Development occurs in the individual.
Development cannot be externally produced. It unfolds through the individual’s own experience, meaning-making, regulation, relationships, exploration and engagement with reality.
Relational systems · human development
ARSDOMARelational System Design for Human Development
ARSDOMA is a theoretical and research framework for understanding and designing relational systems that support human development.
Development takes place within the individual.
Relational systems shape the conditions under which that development can unfold.
What conditions must the surrounding system create for development to become possible?
ARSDOMA is currently being developed through theoretical work, scientific research and the preparation of applied institutional collaboration.
01 · Framework
Three core propositions
The relational system creates the conditions.
No individual develops in isolation. Family members, educators, peers, professionals, institutions and communities together form a relational field that may support, constrain or destabilise developmental processes.
These conditions are initially carried by others.
Many capacities that later become increasingly internal — including regulation, safety, trust, reflection and autonomous action — first emerge within relationships.
The individual develops.
The system is responsible for the conditions.
02 · Relational safety
The zeroth condition of development
How can I become safe for the other?
Relational safety cannot simply be declared by a person, programme or institution. It is experienced within the relationship and therefore must remain responsive to the concrete individual.
This shifts attention from abstract intention to lived relational experience: whether connection, participation and development can become possible for this person, in this relationship, in this context.
Safety is not what the system claims to provide. It is what becomes possible in the relationship.
03 · The relational system
Development is never carried by one person alone
ARSDOMA treats development as occurring within a network of relationships. Developmental responsibility cannot be assigned to a single teacher, parent, therapist or institution.
individual
- family
- educators
- peers
- psychologists
- other professionals
- mentors
- communities
- institutions
When something is not working, ARSDOMA asks not only what is happening within the individual, but also what may need to change around them.
04 · Learning and creation
Exploration beyond reproduction
Learning can support exploration, questioning, understanding, testing possibilities and increasingly autonomous engagement with reality.
Creation is understood broadly: as contributing something genuinely one’s own rather than merely reproducing what has already been given.
05 · Understanding the relational system
How do we understand whether a system is supporting development?
ARSDOMA considers not only declared values, methods and intentions, but also patterns of functioning and participation.
- Can the person ask for help?
- Can uncertainty be tolerated?
- Can mistakes occur without loss of belonging?
- Is exploration possible?
- Can disagreement occur without relational collapse?
- Can recovery occur after difficulty?
- Can autonomy grow without loss of connection?
The individual is not only someone within the system. Their functioning may also tell us something about the system.
06 · Human-centred AI
Human-centred AI in relational systems
ARSDOMA does not position AI as a replacement for parents, teachers, therapists, mentors, professional teams or human relationships.
Developmental, ethical and relational responsibility remains human.
A high-level concept
Metamental support
AI may support humans in reflecting on their own thinking, interpretations, relationships and systems without transferring relational or normative responsibility to the technology.
AI does not carry development. It may help humans understand developmental conditions more accurately.
07 · Current status
Where ARSDOMA stands today
ARSDOMA is a developed theoretical and professional framework that continues to evolve through conceptual work, scientific research and applied development.
Its broader institutional implementation, operationalisation and empirical investigation remain part of an ongoing research and development programme.
Developed and continuously refined
Ongoing
In development
08 · Research programme
Current research directions
Relational safety
How does safety become possible as a lived quality of particular relationships and systems?
Human development
What surrounding conditions support regulation, meaning-making, agency and increasing autonomy?
Learning and creation
How can relational environments enable exploration, understanding and genuinely individual contribution?
Relational systems
How do networks of people, practices and institutions shape developmental possibilities?
Multidisciplinary collaboration
How can professional perspectives contribute without fragmenting responsibility for the whole system?
Human-centred AI
How might AI support reflection while relational, developmental and ethical responsibility remains human?
09 · Publications
Publications and research
ARSDOMA is being developed through an ongoing programme of theoretical, conceptual and applied research. Scientific outputs will be added here as they become publicly available.
Publications
Scientific publications related to ARSDOMA will be listed here as they become publicly available.
10 · Theoretical foundations
A relational and developmental perspective
ARSDOMA draws on developmental psychology, relational theories, attachment research, mentalisation, phenomenological and existential approaches, psychoanalytic thinking, systems perspectives and contemporary developmental science.
ARSDOMA does not simply combine these traditions. It uses them to address the system-level question of what relational conditions allow individual development to unfold while preserving both connection and increasing autonomy.
Individual experience
Relationship
System
11 · People
The people behind ARSDOMA
András Bódis
Founder · Clinical Psychologist
András Bódis is a clinical psychologist and the founder of ARSDOMA. His work focuses on relational safety, human development, mental health and the systemic conditions that support developmental processes.
LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)Dr. Katalin Domonkos
Co-Founder · Educator
Katalin Domonkos is an educator and co-founder of ARSDOMA. Her work focuses on relational safety and supportive developmental environments in education.
LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)12 · Collaboration
Research.
Dialogue.
Development.
ARSDOMA welcomes dialogue with researchers, educators, psychologists, institutions and organisations.