Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson’s legacy has yet to be fully realized. His delineation of the philosophical framework for family therapy has been crucial in the field’s development. By applying discovers from mathematics, physics, anthropology, along with various other fields, Bateson achieved a clarity that has yet to be duplicated. He stated, “So, in 1948 the problem was clear: The problem as set by context (whether or not one knew that this is what one was doing), was to build the underpinnings for the behavioral sciences—their Newtonian particle. How to Start?” (Bateson, 1977).
Gregory Bateson’s influence on Family Therapy cannot be overstated. His research project on communication that began in 1952 became the origin for the majority of the interactional approaches to psychotherapy. Bateson’s ideas have been pervasive in the field of family therapy for more than fifty years, but they have also been grievously misunderstood from the outset. Bateson himself expressed his disappointment with the direction his colleagues took his ideas stating, “I must confess that I was bored and disgusted by the Augean muddle of conventional psychiatric thinking, by my colleagues’ obsession with power, by the dumb cruelty of the families which “contained” schizophrenia, and appalled by the richness of the available data” (Bateson 1976).
The following excerpt is taken from the forthcoming International Dictionaries of Psychotherapy and is written by Bradford Keeney concerning Aesthetics of Change:
"Gregory Bateson, an original member of the Macy meetings that gave birth to transdisciplinary cybernetics, had planned to publish a major book on how cybernetic and communication ideas could provide an aesthetic base for the understanding of human interaction. One of the dark family secrets in family therapy history concerns how Bateson’s anticipated landmark work was pre-empted by his colleagues Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Don Jackson in their book, Pragmatics of Human Communication. Harries-Jones (1995) has established that Pragmatics was a definitive version of Bateson’s ideas that the authors had collected in their association with him. Haley further reported (in Harries-Jones, p. 27) that Bateson believed that the book “stole 30 of his ideas” and spread misunderstanding about the double bind hypothesis.
Bateson believed “the title Pragmatics was completely contrary to the theoretical ideas about communication he had developed.” He dissociated himself from Watzlawick and wrote him a caustic letter saying: “I used to wonder how the Kahunas [Hawaiian Priests] feel when they see the carvings of their gods in the shop window of a travel bureau. Now I know . . . And the loot is sometimes correctly labelled as to provedance. And the native has no comeback.” (cited in Harries-Jones, p. 28). Bateson and Watzlawick ceased communication following the publication of Pragmatics."
It is necessary to perpetuate a resurgence in the study of Bateson’s original work, rather than to rely wholly on the interpretations that filter through the field.
References:
Harries-Jones, Peter. A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
Bateson, Gregory (1976). A Formal Approach to explicit, Implicit, and Embodied Ideas and to Their Forms of Interaction, in Double Bind: The Foundation of the Communicational Approach to the Family, eds Carlos Sluzki & Donald Ransom. Grune & Stratton, Inc.
Bateson, Gregory (1977). The Growth of Paradigms for Psychiatry, in Communication and Social Interaction: Clinical and Therapeutic Aspects of Human Behavior, ed. Peter Ostwald. Grune & Stratton, Inc.
Additional Material on Bateson can be found by following this links:
The Institute for Intercultural Studies -- Gregory Bateson's Obituary
Crazy Tiger Institute -- The Gregory Bateson Archive
"An Ecology of Mind" -- The Gregory Bateson Documentary website by Matt Borer, visit him at his Home Page.
Edge -- Gregory Bateson: The Centennial
Oikos -- Gregory Bateson
Wikipedia -- Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson’s influence on Family Therapy cannot be overstated. His research project on communication that began in 1952 became the origin for the majority of the interactional approaches to psychotherapy. Bateson’s ideas have been pervasive in the field of family therapy for more than fifty years, but they have also been grievously misunderstood from the outset. Bateson himself expressed his disappointment with the direction his colleagues took his ideas stating, “I must confess that I was bored and disgusted by the Augean muddle of conventional psychiatric thinking, by my colleagues’ obsession with power, by the dumb cruelty of the families which “contained” schizophrenia, and appalled by the richness of the available data” (Bateson 1976).
The following excerpt is taken from the forthcoming International Dictionaries of Psychotherapy and is written by Bradford Keeney concerning Aesthetics of Change:
"Gregory Bateson, an original member of the Macy meetings that gave birth to transdisciplinary cybernetics, had planned to publish a major book on how cybernetic and communication ideas could provide an aesthetic base for the understanding of human interaction. One of the dark family secrets in family therapy history concerns how Bateson’s anticipated landmark work was pre-empted by his colleagues Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Don Jackson in their book, Pragmatics of Human Communication. Harries-Jones (1995) has established that Pragmatics was a definitive version of Bateson’s ideas that the authors had collected in their association with him. Haley further reported (in Harries-Jones, p. 27) that Bateson believed that the book “stole 30 of his ideas” and spread misunderstanding about the double bind hypothesis.
Bateson believed “the title Pragmatics was completely contrary to the theoretical ideas about communication he had developed.” He dissociated himself from Watzlawick and wrote him a caustic letter saying: “I used to wonder how the Kahunas [Hawaiian Priests] feel when they see the carvings of their gods in the shop window of a travel bureau. Now I know . . . And the loot is sometimes correctly labelled as to provedance. And the native has no comeback.” (cited in Harries-Jones, p. 28). Bateson and Watzlawick ceased communication following the publication of Pragmatics."
It is necessary to perpetuate a resurgence in the study of Bateson’s original work, rather than to rely wholly on the interpretations that filter through the field.
References:
Harries-Jones, Peter. A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
Bateson, Gregory (1976). A Formal Approach to explicit, Implicit, and Embodied Ideas and to Their Forms of Interaction, in Double Bind: The Foundation of the Communicational Approach to the Family, eds Carlos Sluzki & Donald Ransom. Grune & Stratton, Inc.
Bateson, Gregory (1977). The Growth of Paradigms for Psychiatry, in Communication and Social Interaction: Clinical and Therapeutic Aspects of Human Behavior, ed. Peter Ostwald. Grune & Stratton, Inc.
Additional Material on Bateson can be found by following this links:
The Institute for Intercultural Studies -- Gregory Bateson's Obituary
Crazy Tiger Institute -- The Gregory Bateson Archive
"An Ecology of Mind" -- The Gregory Bateson Documentary website by Matt Borer, visit him at his Home Page.
Edge -- Gregory Bateson: The Centennial
Oikos -- Gregory Bateson
Wikipedia -- Gregory Bateson
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