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Second-Order Change in Couple and Family Therapy

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Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy

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Name of Concept

Second-Order Change

Synonyms

Change of change; Meta-change; Trait change

Introduction

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, hosted a variety of professionals from multiple disciplines, including human communication research, psychiatry, and anthropology. This was before “couple, marriage, and family therapy” was a distinct discipline. Several original members of the MRI team shared their understandings of change, specifically second-order change, with the broader community of helping professionals in 1974, through their book, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. There, they describe second-order change in relation to another type of change, first-order change.

Theoretical Context for Second-Order Change

According to group theory, which is a theory of relationships between elements and wholes, the first type of change (i.e., first-order/state change) happens within a group, where afterward, the...

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References

  • Ashby, R. W. (1956). An introduction to cybernetics. London: Chapman & Hall.

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  • Russell, B. (1908). Mathematical logic as based on the theory of types. American Journal of Mathematics, 30, 222–262.

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  • Von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General systems theory: Foundation, development, applications. New York: Braziller.

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  • Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Rachael A. Dansby

  2. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Jason B. Whiting

Authors
  1. Rachael A. Dansby
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  2. Jason B. Whiting
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rachael A. Dansby .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jay L. Lebow

  2. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Anthony L. Chambers

  3. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Douglas C. Breunlin

Section Editor information

  1. University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Eli Karam

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Dansby, R.A., Whiting, J.B. (2019). Second-Order Change in Couple and Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_307

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