Podcast TCCR #006 - Open systems, feedback, and autopoiesis: Contributions from systems theory

This episode delves into one of the backbone components of the "Cognosystemic Theory of Human Psychosocial Relational Construction" (TCCR): the contributions of General Systems Theory. Through the concepts of open systems, feedback, and autopoiesis, the episode unfolds a dynamic, organizational, and adaptive understanding of psychosocial reality—crucial for intervening in Social Work from a more complex, relational, and transformative perspective.

A Systemic Legacy in Social Work

Since its beginnings, Social Work has drawn from systems theory to analyze the interactions between individuals and their environments. The TCCR acknowledges this legacy but expands it radically: the focus is no longer merely on observing structures and functions, but on interpreting social systems as narrative, cognitive, and symbolic networks that evolve, resist, and transform through continuous dialogue with their context.

Open Systems: Permeability and Transformation

An open system is one that maintains constant exchange with its environment. In the TCCR, narrative systems are open systems: they interact with other stories, contexts, and symbolic structures. These exchanges occur through cognosystemic memes—the minimal narrative information units that allow adaptation, conflict, or evolution. This openness is essential to understanding phenomena such as cultural change, identity transformation, or professional intervention processes.

Feedback: Stability and Change

This episode explains how systems self-regulate through two types of feedback:

- Negative feedback: reinforces system stability and continuity by preserving its boundaries and central narratives.

- Positive feedback: introduces tension and fosters change, enabling the emergence of new narratives and structural transformation.

Within the TCCR, this logic helps explain how certain discourses persist for decades, while others collapse or are replaced in times of crisis or social conflict.

Autopoiesis: Systems That Narrate Themselves

Drawing on the work of Maturana and Varela, the episode introduces the concept of autopoiesis as the capacity of a system to produce and reproduce itself. In the TCCR framework, narrative systems are also autopoietic: they sustain, modify, and regenerate themselves through their internal narratives. This explains how cultures, identities, or institutions can persist over time without losing their transformative capacity.

The Cognosystemic Narrative System

This episode introduces a key concept: the Cognosystem. The TCCR posits that psychosocial reality is composed of interconnected narrative systems, organized hierarchically and governed by their own mechanisms of regulation and adaptation. Each of these subsystems receives and emits narrative memes, experiences feedback loops, and undergoes processes of preservation or rupture. This perspective systematizes the complexity of the psychosocial without reducing it to isolated variables or linear explanations.

What Does This Mean for Social Work?

Thinking in systemic terms enables Social Work to:

- Identify closed or rigid narrative systems that perpetuate distress or exclusion.

- Design interventions that introduce new narratives capable of generating relational and symbolic transformation.

- Understand that social change is neither instantaneous nor linear, but the result of multiple interactions and feedback processes.

This episode concludes with a key affirmation: systems theory provides the TCCR with the language and structure to conceptualize narratives as living, organized, and ever-evolving processes.

Listen and discover how this perspective can profoundly transform the way you understand and intervene in psychosocial reality through Social Work.

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