PART II. WHAT: Functional Systems Facilitation as a Living System

“A clear shared purpose, well-defined rules, a transparent format. Participants striving for maximum honesty and openness. The sincere expression of experience — we speak only about ourselves, we try to voice the feelings we are having in the present moment. Acceptance, the renunciation of shoulds and expectations, dialogue without criticism, judgment, imposition, ‘curing,’ or ‘teaching.’ Personal practice — we do not demand open dialogue from the other participants.”

— from my book “Open Dialogue: A Key to the Conscious Management of Health” (2018)

In Part I we saw why Functional Systems Facilitation is needed: the quality of our social bonds shapes the quality of our life and health, yet these bonds are hard to rebuild in an ordinary environment, because a brain running on its old predictive models tends to revert to its old automatic patterns. What is needed is a special environment — one with a clear purpose, well-defined rules, and a protected space.

Now let us look at what FSF actually is as such an environment: what its three basic principles are, what its internal architecture of “three channels” is, what its recurring structural unit — the systemquant — looks like, and what fundamental idea underlies all of it: purpose determines perception.