glossary
The glossary is constantly being expanded. Suggestions for explanatory terms and explanations of the content are welcome. Please feel free to write to us; we look forward to your suggestions or questions.
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The aversion/avoidance system (BIS) (see Petzold & Henke (2023): "Motivation. Fundamentals for a Successful Life") is one of three motivational systems that has a neurophysiological association with the fear center in the amygdala. It is triggered when a person assesses a situation as threatening. Then, particularly via the hormonal stress axis and the sympathetic nervous system, it creates a state of tension and metabolism that enables rapid averting of the danger, fighting, fleeing, or playing dead, or even caring and connecting. This inner attitude is called the averting mode. In the averting mode, the organism is entirely geared toward averting the threat or turning away from it. This includes its feelings and thoughts.
Adaptation means the adjustment of organisms to their environment and/or supersystems. In evolutionary theory, materialistically oriented biologists and evolutionary researchers define adaptation as the selection of genetically adaptable, or "fit," organisms. More recent perspectives, incorporating findings from epigenesis and chaos research, also consider a mutual adaptation of living beings to the coherence of their supersystems. On the one hand, the living beings co-shape their environments, and on the other, genes are modified through epigenetic influences and symbioses.
Angina mentalis is a new term for a state of mind in a fear bubble, for a narrowed thinking driven by fear in the aversion mode. During the coronavirus crisis, we observed angina mentalis both in scientists and politicians who had dedicated their thinking entirely to averting the virus threat, as well as in lateral thinkers who viewed all measures taken by governments and virologists as a threat to freedom and health.
The approach system (Behavioral Activating/Approach System BAS) is the motivational system that most people experience as positive. It is activated when we have a pleasurable need and/or perceive a correspondingly attractive object. It is linked to the so-called internal reward system, the dopaminergic system, with a center in the nucleus accumbens, the pleasure center. It is often seen as the counterpart to the aversion system. Both systems can also reinforce each other. One example is the fear-related pleasure experienced when watching crime dramas. The basic attitude of the organism, which, with a motivating feeling of pleasure, causes or enables an approach to attractive goals such as food, sensual or sexual proximity, is called the approach mode.
An international working group of geologists calls the Anthropocene a new geochronological epoch in which humans have become one of the most important influencing factors on the biological, geological and atmospheric processes on Earth: a new geological era, a "geology of humanity."
Antonovsky, Aaron (1923–1994) was an Israeli-American medical sociologist and stress researcher who coined the term salutogenesis in the 1970s. Since the 1960s, in addition to teaching, he was primarily active in stress research and investigating the latent functions of healthcare institutions in Jerusalem. In this work, he discovered what he considered a miracle: that some Jewish women who had survived Nazi concentration camps had been able to build healthy new lives for themselves. From then on, he dedicated his work to this miracle of staying healthy.
Attractor is a term from chaos research and describes an attractive target state in a dynamically changing system, toward which the system tends to converge. A simple example is the point at which a swinging pendulum comes to rest. When a pendulum swings between several magnets, chaotic movements can occur, but these ultimately settle in a calculable target region (deterministic chaos). When dealing with complex targets, chaos research refers to strange attractors. When dealing with living beings, and especially with human development processes, I use the term attractors to describe the complex target information that motivates them (consciously and unconsciously). Attractants have an attractive effect, originating from a static quality (like Aristotle's "unmoved mover") and, in their complexity, elude precise mathematical calculation. However, since the ending "-tor," as in attractor, denotes an active and masculine quality, this term is not appropriate for the phenomenon described in human life, even though it intends to describe the same principle.
The attraction principle is the principle of emergence or creation, which states that energy and mass move toward attractors (see Petzold: "Communicating Creatively – Embarking on a New Dimension of Thinking"). This occurs in chaotic, not precisely predictable ways—toward new dynamic states of order and structures.
Autonomy means self-governance: A system like a human being functions and regulates itself according to its own laws. Autonomy does not mean that a human being does or decides everything alone. Human autonomy includes living, feeling, and thinking in relationships; it includes being a social, cultural, and possibly even spiritual being.
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Need communication: Successful communication of one's most important needs is the foundation for a person's healthy development. An infant is existentially dependent on their caregivers understanding their needs and responding satisfactorily. As long as they cannot yet speak, their emotions serve to express their needs. As a person matures, they learn to satisfy some needs directly and without the help of others. This, too, can be understood as need communication with the respective objects. Thus, in general, need communication forms the core of the psychodynamics of healthy development.
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Chaos research is the study of how order can emerge from chaos in dynamic systems (and all observable systems are dynamic and permeable), and how chaos can emerge from chaos. Chaos theory encompasses mathematical and physical theories describing systems that are bounded by laws, but in which small changes in initial conditions cause a nonlinear (e.g., exponential) growth of disturbances. The behavior of such systems leads to the formation of chaotic structures and is unpredictable in the long term. Deterministic chaos describes a process that appears chaotic, but whose outcome is determined (by a possibly calculable attractor).
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Entropy was introduced by Clausius in 1854 as a measure of disorder to determine the reversibility of a thermodynamic process in a system. Today, there is a modern formulation of the second law of thermodynamics: "An isolated system never spontaneously changes into a significantly more improbable one." The increase in entropy is even said to determine the direction of the arrow of time: We are therefore moving toward heat death in the chaos of the universe. How is this reconcilable with the fact that evolution on Earth, over approximately 3 billion years, has produced ever more complex order (= negentropy) in living organisms – completely contrary to the second law of thermodynamics? Physicists say that this negentropy in our biosphere is only possible at the expense of the increase in entropy of the environment, including the sun. So, we humans were only able to develop our complex structure by absorbing order (here = information) from our environment, but that overall entropy remains the same or increases. This mainstream scientific opinion, that the universe is ultimately a closed system and therefore its entropy is increasing, and that the irreversible direction of the passage of time can therefore be derived from the increase in entropy, can neither be proven nor disproven, since we can expand the spatial and temporal boundaries of the system at will and cannot definitively measure them. However, from the perspective of our human experience – and the second law of relativity is supposedly a principle of experience(!) – it seems more likely that the increase in observable complex order (= evolution) determines the arrow of time, rather than the increase in entropy, as physics claims. A balance between the two tendencies, however, seems equally likely. In that case, order would have nothing to do with a fundamental arrow of time. There would probably be a constant alternation, a circular process of chaos and order, in which entropy could remain constant over long periods of time and across large spaces. (see also 'Science and Vision' by Th. Petzold in DER MENSCH issue 38, www.salutogenese-dachverband.de, and 'The Decisive Factor' 2000, Verlag Gesunde Entwicklung)
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Healthy development is an approach to the attractiveness of health. There are as many healthy developments as there are people. Each approach is individual and unique. It also involves three motivational attitudes with complex behavior patterns.
According to the WHO definition of 1946, health is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion of 1986 adds: "To achieve complete physical, mental and social well-being, it is necessary that both individuals and groups are able to meet their needs, realize and realize their aspirations and desires, and cope with and transform their environment. In this sense, health is to be understood as an essential component of everyday life and not as a primary goal in life. Health represents a positive concept that emphasizes the importance of social and individual resources for health as much as physical abilities." According to Antonovsky, health is not a state, but a process (health-illness continuum).
According to Antonovsky, the "health-illness continuum" is intended to overcome the dichotomy, the absolute separation between healthy and sick, and describe how a person always has both sick and healthy parts within themselves, thus being somewhere on the imaginary "continuum" between healthy and sick. Elsewhere, Antonovsky calls for a "multidimensional" view of sick and healthy. We meet this demand in our dynamics of self-regulation (see below).
Health motivation refers to the pursuit of a harmonious life, of holistic, coherent functioning of the body, emotions, and thoughts in their multidimensional environment. It is to be understood as an aspect of coherence motivation. (See TD Petzold: "Health motivation as a basis for doctor-patient cooperation?" in ZfA 2/23)
Goal-setting involves identifying and agreeing on goals between partners. It serves to explicitly define attractive life and action goals, as well as goals for cooperation, thereby strengthening motivation (see also SalKom® GOALSETTING).
I define a good life as a life on the path to coherence and harmony. Thus, viewed from the outside, every life is a good life because it unfolds toward coherence according to its own capabilities and external conditions. Subjectively, we evaluate it as good when we consciously experience this striving for coherence. Thinking about a good life is about consciously remembering our inherent striving, our evolutionary attractiveness, and not about judging life as good or bad. By communicating our attractive ideas of the good life to as many people as possible, we can cultivate our cooperation in co-creating a good life. With a successful life, the focus is more on one's own participation in shaping life.
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Heterostasis describes an imbalance within a system (see homeostasis).
Heuristics (like heuristic) refers to the "study of finding" solutions and insights. In the context of health sciences, an intentional heuristic is particularly needed to approach attractiveness. This can be practiced very practically in health circles, goal-setting, and salutogenic reflecting teams, as well as in interdisciplinary groups in health sciences.
Homeostasis or self-regulation describes the ability of a system to maintain itself in a stable (=functional) state through feedback within certain limits; for example, the human body, which maintains its physiological functions in balance through control circuits (blood pressure, body temperature, pH value of the blood, etc.).
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Information comes from the Latin informare, which originally meant to form, to shape. So here information is used based on this original meaning as that which brings energy/mass into form. Matter is formed, i.e. informed, mass/energy. Energy and information remain the basic entities of all existence. In this most general sense, information has the meaning of mind – but more from an observer's perspective, whereas mind is spoken of more from an internal perspective. Thus, information shapes the neural connections in our brains as well as connections in computers, where it becomes data. When someone retrieves it, the data can also inform. Whether there is a mind beyond information – a mind that cannot shape our brain activity – we cannot say, since we can only think about what informs our brain.
Tomasello (2010, 2014) sees intentionality as the directionality of an intention or purpose as fundamental to human cooperation. Even very young children can resonate with and share the intentionality of their caregiver. This shared intentionality then becomes a shared motivation for cooperation. When cooperation is no longer working well, examining intentionality is often helpful.
Intentional resonance space arises when people communicate with each other with shared and thus common intentionality. They form a co-creative system, a space for co-creativity.
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Coherence: – Coherence: connection, clarity, agreement. – Coherence in physics: 'connected' wave formations that can create interference (amplification, cancellation); coherence is a prerequisite for resonance. – Coherence in humans: harmonious connectedness, well-being, sense of harmony, order. – Systems theory: A system is characterized by its own inherent coherence.
Sense of coherence is the most common translation of Antonovsky's 'sense of coherence' SOC. Since 'sense of coherence' contains both the perceptual meaning 'sense of coherence' and a descriptive 'feeling of coherence', it seems sensible to explore both meanings. Here is Antonovsky's definition from 1987 (translated in 1997 by Alexa Franke): "I can now redefine SOC as follows: The SOC (sense of coherence) is a global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring, and yet dynamic feeling of confidence that the stimuli arising in the course of one's life from the internal and external environment are structured, predictable, and explainable; that one has the resources available to meet the demands posed by these stimuli; and
these requirements are challenges that are worth effort and commitment.” (Antonovsky 1997 (1987) p. 36,
If we now distinguish between a perceptual 'sense of coherence' and a 'feeling of coherence', then the feeling of coherence arises from the experience of coherence in the physical exchange with the environment (>'manageability'), in the social-emotional exchange with other people (>'significance') and in the cognitive exchange with cultural carriers (>'understandability').
Coherence motivation is the overriding intrinsic striving for coherence, fit, and consistency within the individual and in their external relationships. This motivates a living being to repeatedly experience coherence, find their coherence mode, and act toward consistency. Another motivational system can be activated for these actions.
The sense of coherence is our inherent, innate ability to perceive coherence (a harmonious connection) between ourselves and our environment. According to recent neurophysiological findings, the sense of coherence likely describes the overarching function of the central nervous system. This sense of coherence is the prerequisite for the development of a sense of coherence. Sense of coherence:
The five (or more) sense organs are outgrowths of the central nervous system that perceive the inconsistency and incoherence of light, sound, temperature, chemistry, and mechanics (pressure, etc.).
The proprioceptive and visceroceptive systems serve the internal perception of coherence.
The CNS evaluates incoming information in terms of consistency/coherence (frontal brain (prefrontal cortex PFC).
'6th sense' discovered in 2005: activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) at the upper end of the frontal lobe briefly warns us of danger when there is inconsistency between (unconscious) perceptions and experiences.
The CNS causes people to create coherence ("congruence and consistency" (Grawe, Klaus 2004, neuropsychotherapy)) in their environment.
On a human everyday level, communication defines collective action in which thoughts, ideas, knowledge, insights, and experiences are shared and newly created. Communication in this sense is based on the use of signs in speech, gestures, facial expressions, writing, images, or music. Communication is the reception, exchange, and transmission of information between two or more people. When describing social contexts, communication can be viewed as a process in which several living beings solve problems together. A history of shared life practices is seen as the basis for the possibility of communicative problem-solving. Language, for example, develops from shared life practices.
In this book, cooperation is used to describe different types of collaboration toward a common goal: firstly, for any form of interaction between subsystems within a system, and secondly, as specifically human, cooperative and voluntary cooperation. Based on the research of Tomasello (2010, 2012, 2020), four governing criteria are assumed for the latter: 1. Cooperation partners engage with each other. 2. They have a common goal, a common intentionality. 3. They coordinate their different roles (preferably voluntarily). 4. They help each other when one needs help.
Illness is a disorder of physical, cognitive, social and/or mental functions that negatively influences the performance or well-being of a living being, subjectively or in a way that is clearly perceptible to different people, or that is expected to have such an influence.
Culture, as a dimension of life, refers to structures at the self-organization stage of human beings, which are essentially characterized by their language and other sign systems such as money, images, etc., by explicit rules and laws, organizations, and the division of labor. Nations, language areas, or even smaller-scale structures can be considered cultures or cultural organizations. Cultural evolution is understood as the development of cultures toward greater complexity of the division of labor and other relationships. In globalization, cultural evolution is evident today, culminating in the transition to the global dimension that appears in the Anthropocene.
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Life dimensions (LD, see also system dimensions and ego dimensions) are dimensions of complexity of our relationships in our environments: in the physical-chemical life dimension (0th LD), the bio-organismic (1st LD), the social (2nd LD), the cultural (3rd LD), the global and spiritual (4th LD), and the cosmic or universal (5th LD). See also Science
Learning refers to an organismic function of living information processing, which always leads to a change in this information—in the best case, to an increase in complexity. In humans, learning can occur multidimensionally in several integration dimensions. Learning is the result of cycles of self-regulation, which is recursively available for further cycles and can influence them. Learning is also an evolutionary process in the course of which the complex structures of the organism, and especially of the brain, are subject to change. In biographical learning, living intelligence is further developed on the basis of evolutionarily formed structures. In particular, a distinction can be made between learning from role models (including mediated ideas) and learning from one's own experiences (self-regulation cycle).
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The power-victim triangle is a relationship pattern between the roles of victim, perpetrator, and rescuer/judge. The victim perceives the perpetrator as powerful. To ward off harm from the perpetrator, the person must exert power. Therefore, in cultures, the roles of judge and rescuer are endowed with power. The roles of rescuer and judge serve to care for and prevent interpersonal harm. However, when these roles and the pattern take on a life of their own, power and role plays develop in which roles can change on the fly (see also drama triangle). The power-victim triangle can then develop a dynamic of its own as a shadow pattern, where judge and rescuer can do more harm than good.
Medical sociology is a branch of sociology and examines medical action and health behavior in a social context.
Metasubjects are subjects that are larger than a single subject. A pair is the smallest metasubject. Groups, parties, governments, university faculties, or disciplines are metasubjects, as are states, cultures, and humanity.
I call "metative" knowledge that has been gained or expressed by a metasubject. The term "metative" is intended to replace the term "objective" in the sciences, which, in ignorance of modern epistemology, leads us to believe that there is true (= objective) knowledge independent of the subject. The meaning of "metative" is similar to that of "intersubjective" as it has recently been used in the theory of science. In contrast to "intersubjective," the term "metative" opens up the question of the metasubject of knowledge and thus of the transparency of the cognitive process. A metative truth is possibly more comprehensive and probable, but not necessarily truer, than that of a single human subject.
"Conscientiousness" is the original meaning of the Latin "conscentia," which is the root of the English word "conscious." The translation "consciousness" goes back to Descartes (1596–1650). I'm giving "conscientiousness," and thus also consciousness, another meaning here, which may be close to the original meaning of "conscentia": According to this definition, a person has a sense of their environment, of the coherence of their supersystems, such as their family and their environment. This sense of knowledge often appears imprecise and thus more like a hunch, an instinct, or an intuition. From this meaning, consciousness also acquires a connection to our supersystems.
A space of possibilities is a virtual, metaphysical space in which, for example, in quantum physics, the possibilities of photons appearing on a photographic plate are conceived before their realization. In the case of the so-called collapse of the wave equation, the possibilities can also be calculated. Analogous to quantum physics, we imagine all possible developments as information in this very virtual space. This information in the space of possibilities can inform reality in the future.
Motivational systems shape our organism's basic psychophysical attitudes toward fundamentally different activities. They have specific organic functional sites in the central nervous system (CNS): the approach, aversion, and coherence systems. As directions of motion, they already occur in single-celled organisms, which can approach an attractive food source, turn away from danger, and rest in a neutrally coherent environment.
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Negentropy is a measure of the creation of order in opposition to entropy. Negentropy is particularly evident in living organisms that create highly complex order. This requires permeability of boundaries. According to physical calculations, a closed system would be incapable of negentropy.
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Open Space Technology (developed in the USA in the 1980s by organizational consultant Harrison Owen) is now an established method for conducting meetings and conferences that is widespread worldwide. It is used successfully in business and public institutions when it comes to addressing complex future topics and harnessing the potential of a large group. Open Space is suitable for groups of approximately 5 to 5,000 participants and is open both in terms of content and form: Participants bring their own topics to the plenary session and each form a working group. In these groups, possible projects are developed and their results are compiled at the end. A steering committee (Open Space facilitator) is important to ensure subsequent implementation. Open Space is self-organized and self-responsible and can produce a wide variety of concrete measures in a short space of time.
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Pathogenesis is the development of diseases. A pathogenetic approach involves focusing on the development of diseases and, consequently, combating them.
A person is mentally healthy when he or she is able to communicate his or her various needs, concerns and goals in his or her multidimensional environment in a sufficiently satisfactory manner (for all involved) – physically, emotionally-humanly, mentally-culturally and spiritually.
Psychodynamics describes psychophysical regulatory processes in humans. The term was originally coined by psychoanalysis to describe the dynamics underlying mental illness. Following a consistent salutogenic approach, TD Petzold described a salutogenic psychodynamics of healthy development, characterized by an interplay of attractiveness, body, and relationship experiences (see "Three Crucial Questions – Salutogenic Communication for Healthy Development," 2nd ed., 2022). This interplay gives rise to psychodynamically effective patterns that can have both salutogenic and pathogenic effects.
I understand systemic psychology as the study of the wholeness of the human being (his psyche/soul) in its multidimensional internal and external interrelationships (see books: “Three Crucial Questions – …” and “Motivation. Fundamentals for a Successful Life”).
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Resilience is a resistance, also called "psychological resilience," to stressful situations. Antonovsky's study of women who survived the Holocaust was initially a resilience study. However, in the course of this research, he expanded the question to the general salutogenic question: How can people develop toward health? This question includes the co-creation of external conditions. The question of resilience is only about how people can remain healthy despite stressful conditions. Changing the stressful conditions is not intended. Thus, resilience is a sub-question of salutogenesis. If this is only addressed in isolation, one remains in the motivational avoidance/aversion mode, i.e., the internal stress mode.
Resources are reserves that can be accessed at any time. This also applies to inner human resources, which could also be described as energies, strengths, and abilities.
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Salutogenesis is a term coined by A. Antonovsky in the 1970s (from the Latin salus = invulnerability, healing, happiness, and the Greek génesis = origin), who introduced the question of the origin of health, of healthy human development, into science. The term is analogous and complementary to the term pathogenesis (Greek pathos = pain, suffering), which describes the question and study of the origin of disease.
