& Goldberg, 1991, p. 5). In dealing with either the troubled individual or the disrupted family this historical approach was based on the assumption that unidirectional, linear chains of causation were the source of difficulties. But in the systems-based approach "causation is viewed as a circular process of action and reaction" and defining a particular event as the problem's point of origin is seen as "an arbitrary punctuation in an ongoing interactional stream of events" (Hansen, 1983, p. 121).
In a system the components covary, "with each unit constrained by or dependent on the state of the other units," and because "the components interact so that each influences and is in turn influenced by other component parts" these processes produce a whole--a system that is greater than "the sum of its interdependent parts" (Goldberg & Goldberg, 1991, p. 35). The mechanisms by which the various types of influence take place are those of feedback and information processing which are best understood as the processes that enable family homeostasis. Homeostasis is a term derived from physiology where it refers to the body's tendency to maintain internal stability in the face of changes in the environment. In the context of the family it refers to "those internal, ongoing, sustaining, dynamically interactional processes that take place within a family and help assure internal balance" (Goldberg & Goldberg, p. 38).
Feedback, based on the notion of systems' inputs and outputs, refers to the reinsertion of information about how a system is working into the system so that it can monitor its own performance. This allows the system "to alter, correct, and ultimately govern [its] functioning" (Goldberg & Goldberg, 1991, p. 41). There can be both negative and positive feedback, the former being the ty
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