Don D. Jackson
The following expert written by Wendel Ray, Ph.D. and appeared first in the Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2000.
Don D. Jackson—A Re-Introduction
by Wendel Ray, Ph.D.
A Little Background Music
Like water is to the makeup of living organisms, so Jackson’s contributions are to the relationship-based conception of human behavior and constructive change. His thinking permeates interactionally oriented models of family therapy and brief therapy—so much a part of our thinking that it is easy to forget the debt owed to Jackson and his colleagues, first in Gregory Bateson’s research projects on paradoxes in communication processes, and later at the Mental Research Institute, which Jackson founded in 1958. With the present upsurge in postmodern and narrative orientations, it is easy to forget who it was that blazed the way for such elementary ideas as the shift in focus from the individual in isolation to the nature of the relationship between people in their present interaction (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956; Jackson, 1957a, 1959, 1965a, b) or the rejection of a pathology-based view of human problems and the articulation of non-normative, non-pathological conception of human behavior (Jackson, 1964a, b, 1967a-c).
During the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, when Lynn Hoffman (a former student and then colleague of Jackson), Harry Goolishian, and Harlene Anderson, Tom Andersen, and Michael White were articulating their revisions of theory and clinical practice, they did so by juxtaposing their ideas with those first conceived by Jackson and his colleagues. Basic building blocks of the interactional approach, such as family homeostasis, cybernetics as a organizing metaphor for family therapy, and the concept of pattern, were depicted as having failed to fulfill the once promised revolution in our understanding of human problems and their resolution. These constructs were portrayed as limited because, so it was said, they merely shifted pathology from the individual to the system of which the individual was a part, and in so doing embraced a modernist separation of therapist as objective observer from the system being observed, while retaining a pathology (albeit broader) framework.
Although there was a time in the not too distant past when Jackson’s theoretical conceptions and clinical intervention strategies dominated the field, after nearly 10 years of what has essentially been a dismissal of his ideas, it is difficult to find Jackson’s work highlighted in most current family therapy and brief therapy training. And so it is easy, within the current practice arena, to dismiss the work of Don Jackson as a kind of historical footnote—an important step away from the pathology—oriented, individual illness conception of behavior that dominated the field of psychotherapy when Jackson entered the scene in the early 1940s, and toward a relationship-focused view of problems. At best a good first step, but still lacking because, some would say, his work was rooted in the modernist tradition of objective observation, so-called first order thinking.
{Wendel Ray has spent his career studying the work of Don Jackson and the early pioneers of the field of family therapy. A Senior Research Fellow and former Director of the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, in 1987 Dr. Ray founded and was the first Director of the Don D. Jackson Archive of Systemic Literature.}
The next expert continues as follows:
Such characterizations of the work of Jackson and his colleagues are, however, unfortunate and inaccurate—revisionist history in the worst sense. Unfortunate because it discourages new clinicians entering the field from availing themselves of a body of literature rich in compelling conceptual and clinical ideas, and inaccurate because it misrepresents the work of those who can legitimately be seen as having laid the foundation upon which most current family and brief therapies are built. Rather than viewing these earlier alternative conceptions from a both/and frame of reference (Cecchin, Lane, & Ray, 1992, 1993), a distressing either/or trend is evidenced from both sides of the “traditional” brief and family therapy versus postmodern, narrative orientation debate (Minuchin, 1998,; Coombs & Freedman, 1998).
Family Therapy and Brief Therapy, at least the interactionally focused brand Jackson and those he influenced are known for, was originally created as a method of research into the ways people in intimate relationships influence one another in the present, and only later evolved into Conjoint Family Therapy as a treatment method (Jackson, 1957b, 1960; Jackson & Weakland, 1959). What many are unaware of is that Jackson was constantly evolving and improving his Conjoint Family Therapy model. Initially, during the Bateson projects, the group voiced a perfernce for Conjoint Family Therapy, defined by Jackson and Satir as “The members of a biological or nuclear family are… seen together at the same time by the same therapist… with the selection dependent on relationships and not necessarily on blood ties” (1961, p.29). The preference for seeing all members of the family together was primarily a product of a research-based desire to be able to observe first hand the effects family members had on one another in the present, and the enduring benefit was the relational data which the interactional approach was derived.
By the end of the 1950s Jackson had articulated a coherent set of interconnected premises that constitute Interactional Theory (1959). Jackson was among the first to fully commit to a purely interactional view of human behavior:
"In our view, the definition of the self, the relationship, and the other are an indivisible whole. We especially do not isolate or abstract the individual from the individual-in-this-relationship-with-this-other. This bias is implicit throughout the present work, and any tendency to read other wise in the following will only lead to confusion (Jackson, 1956a, p. 7)".
Being among the first, if not the first theoretician/clinician to expound an uncompromising interactional theory, allowed Jackson to move away from the idea that family therapy is contingent on having all members of a family participate in therapy, expressing the belief that family therapy had more to do with a way of thinking on the part of the therapist than the number of people you had in the therapy room (Jackson & Weakland, 1961; Jackson, 1965c; Weakland, 1984).
Original Citation:
Ray, W. (2000). Don D. Jackson – A re-introduction. (Followed by an original article) Jackson, D., Brief Psychotherapy, Journal of Systemic Therapies, 19 (2), 1-6, 7-22
Don D. Jackson—A Re-Introduction
by Wendel Ray, Ph.D.
A Little Background Music
Like water is to the makeup of living organisms, so Jackson’s contributions are to the relationship-based conception of human behavior and constructive change. His thinking permeates interactionally oriented models of family therapy and brief therapy—so much a part of our thinking that it is easy to forget the debt owed to Jackson and his colleagues, first in Gregory Bateson’s research projects on paradoxes in communication processes, and later at the Mental Research Institute, which Jackson founded in 1958. With the present upsurge in postmodern and narrative orientations, it is easy to forget who it was that blazed the way for such elementary ideas as the shift in focus from the individual in isolation to the nature of the relationship between people in their present interaction (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956; Jackson, 1957a, 1959, 1965a, b) or the rejection of a pathology-based view of human problems and the articulation of non-normative, non-pathological conception of human behavior (Jackson, 1964a, b, 1967a-c).
During the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, when Lynn Hoffman (a former student and then colleague of Jackson), Harry Goolishian, and Harlene Anderson, Tom Andersen, and Michael White were articulating their revisions of theory and clinical practice, they did so by juxtaposing their ideas with those first conceived by Jackson and his colleagues. Basic building blocks of the interactional approach, such as family homeostasis, cybernetics as a organizing metaphor for family therapy, and the concept of pattern, were depicted as having failed to fulfill the once promised revolution in our understanding of human problems and their resolution. These constructs were portrayed as limited because, so it was said, they merely shifted pathology from the individual to the system of which the individual was a part, and in so doing embraced a modernist separation of therapist as objective observer from the system being observed, while retaining a pathology (albeit broader) framework.
Although there was a time in the not too distant past when Jackson’s theoretical conceptions and clinical intervention strategies dominated the field, after nearly 10 years of what has essentially been a dismissal of his ideas, it is difficult to find Jackson’s work highlighted in most current family therapy and brief therapy training. And so it is easy, within the current practice arena, to dismiss the work of Don Jackson as a kind of historical footnote—an important step away from the pathology—oriented, individual illness conception of behavior that dominated the field of psychotherapy when Jackson entered the scene in the early 1940s, and toward a relationship-focused view of problems. At best a good first step, but still lacking because, some would say, his work was rooted in the modernist tradition of objective observation, so-called first order thinking.
{Wendel Ray has spent his career studying the work of Don Jackson and the early pioneers of the field of family therapy. A Senior Research Fellow and former Director of the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, in 1987 Dr. Ray founded and was the first Director of the Don D. Jackson Archive of Systemic Literature.}
The next expert continues as follows:
Such characterizations of the work of Jackson and his colleagues are, however, unfortunate and inaccurate—revisionist history in the worst sense. Unfortunate because it discourages new clinicians entering the field from availing themselves of a body of literature rich in compelling conceptual and clinical ideas, and inaccurate because it misrepresents the work of those who can legitimately be seen as having laid the foundation upon which most current family and brief therapies are built. Rather than viewing these earlier alternative conceptions from a both/and frame of reference (Cecchin, Lane, & Ray, 1992, 1993), a distressing either/or trend is evidenced from both sides of the “traditional” brief and family therapy versus postmodern, narrative orientation debate (Minuchin, 1998,; Coombs & Freedman, 1998).
Family Therapy and Brief Therapy, at least the interactionally focused brand Jackson and those he influenced are known for, was originally created as a method of research into the ways people in intimate relationships influence one another in the present, and only later evolved into Conjoint Family Therapy as a treatment method (Jackson, 1957b, 1960; Jackson & Weakland, 1959). What many are unaware of is that Jackson was constantly evolving and improving his Conjoint Family Therapy model. Initially, during the Bateson projects, the group voiced a perfernce for Conjoint Family Therapy, defined by Jackson and Satir as “The members of a biological or nuclear family are… seen together at the same time by the same therapist… with the selection dependent on relationships and not necessarily on blood ties” (1961, p.29). The preference for seeing all members of the family together was primarily a product of a research-based desire to be able to observe first hand the effects family members had on one another in the present, and the enduring benefit was the relational data which the interactional approach was derived.
By the end of the 1950s Jackson had articulated a coherent set of interconnected premises that constitute Interactional Theory (1959). Jackson was among the first to fully commit to a purely interactional view of human behavior:
"In our view, the definition of the self, the relationship, and the other are an indivisible whole. We especially do not isolate or abstract the individual from the individual-in-this-relationship-with-this-other. This bias is implicit throughout the present work, and any tendency to read other wise in the following will only lead to confusion (Jackson, 1956a, p. 7)".
Being among the first, if not the first theoretician/clinician to expound an uncompromising interactional theory, allowed Jackson to move away from the idea that family therapy is contingent on having all members of a family participate in therapy, expressing the belief that family therapy had more to do with a way of thinking on the part of the therapist than the number of people you had in the therapy room (Jackson & Weakland, 1961; Jackson, 1965c; Weakland, 1984).
Original Citation:
Ray, W. (2000). Don D. Jackson – A re-introduction. (Followed by an original article) Jackson, D., Brief Psychotherapy, Journal of Systemic Therapies, 19 (2), 1-6, 7-22
