glossary
The glossary is constantly being expanded. Suggestions for new terms and explanations are very welcome. Please feel free to write to us; we look forward to your suggestions or questions.
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The aversion/avoidance system (Behavioral Inhibition System, BIS) (see Petzold & Henke (2023): Motivation. Fundamentals for a Successful Life) is one of three motivational systems that has a neurophysiological location in the amygdala, the brain's fear center. It is activated when a person perceives a situation as threatening. It then triggers a state of tension and metabolic activity, primarily via the hormonal stress axis and the sympathetic nervous system, enabling a rapid escape from the danger, a fight, flight, freeze response, or even caregiving and bonding. This internal state is referred to as the avoidance mode. In avoidance mode, the organism is entirely focused on averting or distancing itself from the threat. This includes its feelings and thoughts.
Adaptation means the adjustment of organisms to their environment and/or supersystems. In evolutionary theory, materialistically oriented biologists/evolutionary researchers understand adaptation to mean the selection of genetically determined, adaptable, or "fitter" organisms. More recent perspectives, which incorporate findings from epigenesis and chaos theory, also consider a reciprocal adaptation of living beings to the coherence of their supersystems. In this process, living beings, on the one hand, shape their environments, and on the other hand, their genes are altered through epigenetic influences and symbioses.
Mental angina is a new term for a state of mind trapped in a bubble of fear, for a constricted way of thinking driven by anxiety and a tendency toward avoidance. During the COVID-19 crisis, we observed mental angina both in scientists and politicians who devoted their thinking entirely to averting the threat of the virus, and in conspiracy theorists who saw all measures taken by the government and virologists as a threat to freedom and health.
The approach system (Behavioral Activating System/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 avoidance system. Both systems can also reinforce each other. An example is the pleasure derived from fear when watching crime dramas. The organism's basic attitude, which, with a motivating feeling of pleasure, causes or enables an approach to attractive goals such as food, sensual, and sexual intimacy, is called the approach mode.
The Anthropocene is the name given by an international working group of geologists to 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 age, a "geology of humanity".
Aaron Antonovsky (1923–1994) was an Israeli-American medical sociologist and stress researcher who coined the term salutogenesis in the 1970s. From the 1960s onward, he worked in Jerusalem, primarily in stress research and the investigation of latent functions of healthcare institutions, alongside his teaching activities. In the course of this work, he encountered what he considered a miracle: that some Jewish women who had survived Nazi concentration camps had been able to build new, healthy lives. He dedicated his efforts to this miracle of continued health from then on.
Attractor is a term from chaos theory and refers to an attractive goal state in a dynamically changing system, towards which the system approaches. 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 predictable target region (deterministic chaos). Chaos theory refers to complex goals as strange attractors. In the context of living beings, and especially in the developmental processes of humans, I use the term attractiva to describe the complex goal information that motivates them (consciously and unconsciously). Attractiva have an attractive effect, emanating from a static quality (like Aristotle's "unmoved mover"), and their complexity defies precise mathematical calculation. However, since the suffix "-tor," as in attractor, denotes an active and masculine quality, this term is not suitable for the described phenomenon in human life, even though it aims to describe the same principle.
The principle of attraction is the principle of emergence or creation, which states that energy, like mass, moves towards attractors/attractives (see Petzold: "Communicating Creatively – Breaking into a New Dimension of Thinking"). This occurs along chaotic, not precisely calculable paths – towards new dynamic states of order such as 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 person does or decides everything entirely alone. The self-governance of a human being includes the fact that they live, feel, and think in relationships; that they are social, cultural, and perhaps even spiritual beings.
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Needs communication: Successful communication of one's most important needs is fundamental to healthy human development. An infant is existentially dependent on their caregivers understanding and adequately responding to their needs. 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 needs communication with the respective objects. Thus, needs communication generally 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 and vice versa in dynamic systems (and all observable systems are dynamic and permeable). Chaos theory encompasses mathematical and physical theories for describing systems that, while bounded by laws, exhibit small changes in initial conditions that 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 refers to a seemingly chaotic process whose outcome is, however, determined (by a potentially calculable attractor).
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Entropy, a measure of disorder used to determine the reversibility of a thermodynamic process in a system, was introduced by Clausius in 1854. Today, there is a modern formulation of the second law of thermodynamics: "An isolated system never spontaneously transforms into a significantly less probable one." The increase in entropy is even said to determine the direction of the arrow of time: according to this view, we are moving towards heat death in the chaos of the universe. How can this be reconciled with the fact that evolution on Earth has produced increasingly complex order (= negentropy) in living organisms over approximately 3 billion years – quite contrary to the second law of thermodynamics? Physicists say that this negentropy in our biosphere is only possible at the expense of the increasing entropy of the surrounding environment, including the sun. Thus, we humans could only develop our complex structure by absorbing order (here = information) from our environment, while overall entropy remains constant or increases. This mainstream view among natural scientists, that the universe is ultimately a closed system and therefore its entropy increases, and that the irreversible direction of time can therefore be derived from this increase in entropy, can neither be proven nor disproven, since we can arbitrarily extend the spatial and temporal boundaries of the system and cannot definitively measure them. From the perspective of our human experience—and the second law of thermodynamics is supposedly based on experience(!)—it seems more likely, however, that the increase in observable complex order (= evolution) determines the arrow of time, and not the increase in entropy, as physics claims. A balance between these two tendencies, however, seems equally probable. In that case, order would have nothing to do with a fundamental arrow of time. There would probably be a constant change, a circular process of chaos and order, in which entropy could remain constant over long periods and vast spaces. (See ‘Science and Vision’ by Th. Petzold in DER MENSCH issue 38, www.salutogenese-dachverband.de, and ‘The Decisive One’ 2000, Verlag Gesunde Entwicklung)
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Healthy development is an approach to the attractiveness of health. There are as many healthy developmental paths as there are people. Each approach is individual and unique. It involves three motivational attitudes with complex behavioral patterns.
According to the 1946 WHO definition, health is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." The 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion adds: "To achieve complete physical, mental and social well-being, it is necessary for individuals and groups to be able to satisfy their needs, perceive and realize their desires and hopes, and master or change their environment. In this sense, health is to be understood as an essential component of everyday life and not as a primary life goal. Health represents a positive concept that emphasizes the importance of social and individual resources for health as well as physical capabilities." According to Antonovsky, health is not a state but a process (health-illness continuum).
According to Antonovsky, the health-illness continuum is meant to overcome the dichotomy, the absolute separation between healthy and ill, and to describe how a person always has both healthy and ill aspects within them, thus existing somewhere on the imagined "continuum" between health and illness. Elsewhere, Antonovsky calls for a "multidimensional" view of illness and health. We address this requirement in our dynamic of self-regulation (su).
Health motivation refers to the pursuit of a harmonious life, of holistic, coherent functioning of the body, feelings, and thoughts within its 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 means defining and agreeing on goals between cooperation partners. It serves to make attractive life, action, and cooperation goals explicit and thereby strengthen motivation (see SalKom®-GOALSETTING).
Basic motivations text is being revised
Appetite motivation
Coherence motivation
Aversionsmotivation
I define a good life as a life on the path to coherence and harmony. From an external perspective, every life is a good life because it unfolds toward coherence according to its own potential and external circumstances. Subjectively, we judge it as good when we consciously experience this striving for coherence. The concept of a good life is about consciously remembering our inherent aspirations, our evolutionary appeal, and not about judging lives as good or bad. By communicating our attractive visions of a good life to as many people as possible, we can cultivate cooperation in shaping a good life. With a successful life, the focus is more strongly directed toward one's own active participation in shaping one's life.
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Heterostasis describes an imbalance within a system (see homeostasis).
Heuristics (as in heuristic) refers to the "study of finding" solutions and insights. In the context of health sciences, an intentional heuristic is particularly useful for approaching attractiveness. This can be practiced quite practically in health circles, goal-setting, and salutogenic reflecting teams, as well as in interdisciplinary groups within the health sciences.
Homeostasis or self-regulation describes the ability of a system to maintain itself within certain limits in a stable (=functional) state through feedback; for example, the human body, which maintains its physiological functions in balance through feedback loops (blood pressure, body temperature, blood pH, etc.).
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Information comes from the Latin word "informare," which originally meant to shape or form. Here, information is used in this original sense as that which gives form to energy/mass. Matter is formed, and therefore informed, mass/energy. Energy and information remain the fundamental entities of all existence. In this most general understanding, information has the meaning of mind—though more from an observer's perspective, while mind is more often described from an internal perspective. Information shapes the neural connections in our brains, as well as the connections in computers, where it becomes data. When someone accesses this data, it can, in turn, inform. Whether there is also mind beyond information, that is, mind that cannot shape our brain activity, we cannot say, since we can only think what our brains are informed about.
Tomasello (2010, 2014) considers intentionality, defined as the directedness of an intention or purpose, to be fundamental to human cooperation. Even very young children can resonate with and share the intentionality of their caregivers. This shared intentionality then becomes a common motivation for cooperation. When cooperation falters, examining intentionality is often helpful.
An intentional resonance space emerges when people communicate with one another with shared and therefore common intentionality. They form a co-creative system, a space for co-creativity.
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Coherence: – Coherence (English): connection, clarity, agreement – Coherence in physics: 'connected' wave formations that can form interferences (amplifications, cancellations); coherence is a prerequisite for resonance. – Coherence in humans: harmonious connection, well-being, sense of harmony, sense of order – Systems theory: A system is characterized by its own inherent coherence.
Sense of coherence (SOC) is the most common translation of Antonovsky's term. Since "sense of coherence" encompasses both the perceptual meaning of "sense of coherence" and a descriptive "feeling of coherence," it seems sensible to explore both meanings. Here is Antonovsky's 1987 definition (translated by Alexa Franke in 1997): "I can now redefine SOC as follows: SOC (sense of coherence) is a global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring, yet dynamic sense of confidence that the stimuli arising from the internal and external environment throughout life are structured, predictable, and explainable; that one has the resources available to meet the demands posed by these stimuli;
These requirements are challenges that are worth the effort and commitment.” (Antonovsky 1997 (1987) p. 36)
If we now distinguish between a perceiving 'sense of coherence' and a 'feeling of coherence', then the feeling of coherence arises from the experience of coherence in physical exchange with the environment (>'manageability'), in socio-emotional exchange with fellow human beings (>'meaningfulness') as well as in cognitive exchange with cultural carriers (>'comprehensibility').
Coherence motivation is the overarching intrinsic striving for coherence, fit, and consistency within the individual and in their external relationships. This leads to an individual repeatedly experiencing coherence, finding their way back to a coherent mode, and actively pursuing consistency. Another motivational system may also be activated for these actions.
The sense of coherence is our innate, predisposed ability to perceive coherence (a consistent connection) between ourselves and our environment. According to recent neurophysiological findings, the sense of coherence likely represents the overarching function of the central nervous system. This sense of coherence is the prerequisite for the development of a feeling of coherence. Senses of coherence:
The five (and more) sensory organs are extensions of the central nervous system that perceive (dis)consistency and (in)coherence of light, sound, temperature, chemistry, and mechanics (pressure, etc.).
The proprioceptive and visceroceptive systems serve the internal perception of coherence.
The central nervous system (CNS) evaluates incoming information for consistency/coherence (frontal cortex (prefrontal cortex [PFC])).
The 'sixth sense', discovered in 2005: Activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) at the top of the frontal lobe provides us with a short-term warning of danger when there is a discrepancy between (unconscious) perceptions and experiences.
The CNS prompts people to establish coherence ("congruence and consistency" (Grawe, Klaus 2004, Neuropsychotherapy)) in their environment.
Communication, on an everyday human level, is defined as a collaborative action in which thoughts, ideas, knowledge, insights, and experiences are shared and also newly generated. Communication in this sense is based on the use of signs in language, 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 seen as a process in which several living beings jointly solve problems. A shared history of lived experience is considered the basis for the possibility of communicative problem-solving. Language, for example, arises from shared lived experience.
In this book, cooperation is used to describe different types of collaboration toward a common goal: firstly, any form of interaction between subsystems within a system, and secondly, specifically human, collaborative, and voluntary cooperation. For the latter, based on the research of Tomasello (2010, 2012, 2020), four guiding criteria are assumed: 1. Cooperation partners are responsive to one another. 2. They have a common goal, a shared intention. 3. They coordinate their different roles with one another (ideally on a voluntary basis). 4. They help each other when someone needs help.
Illness is a disturbance of physical, cognitive, social and/or mental functions that negatively affects, or is likely to affect, the performance or well-being of a living being in a way that is subjectively or clearly perceptible to various people.
Culture, as a dimension of life, refers to structures at the self-organizing stage of human beings, characterized primarily by their language and other sign systems such as money, images, and the like, 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 in the division of labor and other relationships. In the context of globalization, cultural evolution is clearly evident today, culminating in the transition to the global dimension that emerges in the Anthropocene.
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Life dimensions (LD, also known as system dimensions and ego dimensions) are dimensions of complexity in our relationships within our environments: the physical-chemical life dimension (0th LD), the bio-organismic (1st LD), the social (2nd LD), cultural (3rd LD), global and spiritual (4th LD), and cosmic or universal (5th LD). See also Science
Learning refers to an organismic function of living information processing, which in each instance leads to a change in this processing—ideally, to an increase in complexity. In humans, learning can occur multidimensionally across several dimensions of integration. Learning is the result of cycles of self-regulation, which are recursively available for and can influence further cycles. Learning is also an evolutionary process in which the complex structures of the organism, and especially the brain, are shaped. In biographical learning, living intelligence is further developed based on evolutionarily formed structures. A distinction can be made, in particular, between learning from role models (including mediated concepts) and learning from one's own experiences (the self-regulation cycle).
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The power-victim triangle is a relationship pattern between the roles of victim, perpetrator, and rescuer/judge. In this dynamic, the perpetrator is perceived as powerful by the victim. To ward off harm inflicted by the perpetrator, the individual must exert power. Therefore, in many cultures, the roles of judge and rescuer are endowed with power. These roles serve to protect and prevent interpersonal harm. However, when these roles and the pattern become autonomous, power and role-playing games unfold, in which roles can shift rapidly (see also the drama triangle). The power-victim triangle can then develop its own dynamic as a shadow pattern, where judge and rescuer can cause more harm than good.
Medical sociology is a subfield of sociology and considers medical practices and health behavior in a social context.
Metasubjects are subjects that are larger than a single subject. A couple is the smallest metasubject. Groups, parties, governments, university faculties or departments are metasubjects, as are states, cultures, and humanity as a whole.
I call a knowledge that has been gained or expressed by a metasubject "metative." The term "metative" is intended to replace the term "objective" in the sciences, which, in ignorance of modern epistemology, suggests the existence of true (= objective) knowledge independent of the subject. The meaning of "metative" is similar to that of "intersubjective," as it is now used in the philosophy of science. Unlike "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 may be more comprehensive and probable, but not necessarily truer, than that of a single human subject.
"Co-knowledge" is the original meaning of the Latin *conscentia*, which is the root word of the English *conscious*. The translation as "consciousness" goes back to Descartes (1596–1650). Here, I add another aspect to co-knowledge, and thus also to consciousness, which may be close to the original meaning of *conscentia*: A person has a co-knowledge of their surroundings, of the coherence of their supersystems, for example, their family and their environment. This co-knowledge often appears imprecise and thus more like a premonition, an instinct, or an intuition. From this perspective, consciousness also acquires a connection to our supersystems.
Possibility space is a virtual, metaphysical space in which, for example, in quantum physics, the possibilities of photons appearing on a photographic plate are conceived before its actual realization. In the case of the so-called collapse of the wave equation, these possibilities can also be calculated. Analogous to quantum physics, we conceive of all possible developments as information in this very virtual space. This information in possibility space can inform future reality.
Motivational systems shape the basic psychophysical attitudes of our organism towards fundamentally different activities. They have specific functional sites in the central nervous system (CNS): the approach, avoidance, and coherence systems. As directions of motion, they already appear in single-celled organisms, which can approach an attractive food source, avoid danger, and rest in a neutrally coherent environment.
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Negentropy is a measure of the creation of order in contrast to entropy. We find negentropy particularly evident in living organisms that establish highly complex order. This requires permeability of the boundaries. According to physics, a closed system would not be capable of negentropy.
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Open Space Technology (developed in the USA in the 1980s by organizational consultant Harrison Owen) is a now globally established method for conducting meetings and conferences. It is successfully used in business and public institutions when it comes to addressing complex future-oriented topics and leveraging the potential of a large group. Open Space is suitable for groups of approximately 5 to 5,000 participants and is flexible in both content and format: Participants introduce their own topics to the plenary session and then form working groups to address them. Within these groups, potential projects are developed, and their results are compiled at the end. A steering committee (Open Space facilitator) is crucial for ensuring subsequent implementation. Open Space functions in a self-organized and self-managed manner and can generate a wide variety of concrete action items in a short time.
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Pathogenesis is the origin of diseases. A pathogenetic orientation involves focusing on the origin of diseases and, consequently, on combating them.
A person is psychologically healthy if they are able to communicate their different needs, concerns and goals in their multidimensional environment in a sufficiently satisfactory way (for all involved) – physically, emotionally-interpersonally, mentally-culturally and spiritually.
Psychodynamics describes psychophysical regulatory processes in humans. The term was originally coined by psychoanalysis to describe the dynamics underlying mental illnesses. With a consistently salutogenic orientation, T.D. Petzold described a salutogenic psychodynamic of healthy development, characterized by an interplay of attractants, the body, and relational experiences (see "Three Crucial Questions – Salutogenic Communication for Healthy Development," 2nd ed., 2022). This interplay gives rise to psychodynamically effective patterns that can be both salutogenic and pathogenic.
I understand systemic psychology as the study of the wholeness of the human being (their 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 with women who survived the Holocaust was initially resilience research. However, in the course of this research, he broadened the question to the general salutogenic question: How can people develop towards health? This question includes the shaping of external conditions. The question of resilience, on the other hand, focuses solely on how people can remain healthy despite stressful conditions. Changing the stressful conditions is not considered. Thus, resilience is a sub-question of salutogenesis. If it is posed in isolation, one remains in a motivational avoidance/aversion mode, i.e., in an internal stress mode.
Resources are reserves that can be accessed at any time. This also applies to internal, human resources, which could also be described as energies, strengths, or abilities.
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Salutogenesis is a term coined by A. Antonovsky in the 1970s (from Latin salus = inviolability, health, well-being, and Greek génesis = origin), who thus introduced the question of the origins of health, of healthy human development, into science. The term is analogous to and complementary to the term pathogenesis (Greek páthos = pain, suffering), which refers to the question and study of the origins of disease.
