We often refer of the Brief and Systemic Therapy (BST) as the Palo Alto model. Let me walk you through the history of the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California and how eminent scientists founded this new therapy in the 60’s which is so contemporary and why I choose to mainly clinically practising according to this model.$
The Mental Research Institute (MRI) was born in Palo Alto in September 1958 thanks to the insights of Donald D. Jackson, a brilliant and inventive psychiatrist, who founded an institute dedicated to studies on systemic interactional processes, that is, studies on the mutual influence, action and reaction, in the communication between people.
DD Jackson collaborates with Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist, who moves his studies from ethnology to the epistemology of communication. Cybernetics, a new multidisciplinary subject, brings new tools to study the interactive systems of which human communication is part. They are the two leading figures who saw in the phenomena of communication the key and the explanation of all human behavior.
In 1967 at the Mental Research Institute the Brief Therapy Center was founded by clinicians and multidisciplinary researchers who were already collaborating with the MRI. Among them, there were the followings:
- John Weakland, chemical engineer and student of G. Bateson, studied for 18 years, confronting directly with him the work of Milton Erickson;
- Richard Fisch, a New York psychiatrist who moved to MRI;
- Paul Watzlawick, philosopher, psychoanalytically trained psychologist, expert in language and logic;
- Artur Bodin, a psychologist, at that time president of the Californian section of the American Psychological Association.
- Virginia Satir psychologist, the best known American family therapist, Jules Riskin, C. Sluszki and Cloe Madanes, who was assistant to Paul Watlzawick, and many others.
Systemic (family) therapy becomes famous all over the world thanks to the studies published in the book "The Pragmatics of Human Communication" (1967) by Paul Watzlawick, JH Beavin, DD Jackson, the bible for those who deal with effects, pragmatics, that is concrete, of communication in people.
How things are said, that is, how whoever communicates creates different effects in whoever receives the communication. It is everyone's experience not to feel hurt by those who, with attention, are able to tell us unpleasant things and instead react impulsively with those who communicate nonsense to us like being solicited with a horn at a traffic light….
I like the reliability of this multidisciplinary scientific approach (cybernetics, systems theory) which is coupled to the 5 axioms of communication and it is applied to therapy to create a new theoretical model.
As I’m a scientist by education (Msc in cellular biology and physiology) I used to deploy the systems theory in my previous career and I’m confident in this scientifically sounded model.
This model is focused in the Now and then rather than in the past history of patients. Even though we may investigate some past events, the emphasis is on the current difficulties or problems and how they are functioning.
Finally it is a pragmatic model as it provides concrete solutions to the patient (on cognitive, emotional and behavioural levels) that he/she will experiment prior deciding whether or not the therapy meets his/her expectations and goals.
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