Generic principles
The conditions that make self-organisation in processes of change more likely.
The generic principles are derived from synergetics and rest on the principles of self-organisation. They describe the conditions that make it more likely that self-organisation can take place in human processes of change.
What makes this concept interesting is the shift in the question being asked. Whereas an instructive model of treatment asks which technique produces which effect, thinking in terms of generic principles asks which conditions make it more likely that a system will reorganise itself. Attention then goes less to the outcome itself and more to the circumstances in which a new order can arise.
Creating conditions rather than forcing outcomes
Schiepek has formulated a number of these principles. Summarised freely, they concern offering stability and safety, recognising the patterns that matter, engaging energy and motivation, attending to the meaning that things have for this particular person, and attuning interventions to the moment at which the system is receptive to change. They are preconditions rather than techniques, and they call for an attitude rather than a recipe.
In our impression, this concept makes explicit what experienced clinicians often already do intuitively. It offers a language for accounting for why one sometimes deliberately refrains from intervening, why timing sometimes weighs more heavily than technique, and why the same protocol flourishes with one person and fails to take hold with another. In this way it builds a bridge between the science of self-organisation and the craft of the consulting room.