Janet Johnson

“The human body as an organism is not the sum of its parts, but rather the interrelationship of the parts. My body is not my body if it is cut into parts. For example, if you cut my legs from my body, you’d hardly look at them and think of me. In a system every part is related to every other part. Each part is wholly a part and partly a whole. In a family, the whole family as an organism is greater than any individual in the family. The family is defined by the relationship between the parts, rather than the sum of the parts. As social systems, families have components, rules, roles and needs that define the system.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You