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disciplines. Important among these were Norbert Wiener, a mathematician who contributed the word
"cybernetics" (Wiener (1948a), (1948b)Bib), which can still be used as a synonym for systems theory,
though more often in Europe than America.
The basic innovation of such approaches was to start to think about processes and the abstract patterns
into which they are organised, rather than to focus on static objects. It is equivalent to placing more
emphasis on verbs and less on nouns. There is less emphasis on naming and classifying things, and far
more on describing how they behave. In the context of family therapy the focus moved from the
individual members of the family to the dynamic pattern of interactions between them. Clearly this whole
approach is very much in harmony with the philosophy of this book. (Though I only learned of systemic
therapy after having formulated the notions of this book as a result of attempting to understand
Hypnotherapy.)
(We might note parenthetically that this change from an emphasis on things to an emphasis on processes
is one which signals the coming-of-age in many a field of knowledge. Before Darwin, species were
simply classified. Subsequently attention has been focused on how they form and change. There was a
time when rocks were simply classified, and were regarded as unchanging. Then it became obvious that
they did change, and geology and related subjects were transformed as attention turned to the more
deeply fascinating questions of how rocks form, and how continents form, and how the face of the earth
changes with time.)
Another important contributor from the early days was anthropologist Gregory Bateson. He was
influenced by the work and ideas of Milton H. Erickson from as early as 1941. He developed systems
ideas in the context of studying schizophrenia (Bateson (1956)Bib) and alcoholism (Bateson (1971)Bib),
the former paper introducing the concept of a double bind, which will be very familiar to workers in our
field. It was co-authored by Jay Haley, who is well known as a student of Milton H. Erickson and now as
a giant of family therapy in his own right.
In practical terms the biggest departure from previous practice that systemic therapy introduced was that
therapists stopped seeing patients in isolation in both senses of the word. They not only started to see the
whole family together - a heretical idea at one time - but also became acutely aware at all times that a
"problem" in an individual would often be a result of family factors.
In the process of analysing such family systems a great deal of emphasis was placed on the study of
communication and information processing. The emphasis on communication was given its major
impetus by Don Jackson, founder of the Mental Research Institute in California in 1959, who was a
communications theorist and published extensively as well as gathering around him many individuals
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Principles of Hypnosis (20). Familly therapy from perspective of systems and hypnosis
who are now well known, such as Virginia Satir, Jules Riskin, Richard Fisch, Jay Haley, Paul
Watzlawick and John Weakland.
Although there have been many developments of this systemic therapy in subsequent years, they have
been primarily within this context of family therapy and with a high emphasis on communication: it is
interpersonal rather than intrapersonal.
Specific schools which may be seen to have developed in this way are structural and strategic therapies.
Structural therapy focuses on the dynamics of communication: who is speaking to whom, when and in
what way. Strategic therapy focuses more on the purpose of communication, including non-verbal
communication, of which the presented symptom may be an example, in establishing the balance of
power within the family.
At the other extreme from systemic therapy we may perhaps place behavioral therapy, which tends in
practice to place the most emphasis on the role of operant conditioning, and to say least about the family
as a system. However the basic idea behind operant conditioning - the fact that a behaviour which [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]