John Weakland

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John H. Weakland (born January 8, 1919 in Charleston , West Virginia , † July 18, 1995 in Palo Alto , California ) was an American chemist , anthropologist and co-founder of the Palo Alto Group . He is considered a "pioneer in the field of systemic therapy" . With his sharp rejection of conventional disease models, he distinguished himself as a categorical critic of traditional psychiatry .

life and work

After studying chemistry, John Weakland worked as an engineer for six years, but turned to anthropology and sociology in 1947 , studying with Gregory Bateson , Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict in New York. In 1952 or 1953, Bateson brought his former student - together with Jay Haley , Don D. Jackson and William F. Fry - to Palo Alto to work on the structure of the paradoxes in a research project on human communication at the Veterans Administration Hospital .

The so-called Bateson project gave rise to the double bond theory of schizophrenia on the one hand in 1956 and the Mental Research Institute (MRI), also known as the Palo Alto group , in 1959 on the other . The double bond theory revolutionized thinking at that time and set itself in contradiction to the valid hypotheses according to which schizophrenia was caused intrapsychically. The revolutionaries from Palo Alto, on the other hand, saw relationship structures as the cause or at least trigger of the clinical picture. A paradoxical behavior evoked by this has a double-binding reaction and thus solidifies ritualized communication.

While Bateson was a professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto from 1951 to 1962 , Haley, Jackson and Weakland - together with Richard Fisch, Jules Riskin, Virginia Satir and Paul Watzlawick - founded the MRI, which quickly achieved international renown and became one It became a kind of pilgrimage site for people with an alternative orientation who - even before 1968 - wanted to break down traditional structures and question conventions. In Palo Alto, Weakland was engaged in studying the analogies between hypnosis and schizophrenia , engaged in geriatric psychotherapy, and was involved in the development of problem-oriented strategic family therapy . In contrast to structural family therapy, the focus here is not on family constellations and their changeability, but rather the clinical picture or problem behavior is viewed as the best possible solution available to the patient. Sophisticated "strategic" interventions should lead the client to the solution with pinpoint accuracy by using experiments and homework to help change behavior.

Fisch and Weakland subsequently - and parallel to the Milwaukee School - developed the solution-focused approach from this innovative form of family therapy , founded the Brief Therapy Center at the MRI and ran it together for three decades. Fisch is still the director of this ambulance. John Weakland was close friends with the solution-focused therapist Steve de Shazer and also wrote several forewords to his books. The two met in 1976 when de Shazer traveled to Palo Alto for the second Don D. Jackson Memorial Conference . John Weakland was married to Anna Wu .

Until his death, Weakland worked as a Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford University .

German-language publications

  • On the way to schizophrenia treatment (together with Bateson, Jackson, Haley). In: Schizophrenia and Family, ed. von Bateson / Jackson / Laing / Haley, Frankfurt / Main 1969, 1-43. (English original version 1956)
  • Strategies of change: systemic short-term therapy (together with Fisch and Segal), Stuttgart 1982, 1987
  • Interaction (together with Watzlawick), Bern 1977, 1980
  • Advice to older people and their families: The practice of applied gerontology , (together with JJ Herr), Bern 1979, 1984
  • Conversation - but of what kind? Systems 9 (1995): 6-15

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stmm / Pritz et al .: Personal Lexicon of Psychotherapy , Vienna, New York 2005, 499
  2. ↑ at the New School for Social Research
  3. ↑ at Columbia University
  4. ↑ diverging sources: fr-Wikipedia speaks from 1952, Stumm / Pritz, 499 from 1953

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Weakland, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weakland, John H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist and psychotherapist
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleston, West Virginia
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1995
Place of death Palo Alto , California