable and creative ways rather than fall apart.

Ilya Prigogine’s work on chaos and that of Maturana and Varela on autopoiesis illustrate this well: a family, as an autopoietic system, holds within itself the power to maintain and renew itself through its own interactions. The practitioner’s role is then no longer to control that system from outside — that would be futile, like trying to choreograph a dance without hearing the music — but to dance with it, to act in resonance so that a new and more workable order can emerge.

The practitioner adopts an attitude of decentring: leaving behind their own view of the world in order to understand another’s, and recognising that their own perception is filtered by their history and their patterns. This epistemological humility joins Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism, which holds that the reality we perceive is partly our own construction.

The practitioner thus becomes an apprentice of the system as much as an expert. They are curious about what is happening, they engage authentically, and they even use their emotions as a tool for understanding. Where first-order cybernetics advocated emotional distance, the second values embodied empathy.