Generic principles
The conditions that make self-organisation in change processes more likely.
The generic principles are derived from synergetics and rest on the principles of self-organisation. They describe the conditions that should be fulfilled in order for self-organisation in human change processes to take place.
What is distinctive about this concept is the shift it brings about. Where the instructive model of treatment asks "which technique yields which effect", thinking in generic principles asks "which conditions make it more likely that a system will reorder itself". The outcome is not pursued directly; rather the field in which a new order can arise.
Creating conditions instead of forcing outcomes
Schiepek has formulated a number of these principles, which may be freely summarised as: provide stability and safety; identify the patterns that matter; set energy and motivation in motion; attend to the meaning things hold for this particular person; and attune interventions to the right moment — the phase in which the system is receptive to change. They are not techniques but preconditions, not recipes but a stance.
To our impression this concept makes explicit something experienced clinicians often already do intuitively. It offers a language to account for why one sometimes precisely does not intervene, why timing weighs more heavily than technique, and why the same protocol flourishes with one person and withers with another. It connects, in a sense, the science of self-organisation with the craft of the consulting room.